When it comes to serving up Southeastern Asian food, plenty of places have you covered for Thai. But at Sweet Rice, the flavors of both Laos and Thailand are on the plate.
Photography by Kathy Tran
“A lot of Laos food is more herbal, and it’s not as many items with the stir fries,” manager Mina Sourignavong says. “It’s more herbal stuff and the taste is also the same, but then the Laos people, they don’t like more oily food or something that cooks more like soup.”
The counter-service restaurant at the corner of Tyler and West Davis opened in October 2024, with a long-running brick wall, dark wooden tables and Edison light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.
Sourignavong has been with Sweet Rice since the first location opened in April 2018. Today, there are five locations throughout Texas, including another spot in northwest Dallas on West Mockingbird Lane and one location in Tacoma, Washington.
She met Sweet Rice founder Von Linavong prior to opening his first Frisco venture, as he gave her a tour of the space and they exchanged ideas on the concept. Sourignavong was exploring new options in the restaurant industry, having already been working as a chef, when things fell into place. Shortly after they met, Linavong invited her to work with him and now she handles operations for the Texas locations.
Sourignavong initially joined to help create a place where she could share her love of home cooking with other people.
“I have a sister. When we were young at home, I’d be the one to cook and she’d be the one to clean, and I guess I’ve been involved in food since I was young,” Sourignavong says. “I love to meet and love to experience different things.”
Moving from Laos to Texas, Sourignavong has been in the Lone Star State for almost 30 years. When it came to developing the menu, she said she wanted to join well-known dishes of Thai food with her own Laotian upbringing eats, specifically “street food” focused dishes.
“It’s something that we know, and then if you do something that you know about, you can be good at it,” she says. “We choose the item or the food that we know, so we can do the best of it.”
She mentioned when first producing the menu, ingredients were easier to get. Today, Sourignavong says there is some uncertainty and shortages with new tariffs. They primarily source their ingredients from Asian grocery stores in Carrollton and Garland.
One reason for adding Laotian in addition to the Thai food menu is how the two countries balance each other.
She highlights one of the Laotian menu items: dry noodle with chicken ($14.99-18.99). Compared with the savory, saucy Thai street noodle chicken ($14.99-18.99), Laotian food tends to have a slightly different texture and taste.
Other favorite options that come to her mind include the Thai papaya salad or Lao papaya salad with salted field crab ($11.99-12.99) and the sweetness of sticky rice with fresh mango ($12).
Some dishes have the option to add spice, ranging from No Spicy at zero to Super Spicy at five. They have an added disclaimer on the menu: “WE USE FRESH THAI CHILI; NO REFUNDS ON FOOD TOO SPICY.”
“We also have the Lao (spicy) sausage ($10.99). It’s very savory and herbal. I mean, everybody loves it,” she says. “Even people here who think they will try it. They love it.”
Each location of Sweet Rice is “a little bit different.”
With this location, Sweet Rice added fruit teas and milk teas ($6-8) with add-in topping options of tapioca boba pearls, crystal boba, oreo or chocolate ($1). Even though the popular bubble tea hails from China, they wanted to include it since there were not many spots for the drink. She says the rising popularity of matcha made it easy to incorporate into the flavor options as well.
For the future, Sourignavong says they hope to focus less on new food items, but they are workshopping Japanese pancakes.
“It’s not easy to run a business,” Sourignavong says. “But it is something you enjoy with reward.”
Sweet Rice, 831 W. Davis St., 214.613.6244, sweetricetx.com
