A taste of home: The flavors of two generations are served at these Vietnamese restaurants
Across from each other on bustling Central Avenue, there are two businesses serving hot, delicious food on the daily.
At first glance, they might seem similar — both are restaurants owned by Vietnamese immigrants — but their respective missions set them apart.
Van Loi Barbecue draws longtime Charlotteans who want to revisit the traditional tastes of their countries. They eat succulent pork and duck and dream of homes they’ve left behind.
But their children, some of whom never knew their parents’ countries, go to Central Tea House for popular bubble tea and banh mi.
It’s where these two worlds collide — immigrants navigating their place in Charlotte through food and the second generation tasting memories of the places their parents grew up.
Central Tea House
If you asked Phu Trinh how he went from banking to starting a tea shop, he’d tell you, “Well, one thing just led to another.”
Trinh moved to Charlotte almost two decades ago after spending much of his childhood in the shipping town Newport News, Virginia. His father, who was in the South Vietnamese Army, took advantage of an opportunity to move his family to the United States to escape communism, Trinh said. Trinh was 7 when they arrived.
He doesn’t remember much of his childhood in Virginia — just how hard his parents worked and how alone he felt.
“It was really just a lot of struggles,” he said. No one else in town looked like his family.
So when Trinh moved to Charlotte, he was stunned by the Vietnamese community’s strong presence.
Between banking and the tea shop, Trinh worked at Walmart, worked for his in-laws’ grocery store the Giant Penny and even did nails for a few years. Then, for about five years, he stayed at home with his three daughters — until March 2019, when he opened Central Tea House.
During his time in Charlotte, he saw a younger Asian generation in Charlotte who wanted more options for boba, along with older folks who wanted traditional food, too. Trinh wanted to open a shop where everyone was welcome.
Three years later, Trinh’s tea house offers every color, flavor and consistency of tea, from mango slushies to avocado smoothies, alongside classic Vietnamese dishes like banh mi. Behind the counter, his daughters help mix drinks and take orders in English and Vietnamese.
He says he tries to put his own spin on the different kinds of tea recipes to serve every customer’s needs.
High school and college students gather in the shop after classes, passing multicolored cups full of tapioca pearls and fruit jellies between each other, while weekends see the shop filled with families of different generations, finding something on the menu to enjoy.
“Bubble tea has no age limit,” Trinh said.
Trinh hopes his younger clients don’t just come for the tea, however.
“Hopefully, they realize what the food or drink stands for,” he said. “And they come to experience … the culture.”
Van Loi Chinese Barbecue
A couple dozen ducks, roasted golden brown, line the window of Van Loi Chinese Barbecue.
The space is only the length of a narrow hallway, but it’s where about 400 ducks and 25 pigs are roasted every week.
Nguyen Thanh-Son bought the store a little more than six years ago, after he had worked there for more than 20 years.
A decade into his life in Charlotte, he went back to Vietnam, met his wife, Vo Lan-Anh, and filed the paperwork to bring her to the United States. She arrived in 2010.
After the previous owner of the shop died, the store changed hands several times. But Thanh-Son says his cooking and quality ingredients has kept customers around through the years. He kept the name from the previous owners, but focuses most on traditional Vietnamese food.
The food served at Van Loi isn’t just casual comfort food — they’re traditional celebratory dishes, meant to fill bellies at the most joyous moments in people’s lives. Heo quay or vit quay, roasted pig and ducks, are practically required at weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and holidays.
When people take a bite of the pig and duck at Van Loi, Vo said they are transported back to their home country and some of their happiest memories. That’s why the premium ingredients are so important.
Vo estimates half of their customers are Vietnamese, and many drive from four or five hours away for their barbecue. And according to her, they’re the only shop that offers roasted duck and pig.
“It is a unique traditional and custom Vietnamese BBQ food,” she said. “There are multiple pho restaurants, but we’re special.”
Their process takes hours. The pig must be marinated a whole day prior, and then several hours to roast, while the several hundred ducks they make every week take about 45 minutes to roast each.
Older customers tend to prefer leaner cuts of meat because of their health, Vo said, while younger people don’t mind a “little fat here and there.” But she’s found that the young people who enjoy their food are the ones who have been raised on it and introduced to it when they were young, like Vo’s 8-year-old daughter.
“Pleasing the customers is my utmost goal,” Thanh-Son said. “It gives me a satisfying feeling knowing that my customers appreciate my cooking.”
Vo said her husband cooks with “his heart and his love, not just the ingredients,” and their customers can tell.
“This is their comfort food in this new land,” she said.
This story was originally published June 23, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
