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Mrs. Diep's pancake shop is located in a small alley. Photo: Ha Nguyen

Alley cake shop

At noon, seeing customers stop by a small banh xeo shop in an alley on Han Hai Nguyen Street (Binh Thoi Ward, Ho Chi Minh City), Mrs. Nguyen Thi Diep (68 years old) quickly called out. Hearing his wife's voice, Mr. Nguyen Van Diep (72 years old) answered briefly and hurried out to light the stove.

It’s called a shop but it’s actually just a small glass cabinet placed on a stainless steel table, with a few plastic tables and chairs in front. Behind the glass cabinet is a wood stove for frying cakes and neatly stacked stacks of dry wood. Everything is hidden under a large umbrella right in the corner of the alley.

Whenever he was sure there would be guests, Mr. Diep would carefully stack the firewood and light the old stove. While waiting for the stove to light up, Mrs. Diep would prepare the vegetables and tell him about her attachment to the pancake dish that has sustained her family for decades.

Mr. Diep only lights the stove and fries cakes when customers order. Photo: Ha Nguyen

When she was young, with no capital to start a business, Mrs. Diep carried scrap metal around the neighborhood because this job did not require much capital and could make money the same day. When she had 4 children, she still struggled to make a living, while Mr. Diep worked as a cyclo driver.

Later, when she no longer had the strength to carry scrap metal, Mrs. Diep decided to change jobs. Seeing a firewood yard near her house, she had the idea of ​​buying firewood and wood chips to light a stove to fry banh xeo.

Mr. Diep fries cakes, while Mrs. Diep waits on customers. Photo: Ha Nguyen

She said: “Banh xeo is a rustic dish that almost everyone knows. Therefore, I decided to choose good rice, grind flour to fry the cake and try to sell it. I mixed the flour and made the filling according to my own ideas, without anyone teaching me or following anyone’s recipe.

In the early days, the cakes were sometimes broken, sometimes burnt; sometimes bland, sometimes salty. Even so, I still had customers and received feedback from them.

From those suggestions, I gradually adjusted, found my own recipe for mixing flour, frying cakes and then had more customers. When sales were stable, I asked my husband to quit his cyclo job and come back to sell cakes with me.

In the blink of an eye, my husband and I have been frying and selling banh xeo together for more than 30 years. Thanks to this job, I can make a living and raise 4 children."

Mr. Diep and his wife sell Western-style pancakes. For over 30 years, they have only fried the pancakes using a wood stove because, according to Mrs. Diep, doing so makes the pancakes delicious and authentic in their traditional flavor.

Mr. and Mrs. Diep sell authentic Western-style banh xeo. Photo: Ha Nguyen

The batter is poured into a large pan placed on a red-hot stove. The cake is golden yellow, big and round, with a filling of shrimp, meat, and bean sprouts. The cake's edges are thin and crispy. When eaten, the fatty aroma of the batter blends with the scent of turmeric, dipped in sweet and sour fish sauce and carefully picked herbs.

There are guests in the kitchen.

Every day, the couple gets up at 4am to set up the table and chairs, and cook at the end of the alley. She goes to the market to buy meat and vegetables. He sits picking vegetables while his wife prepares the ingredients. She doesn’t buy pre-mixed flour.

She chooses the best rice based on her experience. Early in the morning, she soaks the rice for a certain amount of time and then takes it to the shop to be ground into flour. She also mixes and stirs the pancake batter herself according to her own secret recipe.

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Mr. and Mrs. Diep currently live in a cramped house. Photo: Ha Nguyen

The pancake batter is carefully preserved by my grandparents, waiting for customers to come to eat before frying it. Mrs. Diep shared: “I don’t fry the pancakes in advance because if I leave them like that, they won’t taste good, they might even spoil, and if customers accidentally eat them, it will ruin my reputation.

So I only fry one and put it in the fridge as a symbol. When guests arrive, I arrange the firewood, light the stove, and pour the cake. This takes a while, but ensures the cake is hot, delicious, and of good quality.”

Recently, the restaurant has seen fewer customers. Now, the couple’s four children have their own families and are struggling to raise young children, so they have little time to help their parents. Apart from visiting and sending a small amount of money to Mrs. Diep and her husband, they cannot provide much support to their parents.

Mr. and Mrs. Diep proudly shared that thanks to the banh xeo shop, they were able to support themselves and their four grown children. Photo: Ha Nguyen

Therefore, the couple still sticks to the profession, considering it their main source of income. Every day, they grind about 2kg of rice. On the busiest days, they sell 40 cakes. On rainy days, they sit from morning to evening, but only sell more than 30.

Mrs. Diep confided: “Sales are slow now. We only have customers once in a while, but we still try our best. I am used to waiting for customers, so I sit at the alley entrance all the time. Mr. Diep has back pain and often goes inside to rest.

When we have customers, I call him to fry the cakes while I clean the table. We only fry 40 cakes a day. If they sell out early, we clean up early, if they sell out late, we clean up late, we don’t make more. Even though we are tired, we still like to sell cakes because we love our job and get to chat with customers.

Some people have been eating my cakes since they were students, and now they are over 30 years old and still come back to eat them. Some people have gone abroad, and when they returned home, they also came back and praised the cakes for being delicious… Hearing those words, we were very happy, all our tiredness disappeared.”

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/quan-banh-xeo-doc-la-cua-vo-chong-cung-ten-khach-muon-an-phai-cho-nhom-bep-2436501.html