Chef Channy Laux’s quest to honor her mother’s legacy has now achieved its goal in the real world.

The Cambodian-born chef and her husband, Kent, have completed a lengthy soft opening period at their downtown San Jose restaurant, Angkor Chef, hosted an official grand opening and are now welcoming customers for lunch, dinner and private events.

A survivor and refugee, Fremont-based Laux worked for decades as an aerospace and biotechnology engineer before turning to cooking in 2010 after her mother died.

“I thought about her life and wanted to find a way to honor her,” she told the Bay Area News Group in a 2019 interview. “She was an orphan. She never had a single day of school in her life, but she was a strong woman, a single mother who raised four children who became engineers and entrepreneurs. After arriving in the U.S., her first job was in a kitchen. She later cooked Cambodian food at many weddings.”

Laux also cooked fragrant, authentic dishes for family, friends and colleagues before opening her spice business and selling products at fairs and pop-ups.

In 2021, she tested the restaurant market by joining a cloud kitchen in San Jose and preparing take-out meals.

Since the South First Street restaurant opened this summer, its best-selling dishes, especially among newcomers to Cambodian cuisine, have been lemongrass chicken, Angkor noodles with shrimp and amok, curry fish steamed in banana leaves.