We stepped out of our hotel and immediately into one of the many crowded alleyways of Hanoi, Vietnam. It was lunchtime, and we were too hungry to venture very far in search of food. Luckily, the alley was dotted with several restaurants and food vendors.
Right across the alley from us was a small restaurant whose metal rollaway door was up for the first time since we’d arrived two days ago. On the black sign above the open doorway, in beautiful white Vietnamese script read: “Banh Cuon Ba Hanh.” Like most traditional restaurants in Vietnam, it was named for what it served; in this case, fresh rice paper wraps. There were banners on either side of the open doorway with pictures of the rice wraps stating they were “Fabulous.”
I looked down at my daughter, Bella, for consensus before we crossed the busy alley.
The empty dining room was very small. There were three small squat tables—about the height you’d expect to see in a kindergarten classroom—each surrounded by four or five brightly colored red and blue plastic stools, a little shorter than the tables. To the right, on the other side of a half wall, which only slightly separated the dining room from the kitchen, stood a small, old Vietnamese woman who was staring us down as if we had just trespassed into her home.
Before we could turn tail and run back through the open doorway, a very tall, young, Vietnamese man entered through a door at the back of the dining room and greeted us in English. He motioned us in energetically, saying, “Please, come sit here!” We did as we were asked, sitting down on opposite sides of the table against the far wall.
“You want lunch?” he asked, pointing to the poster-sized menus hanging on the wall. One menu listed the combination plates, and the other listed side dishes and drinks. “Please let me know if you have questions,” he said with a smile, waiting for our order.
The menus were in English, not uncommon in the old quarter where there are so many tourists, but having menus we could understand was always a concern when we walked into any restaurant in Vietnam.
After a moment of contemplation, I said, “We’ll have the ‘Fond Memories’.” I pointed to the whimsically named combination which included rice rolls, an omelet, a lemongrass skewer, and a coke. “To share,” I added when he motioned towards Bella. Even though the meal was under $3, it was more food than we could finish between us.
“Ok,” he said. “Be right back.”
He hurried off to the other side of the wall and relayed our order to the old woman standing in the kitchen. Then he ran through the doorway behind us. He returned a minute later with a cold glass bottle of Coke and two glasses. He set them down on our table, looked at me a little sheepishly, and asked, “Would it be ok if I practice my English with you until your food is ready?”
“Sure!” I replied. He wasn’t the first person in Hanoi to ask me this. The city was full of young people eager to practice their English. In Vietnam, speaking good English means better paying jobs and more opportunity. I was happy to help and I enjoyed meeting the locals and learning more about their culture.
He pulled a stool up to the end of the table, sat down, and said, “Thank you! My name is Michael. What are your names?”
“Hello Michael,” I replied. “My name is Brenda, and this is my daughter, Bella. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Br-en-da and Bell-a,” he repeated slowly, trying out the syllables. “It is nice to meet you too!”
“Is Michael your real name?” I asked.
“No. Michael is my English name.”
Flashing back to my high school Spanish class, where I had been given my Spanish name, Maria, I asked, “What is your Vietnamese name?”
“Pham is my Vietnamese name,” he answered.
“Why do you have an English name?” Bella asked.
“Because my English teacher says it is better to have an English name that is easy for English people to say,” he responded, enunciating every syllable without contractions.
“People should just learn to say your real name,” she exclaimed. We started laughing at this when the old woman in the kitchen shouted something to Michael in Vietnamese.
“Your food is ready,” he said.
He walked over to where the woman stood and began gathering the dishes she had prepared. He returned a moment later carrying a large, round, woven, bamboo tray. Arranged neatly on top were four small plates piled with food and a small bowl of sauce. We moved our glasses and the Coke bottle out of the way, and he set the tray in the center of the table. The food looked delicious!
“Please enjoy,” he said. Then he walked into the room behind us.
The food was so good, but even sharing, it was too much to finish in one sitting. Our hotel was just across the street, so I decided we would take the rest of the food back to our room and put it in the tiny fridge for later. Michael came back to our table and asked if we needed anything.
“Could we have a container for the rest of the food, please?”
“Ok!” He responded. “Did you like the food?”
“Yes! Very much! It’s just too much for us to finish.”
He walked to the kitchen for a moment, then came back and sat down on his stool again.
“She will bring you a container for your food,” he explained.
We started talking again, and Bella, trying to be helpful, started combining the smaller plates of leftover pickled vegetables, omelet, and rice wraps onto one plate. The old woman came out from behind the wall carrying three small plastic containers. When she saw that all the food had been combined on one plate, she stopped, started shouting in Vietnamese, and pointed at the plate with a very angry look on her face. Confused, Bella and I looked at each other, and then to Michael, hoping he could explain.
“She says you’ve ruined it,” he said, with an apologetic shrug.
The woman was leaning on the far wall, her arms crossed hostilely, holding the containers in one hand with her nose in the air refusing to look at us.
“Ruined it?” I asked. “How?”
“You put the vegetables with the rice wraps.” When he saw that this hadn’t clarified the problem, he continued, “The juice from the vegetables will ruin the rice wrap and make them fall apart.”
“So, what do we do now?” I asked, glancing over at the old woman who refused to give us the containers.
“I think you need to eat it,” he said, a worried look on his face.
Bella and I looked at each other, a little frightened of what might happen to us if we didn’t find some way to take back the insult.
“Let’s try and finish it, ok?” I said. She nodded in agreement.
We picked up our chopsticks and began topping off our already full stomachs. When the woman saw we were eating it, she began to relax her arms a little. We made our way through the rest of the vegetables and rice wraps, leaving only half the omelet still sitting on the plate. Hoping we had eaten enough to appease her anger, we put our chopsticks down. I was about to ask Michael if that would do, when she darted over to the table, poked the omelet with her finger, and began shouting again.
Bella, half out of fright and half trying not to laugh at the sheer speed of the old woman, almost fell back off her stool.
“What did she say?” I asked, when she had finished yelling and returned to leaning on her wall.
“She said you need to finish it all.” He looked a little frightened of her now, too.
Bella looked at me in horror and said, “But she touched it!”
“It’s ok,” I said. “I’ll finish it.”
As quickly as I could, I polished off the rest of the omelet. I looked first to Michael and then to the old woman to see if we were safe. Michael was smiling and the old woman had a slight smirk on her face as she set the containers down and returned to the other side of the wall, mumbling something in Vietnamese.
“Your grandmother really takes her rice wraps seriously, doesn’t she?” I asked Michael, only half joking.
“Oh, she’s not my grandmother. I just work here. But yes, very seriously.”
“I’m sorry! I just assumed this was a family restaurant.” “It’s ok,” he said. “In Vietnam, any grandmother is everyone’s grandmother.”