Visiting Hoc Mon market (Hoc Mon district, Ho Chi Minh city) and asking about Mrs. Kim Yen's sweet soup shop, it seems like everyone knows it, because this shop is known as the "most expensive sweet soup shop in Hoc Mon". That is the reason why many traders in the market jokingly say that if you want to know whether the market is crowded or sparse that day, just look at Mrs. Kim Yen's sweet soup shop!
“Out of 7 days in a week, I eat sweet soup… 8 days!”
After 4pm, the chè shop started to open. The 3 employees in the shop, the senior ones have been working for more than 20 years, the younger ones have been working for the past few years, were busy preparing and displaying nearly 30 different types of chè on the table in a very eye-catching manner. Here, from hot chè (eaten hot) to cold chè (eaten with ice), everything was available, especially many types of chè were stored in "huge" basins, which surprised me a bit.
At 4:00 p.m., the sweet soup shop at 13/125 Tran Binh Trong starts selling.
Just opened, Ms. Kim Yen's sweet soup shop continuously has customers coming to buy.
As the evening wore on, more and more customers gathered in front of the shop. Ms. Thanh Hang (red hat) has been a regular customer of the shop for decades.
As soon as it opened, customers started coming in continuously as if they had been familiar with the shop’s hours for a long time, mainly for take-out. There were many types of sweet soup to choose from, from steamed banana sweet soup, taro sweet soup, corn sweet soup to steamed banana, floating rice balls, jujubes, green beans, red beans, black beans, and thung sweet soup…
An employee with 20 years of experience working at this tea shop introduced that there are nearly 10 types of hot tea and nearly 20 types of cold tea, diverse for customers to choose from. Usually the shop opens from 4pm and sells out by around 11pm.
Most of the customers here are regulars, people living in Hoc Mon area. However, there are also many people who have heard of the shop so when they come to the city, they come here from neighboring provinces such as Tay Ninh, Dong Nai, Binh Duong, etc.
The three staff in the restaurant had prepared carefully before the guests arrived.
All kinds of hot and cold tea are displayed attractively.
As the afternoon wore on, the number of customers visiting the restaurant grew larger. At peak times, customers crowded the restaurant, waiting for the owner and staff to sweat as they prepared the perfect meals for the customers. Already familiar with the job, he worked quickly, trying not to make the customers wait too long.
Ms. Thanh Hang (54 years old, living in Hoc Mon) said that she has been a regular customer of the shop for decades, since the mother of the current owner. Because she has been eating here for so long, she laughed and said she could not remember when she first ate here, but she only knew that the taste of the sweet soup here was to her liking, so she came back every day to support.
Colorful tea.
With cooking methods passed down for many generations.
“I don’t know what the owner cooks, but I’m addicted to it, I come here every day to buy it. My husband is the same, when he sees me buying it, he tells me to buy a portion too. The desserts here are delicious, not too sweet, there are many types so I can change the dish every day without getting bored,” commented a “regular” customer.
Ordering a portion of steamed banana with coconut cream and chè thung to take home, Ms. Thanh Loan (27 years old) excitedly said that almost every time she comes to buy, the shop is crowded. According to Ms. Loan, she has been eating chè here since she was little, every time she goes to school or comes home from work, she stops by to buy some as a habit.
Tea here costs from 12,000 - 25,000 VND/portion.
“Out of 7 days a week, I buy and eat 8 days! Just kidding, but I really love the chè here, because I have a sweet tooth, and the owner is funny and cute. I have to wait a bit, but it's okay. I will definitely eat here all the time because it's the chè shop of our generation's childhood," the customer added.
Grandma's recipe for sweet soup
The sweet soup shop is named after Mrs. Pham Thi Kim Yen (57 years old, current owner), but many long-time residents here still remember the shop with the affectionate name "Mrs. Tu's sweet soup with floating water" because Mrs. Yen's mother opened this sweet soup shop before 1975.
Speaking to us in a slow and elegant tone, she said that at that time, the sweet soup shop was not spacious and spacious with rented premises like it is now, but Mrs. Tu carried it around to sell around the Hoc Mon area. "At that time, I was very young. I only remember that every day my mother cooked sweet soup and left the house, went around for a while and then came back," the owner recalled the image of her late mother.
Ms. Kim Yen, owner of the sweet soup shop.
[CLIP]: Ms. Yen inherited her mother's sweet soup stall.
Many people have been regular customers of the restaurant for decades.
Her mother told her that her grandmother passed down the recipe for sweet soup, thanks to which she raised her 6 children to adulthood. Now her siblings all have their own jobs, leaving her alone to inherit the recipes passed down from her grandmother and mother.
After 1975, her family still lived off of Mr. Tu's sweet soup stall. Her childhood was spent helping her mother cook sweet soup and selling sweet soup with her mother. So the sweet soup stall became a familiar part of her childhood memories even to this day.
“Later, my mother and I stopped selling on the street and opened a permanent tea cart at a corner of Tran Binh Trong Street. At that time, we sold tea with oil lamps at night for workers, so people also called it oil lamp tea. Later, when we had better conditions, we rented a space and installed electric lights," the owner recalled.
Customers commented that the tea was not too sweet and tasted good.
At that time, she and her mother sold about 5-6 basic, familiar types of sweet soup. Later, to meet the needs of customers and to stand the test of time, she started to make more new types of sweet soup. According to Ms. Kim Yen, her shop currently has a stable number of customers. On weekends or full moon days, there are more customers than usual.
Two years ago, Mrs. Tu passed away at the age of 78. That was also the time when she officially inherited her mother's life-long passion for the sweet soup shop. Talking about her late mother, she emotionally said that even in her last days, her grandfather helped her cook sweet soup. The day her mother passed away, she felt a bit lost.
Ms. Thanh Loan has eaten sweet soup here since she was little.
The owner is determined to maintain her beloved tea shop for as long as possible.
“While my mother is still alive, she helps me with everything. Now that my son and I are here, we have hired more employees. The sweet soup shop is the passion of my mother’s whole life, my childhood and youth. It has supported many generations in my family and maybe my son will be the one to inherit this sweet soup shop,” Ms. Kim Yen expressed and determined to maintain this sweet soup shop until she no longer has the strength.
Just like that, customers come and buy and leave to enjoy the sweet taste that generations of Kim Yen's family have preserved for half a century...
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