One evening in 1995, 16-year-old Anthony Teav and his 14-year-old sister, Christina, sat around the kitchen at their Stockton home ready to feast on steamy bowls of traditional Cambodian rice noodle soup. Kuy teav, the savory dish made with pork bones, was a typical meal served at the Teav household. But on this day, their mom, Kunthara, surprised them with a new creation: homemade chili crisp.
The Teav family normally used Sriracha and hoisin to enhance the dish, but Kunthara removed those condiments from the table and replaced them with a jar of the Cambodian-inspired sauce made with chile peppers and packed with crunchy bits of fried garlic. After months of practice, Kunthara had finally perfected the recipe, taking what was an already stellar dish to new heights. Even now, almost 30 years later, the siblings still remember the day that transformative sauce changed their world and eventually inspired them to launch Mama Teav’s, the popular Bay Area chili crisp.
For the past three years, the sibling founders behind Mama Teav’s have kept busy as they’ve steadily grown their business from a tiny apartment operation in Oakland to a mini chili crisp empire. Locals will spot jars of Mama Teav’s chili crisp tucked within specialty shops like Earthen in SF and trendy Bay Area restaurants including Joodooboo in Oakland and Lunette inside San Francisco’s Ferry Building. And they’re only expanding…