The Broth that Binds Us
Interviewing children who are behind the success of their family-owned restaurant.
Behind the small counter located at the back of Mỹ Vị Mì Gia, a young girl takes orders. Customers walk past the rows of metal tables and cushioned stools, squeezing by one another to order their meals. Besides a broken POS machine, she takes down each person’s order with a ballpoint pen on a worn checkbook, marked by the imprints of previous orders. Her handwriting is loopy and cursive, seemingly written by someone double her age.
At 14 years old, Mai has been helping her family’s restaurant since she began middle school. During holidays, she takes on full-time hours and the responsibility of the front of house. When her parents open the restaurant each morning, Mai is in charge of ensuring that the dining space is ready for customers. While taking the chairs off the tables that she stacked the night before. She then proceeds to stock up the condiments, napkins, and utensils at the end of each table until everything is full.
“My mom says that making sure every customer has enough condiments is the key to the restaurant’s success,” Mai explains while refilling a Hoisin bottle, “not everyone likes the same flavours so extra sauces let them customize their own dish.”
Her movements are mechanical, part of the well-oiled machine that is her family. By 8 o’clock, Mai is seated at the counter as customers begin trickling in. Soon, the metal tables are filled by patrons sitting knee-to-knee as they slurp broth. They don’t react to the young girl, speaking with her as if she were any other waitress. They hand over their credit cards or wave her over to request extra lemons without asking a single question about her.
Just as no one reacts to Mai’s age, no one pays any mind to the restaurant’s lack of decor. There are frames of mismatched calligraphic paintings on each wall and a prominent Buddha shrine above the front counter, heavily adorned by battery-powered lights. The restaurant is also noticeably outdated in the virtual realm, not having any social media accounts or websites to reach non-local audiences.
It’s often the case that small, family restaurants rely on their children to help revamp their brand to grow their business. At Mỹ Vị Mì Gia, it’s evident that this isn’t the case, but not for Mai’s lack of trying. Despite her insistence on modernizing the restaurant, Mai’s parents are committed to this particular aesthetic. In Vietnamese cuisine, it’s believed that worse the restaurant looks, the better the food is,
“Changing how the restaurant looks would lose customer’s trust,” Mai shrugs, “business is good enough without young people.”
The difference in culture is evident when we look at Angelo’s Stuffed Pizza, located in Southside Chicago. The owner’s son, Isaiah, had taught himself various digital skills in high school to help the restaurant’s branding. From website development to designing merchandise and social graphics, the restaurant’s second generation has already made an imprint on the establishment’s image,
“Our food isn’t that culturally relevant to a certain group so there’s less community. There’s always room for our business to grow, so my dad is willing to let me do a lot,” Isaiah comments on this difference in children’s roles at their family businesses.
While Mai’s impact on the business may not be as visually evident, her crucial role in the restaurant’s operations is clear. While she works the front, her parents rarely check in on her–demonstrating deep trust in her abilities. Throughout the day, Mai weaves in and out of the kitchen, bringing incoming orders to the back of house, then emerging with a tray of food or drinks to be served. Despite the overwhelming demands of customers, Mai remains collected. When serving, her arms are steady–heavy platters resting on her forearms as she walks with confidence and ease.
Within the small confines of the restaurant, her movements flow like water–leaving no trace of her presence save for the steaming bowls of noodles freshly set on each table. She is so efficient that patrons barely register her presence before she disappears to the next table.
It’s no question Mai can navigate the tight space with such ease, given that Mỹ Vị Mì Gia was her primary home growing up. While her family’s address has changed over the years, the restaurant was their anchor. With the restaurant remaining in the same tiny Garden Grove plaza since Mai was an infant, there are patrons that she has known her entire life.
“They’re my broth relatives,” she chuckles, “like blood relatives but with broth.”
The Broth Relatives are a band of aunts and uncles not bonded to Mai by blood, but rather by her family’s cooking. A Broth Uncle, Duong, stops by this morning. He asks about her first semester in high school, bringing a smile to Mai’s face as she responds. Duong has been a loyal customer to the restaurant for almost a decade, stopping by to pick up mì vịt tiềm–braised duck noodle soup–for his wife. Duong recalls watching Mai when she was a toddler,
“Her parents didn’t allow to touch anything. She was a good girl so she listened and didn’t touch anything. She was also a smart girl so she started asking customers to play with her instead,” he shakes his head, “the first time I met her, she showed me the world’s longest fingernails in the Guiness World Record book while I was eating.”
The stories he tells paint a picture of Mai before she started working at the restaurant. Each anecdote shows how time at the restaurant has sculpted her. Gone is the young girl who would run rampant around the business years ago, demanding attention from every customer. As she grew into her role, she drew less attention from patrons until new customers stopped reacting to her young presence at all.
In an industry that now favours trendy experiences and aesthetics–the behind-the-scenes work of young people like Mai at Mỹ Vị Mì Gia proves that success in the food industry is rooted not in flashiness but in dedication, efficiency, and family responsibility. Mai may not be the face of the restaurant to her customers, nor does she seek to be, but her role is indispensable. The young generation’s contribution, though often invisible, is what keeps the heart of a restaurant beating.
