48 years of making firewood-cooked vermicelli soup, selling hundreds of bowls a day, twice as much vermicelli as other places

A bowl of vermicelli soup with crab soup at Mrs. Tai's restaurant costs 30,000 VND/bowl - Photo: HOANG LE

The crab noodle shop is small, with no sign, just a few old tables and chairs. Regular customers call it Mrs. Tai's crab noodle shop.

30,000 VND/bowl of vermicelli soup with crab soup, full stomach

Mrs. Tai's vermicelli soup shop opens from about 6am to about 10:30am - 11am. It mainly sells to workers and people living nearby.

The shop only sells directly, not through the app. Sells about 70 to 100 bowls per day.

Mr. Huy - Mrs. Tai's grandson - takes vermicelli soup for customers to take home. The pot of broth has reduced quite a bit - Photo: HOANG LE

At nearly 10 o'clock, the restaurant only had a few customers sitting at the tables and quite a few people coming to buy take-out. The person selling was not Mrs. Tai, but Mr. Huy - Mrs. Tai's grandson.

Mr. Huy shared: "She wakes up at 4am, cooks noodles and sells them to customers from 6am. Now she's too tired so she goes to the motel. After taking my child to school, I come out to help her. When the restaurant is cleaned up, I go back to work at the company."

Mrs. Tai's vermicelli soup is cooked in Southern style, without crab but with dried shrimp mixed with meat and meatballs to make rieu.

The broth is made from dried squid, dried shrimp and bones, quite light and low in fat. Each bowl costs 30,000 VND with toppings including 3 pieces of shrimp meatballs, 2 pieces of sausage, 3 blood clots, and a few pieces of tofu.

If customers want more toppings, they can ask for it and pay extra. The amount of noodles in the bowl is quite a lot, sometimes equal to two bowls of noodles sold elsewhere.

When asked why Huy bought so much noodles, he smiled and said: "Let everyone have enough to eat before going to work. Whoever wants less noodles, please tell me first so the shop can reduce it." A few regular female customers who came to buy almost all added the sentence: "less noodles".

The door was black with smoke.

Mr. Huy said his grandmother was from Vinh Long and had lived in Saigon for a long time. This vermicelli soup restaurant has been open for 48 years, where Mrs. Tai earned a living and raised four children, of which his mother was the first daughter.

The door and back wall of Mrs. Tai's house are covered in smoke from cooking vermicelli soup with firewood for a long time - Photo: HOANG LE

The original vermicelli soup restaurant cooks with firewood, and still cooks with firewood today.

Recently, people in the family suggested that she cook with coal or gas, but she refused, saying that guests said the noodles taste better when cooked with firewood. She collected and bought firewood from scrap dealers. Some people even brought her unused wood for her to use.

Mrs. Tai's house is just a few houses away from the noodle shop, easily recognizable by the door and walls of the back kitchen, blackened by decades of firewood smoke.

Mr. Huy said: "She has lived and sold vermicelli soup in this neighborhood for a long time. When cooking with firewood, the neighbors sometimes complain a little because the smoke from the stove is high. At that time, she just needs to control the fire on the stove."

He also said: "My grandmother is over 70 years old this year. Everyone in the family told her that she should retire at this age and that her children and grandchildren should help pay for her daily meals, but she refused. She said that walking around helps relieve the pain in her arms and legs, and she feels happy and healthy."

Mrs. Tai's vermicelli soup restaurant has some people praising it, some criticizing it depending on taste, but the feeling of eating while smelling the smoke from the wood stove makes the old nostalgia suddenly return, a "specialty" that is difficult to confuse with other restaurants, creating richness for Saigon street food .

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HOANG LE

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/48-nam-bun-rieu-nau-cui-ngay-ban-tram-to-bun-nhieu-gap-doi-noi-khac-20250523171611095.htm