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30 years of ‘eat full’ grilled meat vermicelli restaurant in Saigon

HO CHI MINH CITY – Mr. Hai’s noodle shop in Tan Binh district for nearly 30 years does not charge extra for vermicelli, vegetables, and free iced tea when customers order more.

Chan Hung Street in Tan Binh District has 5 barbecue noodle shops. If you go at noon, you will see a shop with customers standing outside waiting to buy and take away. Mr. Nguyen Van Hai (64 years old), the owner, said that his shop has been open for nearly 30 years, specializing in selling grilled pork vermicelli, grilled spring rolls, and spring rolls. “In the past, this area had only one of my stores, after many stores opened, it was as crowded as it is today.”

30 years of ‘eat full’ grilled meat vermicelli restaurant in Saigon
The full vermicelli section includes spring rolls, spring rolls and grilled meat, adding pickles, fatty onion and peanuts, soft vermicelli, drizzled with spicy chili fish sauce. Photo: Huynh Nhi

Every day, Mr. Hai and his wife get up at 5 a.m. to prepare, cut meat and marinate spices, and at 8 a.m. the restaurant starts grilling meat and welcomes the first guests. The lean meat is thinly sliced ​​into bite-sized pieces before being grilled. And spring rolls are minced meat, marinated with spices according to their own recipe and then molded into flat balls, so that the meat is still fragrant and soft, absorbed, the grilled spring rolls are still succulent to release fat. Particularly, the spring rolls are made in large size, inside are vegetables, green beans, chopped shrimp and ground meat, the shell is crispy.

Because the shop is crowded, the vermicelli is divided into bowls, when someone orders, the staff just adds the ingredients and brings them to the table quickly, with a full basket of green vegetables with sliced ​​cucumbers, salads, etc. Perilla… Particularly fish sauce, the restaurant is divided into small bags for customers to pour separately, not in the same large glue as before.

Mr. Hai’s vermicelli shop is called a “full” restaurant by diners, because when he eats, he keeps ordering more vegetables and noodles without taking money, and iced tea at the restaurant is free. Mr. Hai explained: “My shop has sold like this before, I want customers to have a full meal for a long time. I sell cheap and easy to eat, so people support a lot. However, I still take quality goods to sell to customers. , put prestige first”, Mr. Hai shared.

At more than 12 o’clock, the staff started telling each other that the restaurant was about to run out of vermicelli, the shop was out of spring rolls, messaged customers to wait for more frying or asked customers to exchange the dish of vermicelli with meat. Mr. Hai said that he was a pleasant wholesaler, and so were customers, saying that changing dishes was easy for them to agree.

The shop has a row of tables for guests to sit, guests in large groups can go upstairs. Photo: Huynh Nhi

Mr. Chi Hung, 26 years old, living in Go Vap, sometimes visits Mr. Hai’s restaurant to have lunch with his colleagues, commenting that the grilled meat at the restaurant is well seasoned and full of meat. “The vegetables at the restaurant are very fresh, sometimes I eat all the vermicelli and still have a lot of meat, the price is affordable and the quality is good,” he said, although the space is small, he feels comfortable.

At peak hours, the shop may run out of spring rolls because they will be sold wherever they go, so diners wait for about 15 minutes or change to another dish.

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