For years, the Thai street food market at Wat Yarnna Rangsee Buddhist Monastery in Sterling remained an open secret among temple attendees. But then NoVA gourmets heard about it.
“There were just too many people coming in,” says member Doi Phuenphiphop. “There was too much traffic.” He and the team behind the delicious spectacle decided last November that it was time for a change.
With the support of U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Tanee Sangrat, who compared the Wat Yarnna Rangsee market to the beginnings of the bustling Thai Town in Los Angeles, Phuenphiphop created the NVA Thai Center in March and held the first NVA Thai Street Food & Cultural Festival in April on the lawn of the Manassas Museum. “That’s how we ended up in Manassas,” says Phuenphiphop, now the COO of the NVA Thai Center.
Through the summer, diverse crowds of people hungry for an airfare-free trip to Thailand have snaked through the corridors of booths at the twice-monthly Sunday market, waiting for sausages and skewers.
At the festival, where the entertainment ranges from Thai karaoke contests to muay Thai kickboxing demonstrations, Waraporn Andrews of Aroy-Jung Thai Street Food fries up meatballs in flavors that include spicy pork with mint and lemongrass-redolent tom yum chicken. She adds sliced cucumbers and cilantro, then douses the meaty skewers in a spicy tamarind sauce, selling them for four for $10. Next to her, Somwang Thai Culture Food offers sticky rice, sometimes selling out.
Both are vendors at the Manassas festival and at the monthly Sterling markets, which host about 30 food stalls. In Manassas, space limitations mean Phuenphiphop is only able to accept 40 vendors at a time. They include a few non-food options, such as alfresco Thai-style massages; comfortable, elephant-printed clothing; and knickknacks.
“If there were more space, I could easily have 100 vendors,” Phuenphiphop says. The Manassas festival has a waiting list of cooks and hawkers who have asked him for spots without being recruited.
Phuenphiphop says that in Manassas, the festival sometimes occurs at the nearby commuter parking lot, rather than at the museum. It is scheduled to continue from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on specific Sundays through December. As of press time, he’s in negotiations for a full roster of biweekly markets throughout 2025, which means even more chances to spice up your weekends in Manassas.
Manassas Museum: 9101 Prince William St., Manassas, facebook.com/nvathaimarket
Feature image by Tyson Bateman
This story originally ran in our September issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
