This is me completely losing control of myself
Ah!
at what some say
is the biggest Southeast Asian street food market
in the U.S.
Hi, I'm Yara,
and I'm in Philadelphia's FDR park,
where the city's Cambodian community
brings together immigrants
from all over Southeast Asia
to host an utterly massive,
open-air,
Southeast Asian
street food market.
But this market has a secret.
In fact, it was a secret.
Because for decades,
Philadelphia's Cambodian street food vendors
operated under the radar.
They didn't have permits for their food stands.
And that's where things got dicey.
We would get handcuffed,
thrown off the table,
just kicked to the side
to tell us to go home.
Selling food on the street
has long been a way for immigrants to earn a living in the U.S.
It's also why America's
food scene is so dynamic and exciting.
But it comes with its own challenges.
She's just trying to sell some stuff!
This is f*cking ridiculous!
So how did this community —
survivors of war and genocide —
manage to keep selling,
sometimes in secret,
for so many years?
And how are they now taking
control of the narrative?
I refuse to let anyone
take this park away
because this is our home.
OK, but first thing's first:
What does a massive Southeast Asian street food market in the U.S.
taste like?
This is the
old school
Cambodian-style barbecue.
That's Jennie Nam.
She's one of the main organizers behind the market
and came here from Cambodia as a refugee.
So, this is your every-weekend market
at FDR park.
We're a huge market.
— 76 vendors!
76 vendors.
Every culture, every diversity of
different Asian ethnics
coming in, cooking,
grilling.
They're serving, like,
all types of papaya salads,
beef sticks,
chicken on a stick.
[angelic, echoing] Papaya salads,
beef sticks,
chicken on a stick...
But wait.
Why are there so many refugees here from
Cambodia,
Laos
and Vietnam?
Time for a little bit of history.
Well, the entire region had been torn apart
by a war
people in the U.S. call
"the Vietnam War,"
but is known in Vietnam
as "the American War."
The carnage spread to neighboring Cambodia and Laos
and led to an influx of refugees
to the U.S.
But more on that later.
First, let me show you some of the incredible food
this refugee community is serving up.
There's meat skewers.
Chicken gizzard.
I love gizzard.
Gizzard.
All right, that's enough.
Next, shrimp cake.
Oooh!
That's very good!
And apparently I couldn't stop shouting that.
Then, these beautiful steamed buns.
A lot of pepper in here. So good,
and it's sweet.
[record scratch]
Is that an egg?
And tart fried bananas.
Mouthwatering noodle dishes.
It's very good.
And out-of-focus, but super sweet, salty, spicy papaya salads.
And then, there's Jennie's booth.
This is the stuff we got from Florida.
Yup.
Jennie not only serves as treasurer of the vendor's association,
which puts on the market every weekend,
but she also operates a booth selling...
sugar cane juice
Mmm.
with her family.
And yes, you heard that right.
Jennie will drive over 2,000 miles
to Florida and back,
just to pick up sugar cane for the market.
And that’s on top of a regular 9-5 selling insurance.
So my family is hardcore business.
But this market isn’t just a side hustle for Jennie.
It’s a crucial part of her family
and her community’s story.
During the Vietnam War,
Cambodia was decimated by covert U.S. bombing campaigns
attempting to disrupt North Vietnamese
supply chains running through the country.
In April 1975,
days before the end of the war,
the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia
amid the chaos and anger over the U.S. bombing.
They then proceeded to carry out a genocide,
killing between 1.5 and 2 million people.
Cambodians who were able to flee to the U.S. as refugees
— about 150,000 people —
settled all over the country,
from Long Beach, California
to Lowell, Massachusetts.
And, of course, here in South Philly,
where many Cambodians took to selling street food
to make ends meet.
This is where we came.
I was a little girl.
And I remember, like, my parents would just come,
and let us go run around and buy our food
and eat for the day.
And what troubled me was
we didn't have a place to go back home.
We had nothing.
[Yara] You guys were...
We basically laid a mat and slept through the night
because we didn't have a place to go back.
I remember as a little girl,
like, just watching someone grilling
and then turn around and I see the police coming by
pushing everything to the side.
Throwing all the food...
Throwing everything to the side and saying,
"Hey, go home, go home."
When we talked to other folks at the park,
we heard the same thing again and again.
They'd come in with a big dump truck
and dump it all out.
No!
They would take —
Yeah. The whole thing.
They would just dump it all in the trash?
How many time you change grill?
Five time?
Wait, they would take the grill?
They confiscate everything.
We asked the Philly police for comment,
but they said they wouldn't respond to general questions of
quote, unquote “alleged incidents"
"without knowing the exact details.”
