Description
- Abstract:
- Oral history interview with Chutema Am about owning and operating Angkor Restaurant, a Cambodian restaurant located in the Fox Point neighborhood of Providence, R.I.
- Notes:
- Chutema Am is the owner of Angkor Restaurant, a Cambodian restaurant located at 333 Wickenden Street in Fox Point. Am has been at this location since 2007. He first entered the restaurant business in 1997. Prior to his current location on Wickenden Street, he had operated two unsuccessful restaurants in Cranston, Rhode Island. He attributes his success on Wickenden Street to the Brown students and faculty who are his main clientèle. His restaurant utilizes recipes from his mother-in-laws aunt, a former chef for the royal palace in Cambodia. The food is a mix of indigenous spices, as well as Thai and French culinary influences. Born in Cambodia, he escaped a Pol Pot work camp with his father during the Khmer Rouge regime. The two lived in a Thai Refugee camp until they were sponsored by a church organization in Providence and granted asylum in Rhode Island. The two came to Providence in 1976 as refugees when Chutema was nine years old. He grew up in Smith Hill. As one of the first Cambodians to relocate to Providence, and one of the few to live in Smith Hill, he faced prejudice and intolerance. He has memories from his youth and early adulthood of discrimination in many of Providences neighborhoods, including Fox Point. Before entering the restaurant business, he attended University of Rhode Island Kingston from 1988-1991 and worked for the City of Providence as a Southeast Asian Community Organizer, the Providence Police Department, and had his own real estate/mortgage company. He is divorced with three children, Brianna, Brittany, and David. Chutema hopes to retire within the next ten years and return to Cambodia to give back to the community, and his family who still live there. He is also hoping to publish a memoir about his experiences growing up in Rhode Island as a Cambodian refugee, and the changes he has seen within the state over the last thirty years.
Citation
"Interview with Chutema Am"
(2010).
Fox Point Project.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:1149937/
Relations
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Biography of Chutema Am
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Transcript of interview with Chutema Am
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Interview with Chutema Am
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Collection:
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Fox Point Project
Since 2008, students from the Brown Center for Public Humanities have worked with Professor Anne Valk on collaborative projects to preserve and present the cultural heritage and social history of the Fox Point neighborhood. An archival collection of oral history …...