Once a customer of Meyer Sign & Advertising, always a customer. It’s a philosophy that makes good business sense. After all, even though a customer might only buy a sign from us once in their commercial lifetime, there’s a pretty good chance they will need to have that sign serviced and/or repaired down the road. Yeah, things like good marketing, expertise, follow through, etc. are all vital to the success of any business — but all of those factors ultimately serve what matters most: customer retention. Which is a fancy way of saying loyalty.

But there’s another reason we care about our customers long after their signs have been installed. Our relationship with them centers on the very core of their brand identity: the signs that proclaim it. Call us sentimental, but we want our customers to succeed not just out of enlightened self-interest, but because we identify with them. We too started out as a small family business.

All that being said, you can imagine that we’ve been pretty concerned about a lot of our customers over the recent weeks. We’ve worried especially about our local mom & pop restaurants and retailers. Rather than sit in self-isolation and wring our hands (ideally with disinfectant soap and plenty of hot water) we’ve been checking in with our customers by phone in the hopes of offering encouragement…and possibly deriving some as well. We’re all in this together! And it sucks.

One of our first calls went out to Sarkall’s Donuts & Noodle Soup. I was dreading what I might learn, to be quite honest with you. If you read our story about Sarkall’s from a couple of years ago, you’ll recall that its husband and wife owners, Kea Sok and Sophann Ley, had sold their previous business, the legendary Darren’s Donuts in Mount Vernon (we made that sign as well, he noted proudly) in order to purchase a venue in Burlington that would provide them with the commercial kitchen space to expand their menu to include the cuisine of their native Cambodia — while still making the killer fried dough that we have long associated with Darren’s. Thanks to that menu expansion, Sarkall’s was rapidly gaining the kind of word-of-mouth traction that spells the difference between success and failure in the high risk restaurant business.

Long before any of us had ever heard the word “coronavirus,” however, Sarkall’s had a much more personal crisis to weather. Sophann’s father had suffered a debilitating stroke, which meant he could no longer perform his duties as “head broth master.” Aside from being a family tragedy, the absence of Kea’s father-in-law had serious consequences for the restaurant. One of Sarkall’s flagship menu items since its opening has been its soups — and the foundational element of its soups are its broths. 

Those of us for whom the most critical component of soup making is a functioning can opener have absolutely zero concept of what a labor of love a broth base is when it comes to making a great soup. I could devote a thousand words to describing it, but to save you the trouble of reading the “inside baseball” explanation, I would simply refer you to the culinary term “umami” — a Japanese word which along with sweet, bitter, salty, and sour describes one of the five basic tastes that make eating so much more than an act of survival. When it comes to the soups on Sarkall’s menu, it’s all about the umami, baby. Without the hours spent on perfecting the broth foundation, all the best ingredients that are subsequently added are a bit like constructing the Taj Mahal on quicksand. It just ain’t going to hold up.

The impact of losing the talents of Sophann’s dad in the kitchen meant that Sarkall’s could only offer its soups on the weekends, when Sophann could step in and assist her husband with the restaurant’s operations. Even as her father’s health improved, he faced a long stretch of recovery at home. One glimmer of hope was that Kea’s brother was planning on bringing his recent Cambodian bride home to Burlington where she too could assist with the daily running of the restaurant, which by now was wearing Kea to a frazzle. The planets aligned, and fate conspired that this event should take place even as Kea’s father-in-law was once again able to return to Sarkall’s kitchen. At last, soup was back on the menu on a daily basis — even though Sarkall’s sandwiches and donuts were always enough of reason to patronize the restaurant.

And then the plague descended upon us. “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley,” to quote Robert Burns. You can see why we at Meyer Sign were worried about the future of Sarkall’s. Sure, we didn’t want to lose a customer. But we also didn’t want to miss out on some of the best damn soup and sandwiches in the Skagit Valley. And don’t even get me started on the apple fritters, or this story will turn into a novella.

Unbeknownst to us at the time, however, was that in the winner-take-all hand of coronavirus poker, Sarkall’s was holding a pair of aces. One was the fact that the restaurant had added a take-out window prior to the pandemic’s emergence — which meant that Sarkall’s could readily adapt its menu to a take-out model, even while its dining space was off limits in the current social distancing regime. And now, with the restaurant’s full menu back on the table, so to speak, enjoying its gems of Cambodian cuisine is merely a phone call  and pick up away. It’s enough to renew ones faith in a benevolent universe.

The other “ace” up Sarkall’s sleeve has turned out to be Kea’s sister-in-law. I have to confess that when Kea first told me about her impending arrival in America, I had imagined that she would experience all the challenges that face any immigrant newly arrived on the shores of a strange land, starting with the language barrier. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Not only is she absolutely fluent in American English (which she learned in her native country), but she is wicked smart, highly creative, and delightfully outgoing. In addition to her other duties in assisting with the family business, and thereby saving Kea and Sophann from exhaustion, she has taken on the role of social media marketeer. Visit Sarkall’s Facebook page and her impact is immediately evident. The photos she shares are just short of “food porn,” and her engagement with Sarkall’s growing number of followers is every bit as appreciative of them as they are of her restaurant. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.

I could easily devote another 1,000 words to why I believe that what Sarkall’s is putting out is some of the best ethnic cuisine in the Skagit Valley, and the reviews you’ll read on the restaurant’s Facebook page should be enough to convince you that I’m not an anomaly when it comes to this conviction. But if you hold to the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, the ones I’ve included in this post (courtesy of Sarkall’s Facebook page) should serve as the culinary equivalent of “War and Peace.” 

But there’s more to this story than pluck and timing. Or even amazing food. Like Meyer Sign & Advertising, Sarkall’s Donuts & Noodle Shop is the story of people who began their family histories in lands and cultures so removed from ours that it strains the imaginations of us native born Americans. They came to our country, as did our ancestors, in the courageous belief that they could fashion a better life for themselves and their progeny. In return, they give us a renewed belief in the promise of our American Dream. And in the bargain, they share the traditions of their culture, including something that every American can get behind: great food.

God bless America…and may the broth always simmer at Sarkall’s Donuts and Noodle Soup in Burlington, Washington. We’re proud to have been a part of its story, and happy to report that even in the midst of coronavirus, that story continues.