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The word sangha means “community.” Here in a rented community center near Sahara and Fremont, northeast of the Strip, 90 families gather once a month to hear a sermon by a Buddhist minister flown in for that purpose. The majority of the sangha’s members are retired Japanese Americans, and many are Hawaiian. They came to Las Vegas after retirement because it was an affordable city in which to live. Vegas is close to California where many still have family.

What does the sangha mean to them? As a community, they are connected by their common experiences, most notably internment at a camp following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Carol Suzuki was born in Poston, an internment camp in Southern California. Another lady, Hana Fukumoto spent three years in Manzanar. She met and married her husband, and gave birth to their first child inside the camp.

Many of the members also grew up attending Buddhist services in Japanese with their parents.

In my hunt for profile candidates, I came upon restaurant owners Bill and Saipin Chutima. Their little eatery Lotus of Siam has been called the best Thai restaurant in North America by Gourmet Magazine. Bill’s wife, Saipin, is head-chef and was a semi-finalist in this year’s James Beard awards. Celebrities and celebrity chefs alike are known to stop by—Drew Barrymore, Billy Joel, Mario Batali, Guy Savoy.

When I told Bill on the phone that I wanted to make a short television piece about his restaurant, he laughed and told me I’ve got the wrong person. 

“Are you sure you want us?” the friendly, booming voice said. “We’re just a little mom and pop shop here.”

His humbleness caught me off guard, as if this was the first time that a journalist had shown interest in the place. I knew from my research that far from it, Lotus of Siam has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and a slew of other national publications. It’s a household name in its home town.

He said he’d be happy to talk to me over the phone. As for shooting video—well, maybe that kind of attention should be paid elsewhere. So slowly over the next hour and a half, Bill told me how as first generation Asian immigrants, he and Saipin came to Las Vegas.

Bill first arrived in the U.S. in 1979, landing in cold, snowy New York to be an English student at Columbia University. He was 21, or 22 and didn’t know a soul. His plan was to stay at the YMCA until he could find his way into a dormitory, but on the flight over, he met a friendly passenger who offered for him to stay with an aunt.

He settled in Brooklyn and worked three jobs—bussing tables, mopping floors, doing whatever needs to be done—to pay the $3,500 per semester tuition at Columbia. It was quite a change.

“I came from a high and might way in Thailand,” Bill said, laughing. “My family had money, but hard headed boys don’t want to take money from the family.”

Bill’s family comes from a long line of cooks to Thai royalty. His grandmother was the best in the village, having learned how to cook from her grandmother. They lived near the northern palace, and whenever any foreign dignitaries came to visit, she was summoned to take care of their chefs and to cook for them.

“My grandma, she can handle five or six kitchens at a time,” said Bill. It was the kind of scale necessary to feed 100 people a day at the house.

Thus she learned how to cook Hungarian, Chinese, Peruvian and all sorts of international cuisines.

“She was the boss.”

Not long had he been in New York when Bill got a letter from immigration, telling him he couldn’t work and study at the same time.

“At that point, I went underground,” he said.

He picked up and moved to Los Angeles (“That’s it, I’m from the tropics.”) and drove delivery trucks. He remained an illegal alien until he successfully applied for legal status under Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program for long-settled illegal immigrants, in 1986.

Bill always dreamed of owning his own business though. When a friend was looking to sell his restaurant in Norwalk, CA, Bill got his chance. Bill and Saipin opened Renu Nakorn. Gourmet’s Jonathan Gold discovered them there. They were written up in Vogue.

After six years, they decided they wanted to move back to New York. They had been doing well, elevating Thai cuisine from its mediocre pad thai forms. They had amassed a solid following of restaurant owners and critics purely by word of mouth. They saw New York as a foodie town, where they would be surrounded by people who loved food like they did.

So how did they end up in Las Vegas?

“We were broke,” said Bill. “You know it’s like the old days when you get on a wagon? You go til the wheel breaks, then you set up shop wherever you are.” 

New York required lots and lots of money. So Bill and Saipin bought a small space on a strip mall on Sahara and opened shop. They took out a single newspaper ad, and waited for the customers.

“When we were struggling—nobody see that part,” said Bill. “Before the word of mouth start flowing, wife and i were sitting down scratching our own heads, ‘Do we do things right here or?’ ‘Yeah, it’s going to take time, but we got to do it right.’”

He attributes the restaurant’s success to their integrity.

“When you do things right, and you do it the right way, people notice.”

Bill prides himself on using the best ingredients, culled from secret locations all over Los Angeles and Orange County, twice a week. He makes the drives himself. When I asked if I could tag along on the next one, he let out a great belly laugh.

“You know how many requests we get from chefs to come along on the shopping trip? I can’t give away all the secrets! Then there wouldn’t be any left for us!”