During the epidemic season, the number of customers ordering online at this food store doubled as usual. At the peak, the shop sold nearly a hundred orders, reaching a turnover of 15-20 million VND/day.

Operating from 2012 until now, the food store located on To Hien Thanh street (Hai Ba Trung district, Hanoi) has become a familiar destination for the people of the capital. This shop is famous for traditional dishes made entirely by hand, imbued with the old Hanoi culinary culture.

The kitchen workshop of a restaurant specializing in selling traditional Hanoi dishes on Nguyen Luong Bang Street has doubled its productivity during the epidemic season.

Inspired and passionate about food from a family with many members who know how to cook, Nguyen Thu Huong (Hanoi) is always impressed and excited to learn about Hanoi’s traditional dishes. 

With the desire to store cultural values ​​that are gradually being lost or lost, she has built a restaurant model (including a kitchen workshop and a food store) specializing in serving typical dishes of old Hanoi. All dishes are made by hand, based on recipes collected from ancient books and generations of elderly people in the villages.

The shop specializes in serving traditional dishes of Hanoi people such as sticky rice cakes, lettuce rolls suddenly wine, … with a completely handmade process.

The shop serves up to a few dozen traditional dishes of Hanoians, but the most famous and loved by many diners are sticky rice cakes, lettuce rolls dipped in wine and cold snail vermicelli. 

In addition, the menu also changes every day, serving dishes with different themes such as savory dishes, drinking dishes, snacks, nutritious dishes for the elderly and children, …

Lettuce rolls with wine, sticky rice cakes, and spring rolls are favorite dishes of customers and ordered a lot during the epidemic season.

For example, sticky rice cake is a snack against hunger, spring rolls, spring rolls served for drinking parties to watch football of “brothers” or lettuce rolls, chicken stew with ginseng is a snack but still nutritious. Besides, there are also roasted pork neck, steamed crocodile cartilage which are “rice-consuming” dishes in the summer.

From early in the morning, the staffs were busy preparing the previously placed orders… … and shipped to diners to ensure the dishes keep their heat and quality and taste.

Sharing about the secret of “attracting” customers for nearly a decade, Ms. Thu Huong said that the manual processing and selection of fresh ingredients are the reasons why the shop always receives support from diners.

“Each dish is handmade, requiring meticulousness from the preparation of ingredients to the processing and finishing of the finished product. That’s also the reason why we always make the right quantity and sell within 48 hours to ensure the quality and taste of the dish,” Huong shared.

In addition to the odd dishes, the restaurant also serves custom orders, from savory dishes, drinking dishes, … to snacks, party dishes.

The two best-selling dishes at the store are sticky rice cakes and lettuce rolls dipped in wine. Regarding the sticky rice dish, the thin crust is selected by Ms. Huong from a special, low-nutrient powder so that when eating, there is no feeling of boredom or heat in the body.

Fat meat is selected from the pig, taken from the fat of the nape to be crispy and fragrant. Accompanying spices such as pepper, Phu Quoc, Phan Thiet or Dien Bien wood ear are also carefully selected to ensure the dish has the most distinctive flavor.

Sticky rice cake is one of the “expensive” snacks, selected from clean, high-quality ingredients to bring the fullest flavor.

Lettuce rolls are made from ingredients such as lettuce, shrimp, ham, herbs, vermicelli, and green onions. Although quite similar to the traditional salad rolls, the special thing about this dish is the accompanying wine.

Suddenly, the wine is distilled with molasses, sour and sweet, served with lettuce rolls, increasing the flavor of the dish, helping to relieve boredom, bringing a cool feeling for summer meals.

During the epidemic season, especially on the full moon day, the 1st, the store always receives hundreds of online orders. Depending on the customer’s request, the restaurant serves from single dishes of only 1.2 dishes to large orders of more than tens of millions of dong.

The capital operates in the form of online, but during the epidemic season, the number of orders at the store doubled, the revenue also increased by 50% compared to weekdays. Especially from the end of May, on the days when there are football matches of the Vietnamese team in the World Cup 2020 qualifiers or the Euro tournament, the drinks here are constantly “sold out” from the very beginning. 

“During the epidemic season, individual dishes or orders in combos and sets are sold in double the normal quantity. The number of male customers who come to the store to buy things also triples. They come to buy food to help their wives. , reduce the family burden for the woman and buy drinks to drink beer, watch football at home.

The number of male customers of the restaurant also increased during the epidemic season due to the need to eat and drink at home to watch more “men” football.

At this time, people are more concerned about health, focusing on nourishing the body, increasing resistance during the epidemic season, so ginseng chicken stew is also selling well. In addition, products such as sticky rice cakes, soaked crocodile water are also ordered by many individuals and units to be sent to epidemic areas, joining hands to support and encourage the medical staff on the front lines against the epidemic, .. ,” the shop owner said.

On peak days, the restaurant serves nearly a hundred orders, earning about 15-20 million VND in revenue.

The menu is rotated, not fixed. Some days, the shop serves more than 500 sticky rice cakes, the staff kneads the dough and packs the cake “tired hands”. Depending on the number and needs of guests, Ms. Huong and the staff have to get up early from 2-3am or stay up until 22-23pm to make food. She said that the kitchen workshop only made the dishes in sufficient quantity and sold out in a day. The food delivered to the customer is still hot, keeping the full flavor.

On peak days such as the full moon and the 1st, Ms. Huong’s shop serves nearly a hundred different large and small orders, with a turnover of 15-20 million dong/day. From singles of a few hundred thousand dongs to large orders of many items with a value of more than tens of millions of dong, they are delivered to all districts in the inner city of Hanoi. Follow Dan trí