Molly runs the front of the house with ease, Suet is the perfectionist in the kitchen, and Heather pulls the family together.
Together, all seven of the Set sisters — daughters of a Thai-Cambodian couple that came to America as refugees 30 years ago — are on the crew at the newly opened CC Thai Cuisine restaurant in North Bend.
The sisters say they love working together as a family. Each brings her own quality to the kitchen.
“We all live pretty far from each other,” said sister Dea Set. The job gives them a chance to see each other on a regular basis.
Dea used to drive a forklift for Yamaha at Kent, but now she works alongside her sisters three days a week.
“It’s so different, the environment,” she said. “Here, it’s fast. Always on the go.”
“We love cooking together,” owner Suet Set said. “We learn from the elders. We learn from cooking for weddings, funerals and gatherings.”
In her family’s culture, “when you have weddings and funerals, all the community comes together and helps cook.”
That skill in the kitchen was just about the only thing ever handed down to Suet and her siblings.
Their family fled Cambodia in the 1970s to escape the horrors of civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime, and lived in a refugee camp for five years. Unable to go to relatives in Thailand, they moved to Tennessee, where a Catholic family took them in, then Seattle, and then Kent, where the girls grew up.
Now, the family is centered around Tacoma. The sisters are all part of a thriving Thai and Cambodian community in the Puget Sound region.
Pictures on the walls show that connection; one group of photos at CC Thai show the boys of the family dressed as monks in a Buddhist temple. When their grandmother died, the boys fulfilled an obligation to her by living in the temple for four days.
The restaurant in North Bend came about after Suet qualified for a business loan.
“We talked about what type of business we could do,” said Heather Set. “She said we could do the restaurant business because we all like to cook.”
Suet’s husband, an avid cyclist, and his friends identified North Bend as a likely spot for a restaurant. Suet learned about a survey done in North Bend that showed more than 80 percent of residents were hungry for a Thai restaurant. It took three years for her to find a location for the restaurant, which has now opened in the new expansion at Mountain Valley Center.
“We went from sleeping on the ground to this,” said Suet, gesturing at the Thai pavilion inside her restaurant. “That’s the American dream. I’m very happy to be here.”
• CC Thai Cuisine is located at 320 S.W. Mount Si Blvd. Hours of operation are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and noon to 8 p.m., Sunday. Call the restaurant at (425) 396-0480.