They referred us to the city’s licensing department,
which states that unlicensed vendors
will face having their items confiscated
and disposed of.
So why didn’t the vendors have food permits back then?
Members of the community say the answer is complex.
And it’s tied up with the story of how Cambodian Americans
ended up here in the first place.
We met up with Sarun Chan,
a well-known community leader, to learn more.
All right, so, Sarun.
Yes.
Tell me, where are we right now?
We are currently on South 7th Street business corridor,
also known as unofficial Cambodia Town.
During the influx of Cambodian refugees in the 1980s,
we were pretty much dumped in this area.
Started off with only two or three different stores,
but we blew up to having 40 different properties
in the circumference.
And tell about me your history with immigration.
I was born in a refugee camp myself.
Oh, wow.
A lot of my friends are all refugee-born.
I’m 35 years old.
So it’s really close, you know, in terms of time.
Being a refugee, you’re being pushed around in a refugee camp,
then you’re placed in the inner city.
There’s intimidation from your neighbors
who don’t understand your background.
A lot of us barely speak the language.
Right? Culture shock.
The thing that
distinguishes from immigrant
versus refugees is that refugees
have a lot of PTSD,
a lot of trauma, mental health illness.
While there’s no single reason
why newly arrived refugees didn’t have permits,
it’s easy to see how that might be,
given a mix of language and literacy barriers,
trauma and distrust of government authorities.
But for me, personally, it also begs the question of
why this sort of informal street vending
is so common in almost every city of the world,
yet so aggressively policed in the U.S.
A lot of working class immigrant families —
who've gone through god-knows-what to get here,
who sometimes end up here
because of this country's very actions.
Well, they often have to find a quick way to make extra money
and survive in this new, unfamiliar place.
And frankly,
it’s not always through the channels
that more privileged folks have access to.
The thing about our community is they're refugees.
They're on survival mode no matter where they are.
Right?
So you take away their livelihood,
they're going to pop up somewhere else.
It’s a similar story for many immigrant vendors across the U.S.
What’s going on? Why are you taking her sh*t away?
Why are you taking her sh*t away?
Y'all, she's crying.
You're taking her sh*t away — she's crying.
What's she doing?
Ma'am, just back now.
It’s illegal to sell food inside the subway station,
This is f*cking ridiculous.
She is f*cking powerless right now, you *ssholes!
But things are starting to change.
On paper, at least.
In LA, officials are taking steps towards regulating
and legalizing the city’s 15,000-strong
street vendor community.
In New York, where cops and street vendors
have clashed so many times before,
police will no longer be in charge of
overseeing the city’s famous food carts.
And here in Philly,
after decades of failing to push
the Southeast Asian Market out of the park,
the city is now working with the community
to give it a proper home.
What we've worked to do here is move
from a space of confrontation
to a space of celebrating what is good about it.
This is Justin, the director of FDR Park.
He’s working with Vina,
a pillar of the Cambodian community and
a long-time vendor here at the market.
I didn't get a chance to work because
my husband was disabled.
So this is the only income that I can
make a little bit for a living.
Now there's a different relationship that the market has
with the city, and
it's no longer being seen as illegal.
There is an incredible food culture that is happening here in the park.
This is an incredible gathering place.
And that's something that a city should work
to make permanent, make real and make sustainable.
Long term, the city’s plan is to establish
a Market Pavilion in the park,
where vendors can sell freely,
without fear of being shut down for not having a permit.
My grandmother was born in Sicily,
so I know from my father that experience of
fighting to become American.
You know, a hundred years ago,
there was another unlicensed food market happening on 9th Street.
You know, it was the Italian market.
Folks in that community got organized.
They wanted to have a permanent home for their food culture.
And it's now one of the greatest tourist attractions
in the city of Philadelphia.
And I think it's an incredibly American story.
It’s that same spirit of resilience
that's seen the Southeast Asian Market
blossom into what you could say
is one of Philadelphia's cultural landmarks.
It’s a living record of a community’s determination,
not just to survive
but to build something everlasting.
Something that honors the past
and celebrates the future.
Now I see the park rangers.
I get along with them.
They come in and buy the sugar cane,
and they’re like, “Jennie, what's the best beef stick?"
"I want this, I want to try that.”
I'm like, wait a minute.
That was not the case back then.
Now they want to be part of the market?
Yes!
You always have to have the light and the dark together,
right?
We have our struggles, but we also have our accomplishments.
We have people shoving our grills down to the ground,
but we come back up.
And we'll pop back up like daisies,
every time.