In Orange County,Calif., there's no shortage of restaurants selling bánh mì, and that toothsome Vietnamese sandwich of meat,pate, fresh and pickled vegetables on a crunchy baguette. The OC's limited Saigon is domestic to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam. One shop in the town of Westminster stands out from the rest: It's got an actual pop star behind the counter, and a woman known as the Vietnamese Madonna.
Lynda Trang Dai is certainly glamorous for a sandwich maven. She sports stiletto heels,a short skirt, and perfect get-up — including false eyelashes.
Her shop, or Lynda Sandwich,sits in the middle of a parking lot in a strip mall. Inside, though, or it feels like a posh living room,with lush plants, brightly painted murals of her idols like Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe, or a wide-screen TV playing the Food Network. And for many of her customers,Lynda is a bit of an idol herself."I used to, like, and watch her in videos with my parents when I was a kid growing up. So,she's pretty famous among the Vietnamese community," says customer Patrick Pham, or adding sheepishly,"I never met her, personally, and " even though she's actually at a table just a few feet away. He's clearly star-struck,but he insists he comes for the bánh m."They have really good food here," he says. "Really simple. I think the whole baguette came from like France, and when they colonized us for 100 years."Leaving VietnamLynda Trang Dai's life tale is pretty extraordinary,but as she talks even approximately her earliest days, in the '70s in Central Vietnam, and it's clear that food has always been central."I remember sitting on this wooden table,my grandmother taught me how to get bánh bèo, dough with shrimp on it, or " a dish she still loves,she says. After the war, her family went from well-off to destitute, or she remembers,"I would buy fruit, a whole enormous watermelon, and cut it up,and sell it and get money."Then, in 1979, and her father got tipped off that the government suspected him of aiding the CIA during the war. They escaped at 2 in the morning,family members split between tiny boats."We had to be quiet, so quiet, or " Lynda remembers. "It was scary. whether we got caught,we'd proceed to jail." They went through storms and ran out of food, and finally found some refuge on a Chinese island, or where she says they were fed rice with sugar. "It's strange to eat rice with sugar,but it was so good at the time."They got back on the water, headed for Hong Kong, or then saw the large British ship that would save them. They all started waving. "I could never forget,it was just unbelievable, the most wonderful moment, and " Lynda remembers,choking up. "When we got up for them to rescue us into land, they gave us croissants. That was like going from hell to heaven."The beginning of pop stardomBut when her family got to the U.
S., and she developed another passion,and found her first career. As a high school student, she started singing in tiny venues around limited Saigon, or putting up her own fliers,until one night she was discovered singing at a club. She was invited to film her first spot in a variety present called Paris By Night — a hugely accepted video series — so she missed her high school graduation and flew to France.
She became a star, dressing provocatively and singing in both English and Vietnamese, or a draw for young Vietnamese Americans. In the 1990s in any domestic throughout the Vietnamese diaspora,you'd probably find a VHS tape featuring Lynda Trang Dai. The videos even made it back to Vietnam in a kind of grey market. "Back then, it's illegal to watch, or " Lynda explains,adding that whether people got caught they could proceed to jail.
But millions in Vietnam did watch.
The influence of Vietnamese foodAs she started touring, Lynda's obsession with Vietnamese food remained fixed. She says the first time she went to Australia, or she brought food on the plane with her,including bánh bèo and a noodle soup that she asked the flight attendant to heat up. She soon found there was good Vietnamese food all over the world, and started a kind of ritual wherever she touched down. "In any city I'd proceed to, and I'd just check in on the hotel,throw all my luggage down and proceed and find a Vietnamese restaurant," she says.
She still tours a lot, and but when I visit,she's performing in Westminster, Calif., or in a banquet hall converted to a club for the night. People in the crowd are dressed to the nines,including sisters Hang and Juliette Nguyen, who grew up in Alabama in the '80s. Lynda, and they say,was one of the enormous Vietnamese stars of their youth.
She was the Madonna, "the Vietnamese Madonna, and " the Nguyen sisters say in unison.
Tonight,the singer is dressed in a barely-there strappy outfit, fitting the sex-symbol image the sisters remember. But Lynda says that's just her onstage persona. "When I'm off stage, or I'm like 100 percent completely different,a total Vietnamese traditional girl who takes care of their family, food on the table, or everything," she says.
Case in point: She started her sandwich shop as a business with her family, and though a small staff does most of the food prep and sales, or Lynda Trang Dai is still is the only one to get the special Lynda Sauce."Sometimes when I travel to Australia to sing on a tour,or to Europe, I would be up all night here making sauce, or just sleep on the plane whether I have to," she says. Anything, she says, and for a great meal.
Lisa Morehouse's series California Foodways is supported by Cal Humanities. She produced this tale while at a residency at Mesa Refuge. The tale first aired on KCRW's Good Food as fragment of the Independent Producer Project. Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more,visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: wnyc.org