Little Saigon
By Scott Millsop
Little SAIGON (This will be fuh)​
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There is a Vietnamese dish sweeping the country in a food fad. It’s called PHO. It’s pronounced “fuh”, as in fun. It’s traditional, trendy, all purpose and delicious. That’s just one of the name games in our Ethnosh this month. We’ll be going to Little SAIGON on Woodman Avenue for some Southeast Asian deliciousness. You’ve probably seen it. It’s been there forever, and it lurks in your subconscious memory’s peripheral vision. But you probably didn’t notice that the sign says Saigon, not Little SAIGON.
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Nevertheless, everybody calls it Little SAIGON, and the legal documents all have that name. T.D. Tran is the owner of Little Saigon but that’s not her name either. Her real name is difficult to pronounce, so one of her professors way back when gave her an “American” name, and if that might seem inappropriate on some level in these times, it is perfectly suitable as a brand. “T.D.” evokes “touchdown”. This is Ohio, so it works.
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Photos by Bobby Tewksbury
T.D. a take-charge type. She’s also funny and friendly and dedicated. She calls people “Buddy”. She’s smart and her face is expressive. She looks you in the eye and asks questions. We’ll want to ask her questions in return during the event because we’ll want to laugh. That’s the sort of energy that inhabits the room. She says comedy is free.
She speaks of “loyalty customers”. Not just regulars, these are people who have been coming to Little SAIGON for generations. T.D. is a third-generation proprietor at this location and she serves the children of families her mother and her aunt served before her. She says that if they change something in the recipe, loyalty customers will call her out on it. Authenticity is important here. It has to taste right.
Many of our Ethnosh hosts are newcomers. A lot are just getting started. Some are settling in to do business after a few years. Little SAIGON has been in the Kettering/Belmont area for 50 years. It dates from not long after a very troubled time between our countries. In 1975 Woodman Avenue was “the strip”, a hotspot in the car culture and home to drive ins and diners. Little Saigon outlasted most of that and remains as a sort of landmark.
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This should be a good learning experience. Vietnamese food is not the same as other Asian cuisines. As T.D. explains it, “Chinese food is sweet and oily. Thai is sour and spicy. Korean food is spicy. Vietnamese food is in the middle.” It’s unusual too because France made a colony of Vietnam and the two countries had a long conflict. The Vietnamese adopted breads, cream and butter among other French ingredients that neighboring country cuisines did not use. The French went back to Europe. All of which makes this a great place to conduct some foodie research. The menu at Little Saigon has 200 items.
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We’ll be enjoying a variety of dishes, which is the Ethnosh signature, along with the important C’s. Cuisine. Culture. Community. Chopsticks are optional.