Regular customers at this store often tell each other about the “treasure” of the shop, which specializes in “weighing and measuring” spring rolls for 3 generations.
Located on Duong Thanh street (Hoan Kiem, Hanoi), there is a 70-year-old spring rolls shop that has passed through 3 generations of “hereditary” but still retains the traditional flavor, making diners “try it”. it’s hard to let go.”
Hanoi now has many delicious, novel, and convenient dishes, but strangely enough, in that tiny, cramped spring rolls shop, every day, many customers come.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Tam – direct salesperson shared: The shop has 7 siblings, children and grandchildren in the house who work continuously, from 5 am to 9 pm to have enough goods to sell to customers.
The family also doesn’t calculate the exact number of sales each day, but there are almost no days left over. On the full moon day, Tet holiday, customers line up on the sidewalk, sometimes there are not enough goods to sell.
“This job looks so hard, it’s very difficult, we have to stay up late and get up early. But this is a family heirloom for 3 generations, so we have to preserve and respect it”, Ms. Tam shared.
The shop’s best-selling dish is venison pork belly, formerly considered a delicacy in the Vietnamese rice tray.
Ms. Tam did not hesitate to talk about the secret to making her own homemade bouillon cubes: “My house-made variegated lard always “respects tradition”, according to the recipe and process of the traditional tools.
The meat for making pork rolls is delicious, fresh butt meat, the face fruit is the face fruit (round meat), the dot fruit is the dot fruit (the raft meat), it must be flexible and sticky.
Fat for making sausage is the fat taken from the shoulder and nape of the neck. The ratio of fat and meat should not be wrong by one ounce. The fat must be hand-sliced, as small as a pomegranate seed, evenly and evenly, then the finished product is a true flower pattern.
The pork is thinly sliced and then put in the mill. On top of the mortar, place ice so that the ground meat forms a smooth, pliable mass that is not destroyed by the heat. At that time, the new owner weighs the delicious fish sauce, main noodles, grinds, and then mixes the fat. Sausage is put into steaming the whole block, then take out the color of the vermicelli, then fried. “The inside, the meat must be flexible, the veins must be clear, the outside of the shell must be yellow, crispy, and slightly glossy,” Tam said.
Regular customers at this store often tell each other about the “treasure” of the shop, which specializes in “weighing and measuring” spring rolls, not wrong an inch. It is an “old” scale, a witness of time and also a “treasure” preserved by family members, a reminder of the honest and quality business philosophy with customers.
The scale is so old: the aluminum plate is chipped, the weight is blurry. Yet, every day, dozens of pounds of spring rolls, or even more, are still balanced.
Explaining why using a disc scale without using today’s modern scales, Ms. Tam said: “With the weight intensity as much as my house, the electronic scales used for about 1 year are damaged, but the accuracy is not high. Even after using it for a long time, it will also move, so the family still uses this scale. It is not only durable and accurate but also an heirloom, connecting generations of families, witnessing the ups and downs of making sausages.” .
Ms. Tam said, there are dozens of modern electronic scales in the store, but they are only used in the “behind-the-scenes” area. Particularly, this 3-generation plate scale is used to weigh finished products for customers, as an impressive highlight of the restaurant. After each sales day, the scale is cleaned and maintained carefully.
This shop is also a rare shop where children and grandchildren work together to build and maintain the profession at one address, without taking the heirloom profession to establish a career in many places. The whole big family “knives instead of cutting boards”, each one has to do one thing, meticulously, diligently from dawn: the one who cuts the meat, the one who grinds the meat, the one who wipes it, the one who wraps the spring rolls, the one who bakes it… The “quick” person the most “quick mouth” is assigned the responsibility of selling.
Follow Dân trí