Whenever I come back to Vietnam, it is a personal ritual of mine to visit locales of the past. As clichéd as it sounds, as I have been abroad in Singapore for six years, returning to Vietnam is almost synonymous with returning to places that once shaped my past selves, whose presence has been fading in my mind.
As I walk along Nguyễn Thái Bình Street of Saigon in the evening, the rain and the yellow lights of bistros I never remember existed bundle up my nostalgia with warmth. Catching sight of the Parish Church of The Lady of Peace, as humble and still as its bilingual signage, I know I have reached Chè Lâm Vinh Mậu, the Hẻm Gems for this week, across the street.
Chè Lâm Vinh Mậu has a handful of counter spaces and a few extra chairs.
It is just the same as I remember amidst the city’s changing landscape. Fluorescent tube lights illuminate a single wooden cart, typically seen at Hoa Vietnamese mobile stalls, complete with fitted reverse glass paintings featuring the name Lâm Vinh Mậu and illustrations of episodes from Chinese literary classics. Below, its built-in sections are filled with various chè soup bases and glass bowls displaying add-on ingredients. Apart from myself, there are only two other customers, who nonetheless are about to leave. Sitting down on one of the few tall plastic stools, I order my favorites. This time, chú Sơn mans the stall. He shares how, for the past few decades, he and his brother have been taking turns running the business, setting up the cart right in front of their shophouse. They took up the business after their uncle Lâm Vinh Mậu decided to settle abroad. Mậu was also the cart's namesake, though he recently passed away.
Colorful tranh kiếng works, a traditional Chinese art form, line the upper portion of the cart.
The stall serves a wide variety of chè, from classics such as sâm bổ lượng or chè đậu đỏ, but there are two particular dishes I’d always come back to. First is the chè hạnh nhân, whose central ingredient is almond tofu. A dish served cold with chopped ice, it comprises a clear sweet soup base, with morsels of soft white almond tofu. Against the sweet soup’s canvas, the tofu’s creamy and herbal notes shimmer with a subtle delicacy.
The other dish is chè trứng bột báng, an egg dessert with sago. From its appearance, one is easily forgiven for thinking it is anything but chè, particularly because the hard-boiled egg and wispy beaten yolks included inside are more evocative of egg drop soup. Yet, despite being a strange combination, the egg ingredients and soup base make for a fascinating taste combination. The viscous chè filled with sago balls provides a textured sweetness to the savory hard-boiled egg. I split the egg open with a two-pronged fork and notice the yolk crumbles into yellow powder swirling within the clear soup. Eating the two chè dishes again from their little porcelain cups after such a long hiatus, I am comforted by the fact that they taste no different from how I remember them six-odd years ago, when I ate at the stall before I left for Singapore.
Apart from special dishes like tea egg, most toppings are eaten with a jasmine sweet syrup.
I give my compliments regarding the chè to Sơn as he wipes off condensed rings of water on the bumpy metallic table with his rag. The night air remains damp, and there are only two of us at the stall. We thus have a brief chat, and he asks me about my university academic journey, and whether I was on vacation. After I tell him of my return to Vietnam for a long break from Singapore, he shares how his son was also a media and communications graduate, and Singapore was also the first country he traveled to with his family overseas back in the 2010s. “Universal Studios [Singapore] was fun,” he recalls, handing me a shot glass of chopped ice and light tea, a palate cleanser.
As I sip the tea, I ask him about his business and regular clientele. According to Sơn, most of them are returning customers, many of whom are also overseas Vietnamese revisiting Saigon. He also bemoans the dwindling Hoa Vietnamese customer base and community in the neighborhood. “Most of them have already migrated abroad. A lot of them have family members who sponsored them,” he says. “Many current residents come from other regions of the country.” He reverts back to talking about Singapore, sharing how his son visited there recently for Lady Gaga’s “Lion City Mayhem” concert.
Simmered fruits and nuts make up most of the chè toppings.
Rain rustling on the corrugated iron roof fills the empty silence. Uncle Sơn stares out at the rain. Apart from the Parish Church of The Lady of Peace from across the street, there is also Khai Minh Secondary School, the vestige of a former Chinese guild-established school; and various communal housing blocks where small food businesses operated by Hoa uncles and aunties within the neighbourhood. As much as they are at risk of disappearing as the Hoa population in District 1 gets older, they are the little gems, tucked away within this corner of the city, waiting to be discovered.
Lâm Vinh Mậu was the name of the original owner, the late uncle of the brothers who currently run the stall.
I don’t think our brief interactions were enough for me to know much about the uncle, let alone the Nguyễn Thái Bình Neighborhood, his home turf, or the complexities behind the Hoa Vietnamese community in Saigon. Nevertheless, the encounter reminds me of a concern plaguing contemporary urban spaces, to which this city is no exception. The concept of a palimpsest has been used to describe the layered nature of a city’s history, whereby traces of the past are left behind or hidden beneath modern establishments.
Stainless steel sections divide the cart.
There are trade-offs to be made, and there are tensions between urbanization and heritage preservation in Saigon that need to be resolved. There is something bittersweet about this whole ordeal: with the continuous migration of people to and away from the city, the presence of heritage — whether it's a chè bowl or the presence of the Cantonese language — becomes as ephemeral as its people who once thought they would make a home there.
Most patrons are regulars, though the Hoa community in the neighborhood is dwindling every year.
As I savor those sweet, carefully curated bowls of Chè Lâm Vinh Mậu, I think about the knife slicing through the almond tofu block, the delicate ladle lifting, the sugary water seeping through its holes, and that rag at rest after a rough run across the table’s rim. I think about chú Sơn’s hands. A crumbly old shophouse with its peeling walls is never just a lifeless building when the hands that cook those morsels have been the scaffolds that keep it standing, but so are the customers, old and new, coming to relish its food. Representatives of our intangible cultural heritage, like cuisines are often inextricably linked to tangible spaces, and the people inhabiting them both. Perhaps people’s nostalgic memories and the desire to rediscover their roots are the greatest catalysts that will ultimately keep these delicious artifacts alive.
To sum up
- Opening time: 7pm–11pm
- Parking: By the stall (bike only)
- Average cost per person: $ (Under VND100,000)
- Payment: Cash
- Delivery App: None
Chè Lâm Vinh Mậu
31 Nguyễn Thái Bình, Bến Thành Ward, HCMC
