DEE DEE : Farm-to-Table Northeastern Thai Food
Pad ka pow is the house plate: ground pork rich and savory, fried basil leaves aromatic and peppery, and an egg yolk jammy in the middle with crisp edges.1
Why go
Lakana Sopajan-Trubiana was born and raised in Nong Khai province on the Mekong, in the arid northeast of Thailand that Matthew Odam names as Issan, and she was doing family prep work in the dark hours before school from the age of five, cooking food that fed the household and went to market the same day.6 She learned the cooking from her mother and her great-grandmother.8 Brandon Watson's line on what that region means at the table is that its traditions have more in common with neighboring Laos than the country's core – particularly in their use of sticky rice over long grain jasmine
.2 Her husband Justin, an Austin native, met her while volunteering in Thailand after a stint in New York finance, and they opened the truck in March 2016 with him on the window and her on the food; the name is a nod to their favourite restaurant back home and translates as good good
.6 A good part of the plate comes off her own ground. Her husband and co-owner Justin Trubiana on the record: Since starting her garden a few years ago, she hasn't had to outsource any of her papaya, wax gourd, butternut squash, Kaprow basil, lemon basil, mint, lemongrass, or Thai bird-eye chilis, which are used in all of her dishes and chili pastes.
3 The move off the East Cesar Chavez trailer into a window at Leona Botanical was her own idea of the point, stated when the site broke ground: Our goal with this project is to create a beautiful space that stays true to our cultures and highlights our upbringing by sharing the traditions we learned from our mothers and grandmothers. We want people to experience a part of our homes.
4
Order this / avoid
- Order: pad ka pow, which McCrary names the signature and the first-timer's order.1
- Then: som tom, the papaya salad, which carries the fish-sauce funk with cherry tomatoes for sweetness. Watson's trailer-era verdict on the same dish is worth holding beside it:
Dee Dee's version of the papaya salad is electrifying, the brume of fish sauce lost in sour and heat, all absorbed by (you guessed it) sticky rice.
12 - Use the sticky rice like bread. That is the instruction Justin Trubiana gave every new customer at the trailer, and it is how the wet dishes are meant to be eaten.2
- Avoid: the lettuce wraps, which arrive deconstructed and whose tofu McCrary calls dry and boring, and the $17 roasted chicken, which is one thigh.1
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation, Nicolai McCrary, page dated 3 March 2026, 7.6: the review of the current window, and it is a mixed one.
With more food pouring out of the kitchen in larger batches, some of the punchy flavors and tear-inducing spice levels we loved so much are dialed back.
The same piece credits the move with killing the hour-long waits and doubling the menu, and notes there is no pad thai on it.1 - The Austin Chronicle, Brandon Watson, 4 August 2016, reviewed the trailer and built the piece around the om gai, chicken and zucchini in a broth fragranced with scallions, chiles and herbs, with dill rising over everything once it hits the tongue. That review is ten years old and describes a kitchen that has since moved; it is quoted here for the cuisine and the cooks, and its verdict belongs to that trailer.2
- The kitchen's own answer to the criticism was given before the criticism existed. Justin Trubiana, at groundbreaking:
I know just how excited Lakana is to finally have a proper kitchen where she will be able to share more of her family's favorite country-style Thai dishes.
A longer menu cooked in bigger batches is what she was after.4 - Austin American-Statesman, Matthew Odam, 26 May 2017, reviewed the trailer under the headline
Thai food truck Dee Dee isn't just good; it's great
and put his finger on why it mattered:it's exactly the kind of cooking Austin could use more of: dishes rooted in family and tradition from a chef with a story to share.
The same piece has the som tom arriving at a two-chili baseline, with Lakana eating hers at ten.6 - Austin Monthly named it a Best New Restaurant of 2016, a staff-decided award and one attached to the black trailer in the Aztec Food Park on East Cesar Chavez.7
- Odam's Top 40 Austin Restaurants for October 2025 does not carry it, and his 2025 best-new list excludes it by name as a relocation. Those are absences from lists, not verdicts.9
- The region gets mislabeled and the trading name settles it. Isaan is the northeast. The Statesman places Nong Khai in northeastern Thailand and the Chronicle calls the region northeastern; KUT's 2017 billing, The Infatuation's 2026 review and one paragraph of Austin Monthly's own spotlight say Northern, and the next paragraph of that spotlight calls larb a Northeastern dish. The venue trades as Northeastern Thai.
Good to know
- Where it is now, and where it is not. Dee Dee runs a takeout window at Leona Botanical Cafe & Bar, 6405 Brodie Lane in Sunset Valley, which opened on 11 November 2025 as its first brick-and-mortar. The trailer at 1906 East Cesar Chavez is not there any more, so ignore older directions.52
- What the site is: five acres with more than 7,000 plants across 80-plus species, 90 existing trees preserved, a pavilion and a shared bar, built with Veracruz All Natural, whose sisters Reyna and Maritza Vazquez met the Trubianas in 2018 when the two trucks were neighbours in East Austin.4
- Hours, as published at opening: Dee Dee serves 10:30am to 9:30pm inside a site trading 7:30am to 11pm. Those are opening-week figures from October 2025.5
- Parking is the known problem. The lot fills and there is no overflow neighbourhood nearby.1
- Hygiene: no inspection record, on either door, and the reasons are ordinary. The trailer years are absent because Austin's published dataset covers fixed addresses and mobile vendors sit outside it.10
Verdict
could-visit — Lakana Sopajan-Trubiana cooks the food of Isaan, northeastern Thailand, from her own upbringing, and the Austin Chronicle places that region's traditions closer to Laos than to the Thai core, sticky rice ahead of long grain jasmine. She grows a good deal of it: since starting her garden she has not had to outsource papaya, wax gourd, butternut squash, kaprow basil, lemon basil, mint, lemongrass or Thai bird's-eye chilis, all of which go into her dishes and chili pastes. The trailer that made the name is gone and Dee Dee now runs a takeout window at Leona Botanical in Sunset Valley, where Nicolai McCrary scores it 7.6 and reports that larger batches have dialed back the spice that used to define it. Order the pad ka pow, skip the lettuce wraps, and expect to fight for a parking space.