This Stockton Park Is a Weekend Haven for Hmong and Cambodian Bites

At first glance, Angel Cruz Park on the northern end of Stockton doesn’t appear extraordinary — there are tennis courts, a softball field, a playground and picnic tables. But along the southern end, the air is filled with wafts of smoke, the smell of grilled meats and karaoke tracks booming out of speakers.

For more than 30 years, especially on weekends, Angel Cruz Park has been a destination for made-to-order dishes created by local food vendors, many of whom are Hmong and Cambodian immigrants. Locals argue over who has the best beef sticks or papaya salad.

The vendors that make this park a food-lovers destination start their days early. Rotana Lach was the first to arrive on a recent Sunday. At 7 a.m., before she even set up her cooking station, she swept the area clean with a tree branch.

With a mischievous smile, Lach explained that 15 years ago, when she was first establishing herself as a vendor in this park, she used to show up even earlier, at 2 or 3 in the morning, to stake out this prime spot. That didn’t make her too popular with other vendors.

“After that, they get mad at me all the time,” Lach said with a little laugh.

She began unloading her car, which was stuffed with folding tables, charcoal and cleaning supplies. She pulled out coolers full of food she prepped at home in the middle of the night.

“I make beef stick, chicken stick, sausage, angel wing, stuffed chicken, lao sausage and papaya salad,” she said. “I make everything by myself.”

Lach started cooking as a livelihood in a roundabout way. Growing up in Cambodia, she rejected her family’s efforts to get her to cook, saying it felt too traditional. Born in Battambang in 1974, the chaos of the war in Vietnam and ongoing regional conflicts was all around her.

When she was a little girl, she said, a friend accidentally detonated an explosive near her, leaving her with burn scars that are still painful.

“Sometimes, it’s like my head hurts,” Lach said. “I cannot control myself, sometimes.”

A few years after the explosion, Lach said her family moved out of the city to cultivate land closer to the Thai border. As she grew older, into her teen years, her family was even more eager for her to learn to cook. They saw it as a necessary skill for her future, but Lach resisted.

“I tell my stepmom, ‘No, I don’t want to cook,’” Lach said. “When people ask [about] marriage, tell them your daughter [doesn’t] know how to cook.”

Her plan to delay marriage worked for a while; suitors stopped asking to marry her. But Lach said, eventually, she did marry, and her husband brought her to Stockton, home to one of the largest populations of Cambodians in the country.

That was 20 years ago, and she’s since divorced that husband. But the difficulty of those early days hasn’t left her. When she arrived in California, she only spoke Khmer.

“No writing, no reading,” she said.

She didn’t speak any English, so she attended adult school for about five years.

Cooking finally caught up to her.

With a husband and a growing family, she finally had to learn. At parties, she’d spy on what experienced cooks were doing. She also spent time online watching cooking videos on YouTube.

All that work paid off.

Now, her stall at the Angel Cruz Park food market earns enough money to support her four kids and to send funds back to relatives in Cambodia.

A multigenerational community

The vendors at this longstanding market represent several different generations within the Southeast Asian community. Many of the longest-standing stalls are run by older folks. Lach falls into the middle category. And then, there are the younger, newer folks, like Steve Kim.

“As a Cambodian American, we’re known for using a lemongrass paste,” Kim said. “[It] has like kaffir lime leaf, garlic, longa, turmeric.”

Kim’s tent is fancier than the others, with laminated images of the items he sells: lemonades, boba tea, Cambodian food and waffles. The 30-year-old said his stomach led him to start cooking.

“In the fourth grade, I was like, ‘Hey, mom’s always working. Dad is always working. You know, we come [home] after school [and we’re] starving.’”

He asked his mom to teach him some Cambodian basics — and his cooking evolved from there.

After managing restaurants for years and making food videos on TikTok, he started selling at Angel Cruz Park in the summer of 2023. He wanted to see if he could build a customer base before jumping into the financial commitment of a full-fledged restaurant.

“So once I got my business license all set up, my permits and everything, I was like, ‘Hey, let’s just try it out,’” Kim said.

He started with three types of lemonade — strawberry, grapefruit and dragonfruit — and then added more items.

The Angel Cruz Park market is a Stockton institution, Kim said.

“When the Southeast Asians migrated, they decided to showcase their food and their culture,” Kim said. “And since then, this park has grown a lot. The food is cheap; it’s made fresh to order. And it’s like a community event.”

He likes that there are multiple generations at the park, elders who established this tradition, and people his age who are expanding on it.

“You hear a lot of negativity about Stockton, but once you come here and you see it [with] your own eyes, it’s not like that,” Kim said.