“I think Madison is ready for more Lao food, right?” Ounprason Inthachith, owner of Sern Sapp, a new, authentic Laotian cuisine restaurant on Williamson Street, tells Madison365. “We’ve been open for about a month and it has been great so far.”
Sern Sapp Restaurant is in a space that is very familiar to lovers of Lao cuisine. Lao Laan-Xang, which closed back in 2022 after 25 years on Willy Street, was founded by his mother and sister, Bounyong and Christine Inthachith, and was managed for years by his brother, Sone Inthachith. Lao Laan-Xang still has its location on Atwood Avenue, where it remains very popular.
Sern Sapp’s website describes the new place as aiming to be “a close-knit place where community meals will be a norm, where meeting new friends will lead to new shared stories and time will slow and stretch out a little but for us to enjoy each other’s company over delicious meals and some spirits.” One of the restaurant’s goals is to bring everyday Lao comfort food to Madison.
“I got the blessings of my brother and my sister before I started this restaurant. They were all for me doing my own thing. They said, ‘We always knew you were a little hot-headed and three hot-headed Inthachiths in the kitchen… that’s not going to work,’” Inthachith laughs. “We love expressing ourselves, especially in the kitchen. We have our own ideas and concepts going on. They’ve done great things with Lao Laan Xang, as everybody in Madison knows.
(Photo by David Dahmer)
“So the transition has been good. My mother was like, ‘You should have carried on with the Lao Laan-Xang. Curry squash and crab rangoons are everybody’s favorite!’ and I was like, ‘That is true … but I think we have room to make more favorites for everybody,'” he adds. “I think Madison is ready for more Lao food.”
Inthachith, who goes by Son, fled Laos with his mom and three siblings in 1980 when they arrived in the United States as refugees. He grew up in Madison and was a young adult here before returning to Laos for about 20 years, where he began a volunteer tourism business called Volun-Tour Laos. When the COVID-19 pandemic began to impact their business, his family started thinking about making the transition back to the U.S., which they completed in July 2024.
“The pandemic changed the course of everything throughout the world. For us, it led to us closing up our business and changing direction and then also putting the family’s priority a little bit higher than the norm. Kids were growing up fast,” says Inthachith, who has children ages 14, 12, and 9. “The pandemic really pushed things, giving us perspective. Where do we go from here? What do we do that’s best for the entire family?
“Opening the restaurant in Madison has been a great experience so far. Our menu at Sern Sapp is based upon my many years living in Laos and the cooking that our family does,” Inthachith continues. “We’ve been back in the United States for about a year and a lot of the menu is based upon what my children were craving. I asked them, ‘What do you miss? How can I make the transition easier for you so you can have some of the food you love, alongside the mac and cheese and eggs and bacon here [in the U.S.].”
In Lao, “Sern” means to invite and to welcome. “Sapp” means delicious.
“Lao food is a mixture of a lot of things from breakfast to lunch to dinner. The menu is based upon me and my family’s time living in Laos,” Inthachith says. “We’re looking forward to just keep sharing our great Lao food. Nothing too major, not too extreme. Madison has been really kind to my family and we want to keep doing right by them. My goal is to provide people with great food for as long as I can and watch my kids grow up here in Madison. Time goes by fast.”
People who have discovered Sern Sapp during its first month have generally put two and two together and realized they are in the building that was once Lao Laan-Xang.
“People come in and they recognize my name and the former place. A lot of the elder customers recognize me,” Inthachith says. “I hope we are a good addition to the neighborhood. Lao food has so much more to offer.
“There are 26 different ethnic groups all over Laos, from north to south, from central to east to west. You go closer to the borderline with Vietnam, you’re gonna have a lot of influence with the Vietnamese cuisine. You go closer to the Mekong in Thailand, you’re gonna have Isaan, and then you have Bangkok flavor. If you go to the north, you have Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. In between, that’s a whole lot of flavor that gets created. And we just want to add a little bit more. And I think more is always good with food.”
(Photo by David Dahmer)
Right now, it’s just Inthachith and his wife and a couple of staff working at the restaurant. Sern Sapp is open Mondays through Saturdays, 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., for breakfast and lunch. Dine-in or take-out is available.
“We’re just getting a feel for it right now and seeing how much we can do in the morning and lunch time, and then contemplate about evenings and whatnot and all this special stuff that we’re thinking about down the line… We have a lot of ideas for the future, but there’s only so much we can do with just one or two people,” Inthachith says.
For those of you who remember the old Lao Laan Xang place on Williamson Street, you know that a realtor would kindly describe it as “cozy” because it is rather small with limited seating compared to most restaurants. That doesn’t seem to bother Inthachith.
“It’s a family place, it’s a community place. And it always starts with this smallness, and you can always create an extension from that … and you can always create these community events,” Inthachith says. “Part of what I’m looking to do by leaving evenings open is to have these community meals and these get-togethers here, whether you are a Willy Street neighbor or a group that wants to try something new in a different environment.
“Another thing about the smallness of the place is that my mom always said that if you get too big, you can lose that consistency and you lose that whole approach to what you were intending to do in the first place … and that was to provide really good authentic Lao food.”
Inthachith says that people are starting to find out about Sern Sapp through word of mouth and a little social media.
“If you have the right ingredients and the right recipes and you keep it and maintain it, people are going to find out about it and they will come,” he says. “So far, we’ve had a lot of the old Lao Laan Xang customers come and a lot of the Willy Street neighborhood have come. People do have a lot of respect for the Inthachith family name.
‘My mom and my sister Christine were very daring back in 1989/1990 [starting Lao Laan-Xang] when nobody knew anything about Laos or Laotian food. So they were bold to put all of this food out there back then,” he adds. “It’s amazing what they did back then, and I guess that’s my way of saying, ‘let’s be bold, too.’”
