Tum Yumz Food Truck Shares Cultural Heritage Through Authentic Family Dishes

When Tien Luu cooks, it's more than just preparing a meal: It's a memory, a connection and a celebration of heritage that he shares with his friend and business partner, Selwyn Hansana. Together, they launched Tum Yumz food truck last August. Since they have no formal culinary training, Tum Yumz is, in the truest sense, a labor of love — rooted in years of home cooking, deep family traditions and a shared desire to bring joy to others through bold and comforting flavors that honor their Southeast Asian cultural backgrounds.

Honoring their culture begins with honoring where they come from, and for Luu and Hansana, that starts with their families. Luu's parents are from Vietnam, though his father's family originally came from China before immigrating to Vietnam. Hansana's family is from Laos, and both men grew up surrounded by rich food traditions. Those early experiences in their kitchens shaped a passion for cooking long before Tum Yumz ever hit the streets.

"We don't have any culinary experience. We've just always been in the kitchen when our parents were cooking," Luu says. "That's how I got started. My mom was always in the kitchen. She would call me down and be like, 'Hey, watch this for me, stir-fry it a little while I prepare some other ingredients.' I was in there helping out, and that's where my love for food grew. I could taste the finished product. Adding our ingredients and giving life to that plate, that's what made me excited."
Although Luu works a day job in the corporate world as a transportation analyst, food has always been his real passion. After moving from Kansas to Colorado five years ago with his wife, who grew up in Denver, he kept that passion alive by cooking for friends and family, often fielding special requests. "Everyone would be like, 'Can you make this? Can you do that?' And I'd say, 'Sure, just cover the ingredients.' It wasn't about the money. I just wanted to see people smile when they ate my food," explains Luu. "That's just how we show love to each other."

For Luu, the dream of starting a food truck simmered in the background for years. But everything changed when he met Hansana at his sister-in-law's birthday in Las Vegas roughly ten years ago, forming a friendship that would eventually spark a shared vision. It wasn't until a later visit, when Hansana came to Denver to see Luu, that the idea began to take shape. "I was cooking for him and his wife the whole time they were staying with me," Luu recalls. "And I told him, 'This is my dream. I want to open a food truck.' And he was like, 'I want to do it with you.' That's when we got serious."

Prior to Hansana's visit, Luu had already created a business name and formed an LLC back in 2021. "I was talking with a friend of mine, and we came up with the name Tum Yumz. I wanted something fun, something that rolls off the tongue and hints at our Asian background," says Luu. "It's kind of a riff on tom yum soup, but also just something that suggests this food is gonna be good for your tummy."

Still, it wasn't until Hansana's visit in 2023 that they fully committed to the vision.

After making the commitment, the two friends started prepping and developing a menu. "Coming up with the menu was probably the most difficult thing because we wanted something unique. We wanted to create something that speaks to us and our cultures," says Luu.

When most people think about Southeast Asian cuisine, they tend to gravitate toward Thai food, but there is a distinct difference in the food and culture that Luu and Hansana showcase. "It's more pungent, it's more salty, it's more fishy," Luu describes. "For instance, Thai papaya salad is usually very sweet and toned down. But our papaya salad is made really pungent and authentic. We use shrimp paste, crab paste, fermented fish sauce. We prepare everything like we have at a family gathering."

In the beginning, the team wrestled with the idea of making the flavors less intense, unsure of how the Denver community would respond to bold, authentic flavors. "We toned things down at first, but we were eating dishes that first week, and we were like, this is not it. I wouldn't order this. I wouldn't eat this. And that's when we decided to go back to our authentic recipes and just serve our dishes and see what people think. Everyone's been really accepting, and I'm happy because it shows that Denver is growing and people are open to trying other, diverse cuisines," explains Luu.
In pursuit of authenticity, Tum Yumz menu features the dishes and flavors Luu and Hasana grew up with. Crispy tempura chicken wings, egg rolls, and crab rangoons are offered as appetizers, but it's the rice platters that steal the show. From Cambodian marinated steak (sach ko jakak) and Southeast Asian grilled chicken to spicy Lao sausage (sai oua), each dish highlights bold flavors from their heritage.

For first-time visitors, Luu suggests the Lao sausage and papaya salad. "We make the sausage ourselves. It's pork with a bunch of herbs, a ton of herbs. Dill, lime leaf, lemongrass, shallots. We serve it with sticky rice and our Tum Yumz sauce, which is like a dressed-up fish sauce, a little sweet, a little spice," explains Luu.

No matter what dish you choose, you're getting a traditional taste. "We're using authentic family recipes and we're making everything from scratch," he says.

After a very successful Mile High Asian Food week this past month, the team is excited for the upcoming busy season. Since both Luu and Hasana still work full-time corporate jobs, Tum Yumz typically operates Friday through Sunday.

To follow the truck, check out its Instagram @tumyumztruck and visit its website at tumyumz.com