The Tamarind cooking school and restaurant, are dedicated to ‘authentic’ Lao food and cooking techniques, intent on teaching visitors what constitutes the food of the region as well as providing a sophisticated Lao food experience. Western tourists overwhelmingly (although not exclusively so with the increasing interest of Thai diners) patronize both the cooking school and the immensely popular restaurant run by a husband and wife team, she Australian and he Laotian. From the notes provided by the Tamarind at the cooking school several things become apparent. The food of the Mekong valley around Luang Prabang has, like all food traditions, elements of continuity and invention. The well-known dish laab (mentioned above) is a case in point. Originally, eaten raw (and still eaten raw in some places) for very obvious reasons: in a tropical climate, with no refrigeration, food could not be kept and the poverty was so deep that the provision of fuel for cooking was a struggle. With greater prosperity in some of the larger towns and the relatively recent arrival of electricity has meant that laab is now, more often than not, encountered as a cooked dish. The cooking, however, is not just to do with taste or a more healthy option. It signifies social status; one has the means to cook it. So there is a degree of continuity, but like all cultural entities, there is also inevitable and ongoing adaptation.
While Tamarind prides itself on its dedication to local produce and local foods, within the setting of its restaurant the Western pre-occupation with modernist cuisine (originality and so called signature dishes) is not resisted. The degree of re-invention is exemplified by lemon grass flowers stuffed with pork and herbs. Everything about this dish could be said to be local – the ingredients, the taste, the preparation – but, by any measure, this dish is an exotic creation that appeals to sophisticated Asian and Western palettes and in its restaurant form is remote from similar concoctions eaten by the local Lao-speaking population. This example merely points to the obvious. All cooking is improvized, all ‘traditions’ are fabricated in the sense that decisions are made about what is and what is not marked out as warranting representation/preservation (in either oral or written form); all cooking is dynamic not just because of the creativity of individual cooks but because of changes in technology (food storage, handling and preparation) and changing social and economic circumstances.