MTS Kitchen

Mae Tao and Son’s Kitchen, also known as MTS Kitchen, serves Lao and Cambodian street food from the food court inside Lotte Plaza Market on West Colonial Drive in Orlando. Husband-and-wife owners Brittney Keophoxay-Lam and Dan Lam grew the business through pop-ups and a food truck before opening this permanent kitchen.

The food comes from family. Their parents fled Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict, and the couple grew up on those flavors. When they were advised to market their cooking as Thai, they declined and kept its real name.

That heritage runs through the menu, in kreung, the lemongrass paste used to marinate the chicken, and in jeow som pickled cabbage, laap salads and Cambodian noodle soup. The same flavors fill the creative sandos that built their following, from the wagyu sando to the Lao hot chicken.