Chau-Yang is ready to keep serving you delicious food | Photo: Andrew Goff


Annie’s Cambodian is Holding Up!

Popular local restaurant Annie’s Cambodian Cuisine – which has been open in a tiny building on Highway 101 between U and T Streets in Eureka for 11 years – has recently gained more love and support from the community than ever before, since news broke that a development company submitted plans to demolish the Annie’s building to make way for a new drive-through restaurant.

“Business has been booming,” Laura Chau-Yang – who, along with her parents Annie and Chin Chau, owns Annie’s Cambodian – told the Outpost. In addition to flooding the restaurant with business, the community has been circulating a petition urging Eureka’s Planning Commission to not approve the project that would replace Annie’s with another chain business. (The project is expected to go before the Planning Commission in April.)

Chau-Yang, her son and parents, Annie and Chin Chau all squeeze into the Zoom chat

On this week’s episode of Humboldt Holding Up — the Lost Coast Outpost’s low-fi podcast — Chau-Yang and her family discuss how they are dealing with the unhappy news, the options they’re exploring for opening a new location and the outpouring of support they have gained from the community. Other topics include:

  • The story of how the family ended up in Eureka and went from opening Happy Donuts in 1993 to serving Cambodian food at local festivals and eventually opening Annie’s
  • How Annie developed her love for food from watching her mother cook in Cambodia
  • Some of their favorite dishes at the restaurant and what gives their cuisine that delicious flavor
  • The family’s passion for sourcing local ingredients when possible and growing their own specialty herbs
  • How important it is to the Annie’s family to stay open, despite recent hardships, and to keep serving delicious food to the community
  • More!

Show your love for Annie’s by clicking the audio player above to hear Chau-Yang’s chat with the Outpost’s Andrew Goff and Stephanie McGeary. And if you’re hungry for more audio, you can scroll through past interviews below.

PREVIOUS HUMBOLDT HOLDING UP GUESTS: