63: Part I: Flavors of Home: Quyen Phan's Culinary Heritage at Anchovies and Salt

Quyền Phan: 1:03

Thank you, sir.

Michael Dugan: 1:05

How are you doing today?

Quyền Phan: 1:07

I'm blessed. I'm blessed.

Michael Dugan: 1:09

You're blessed. That's a beautiful thing to say. I wanted to get started with what it was like growing up for you. It's the first thing you remember cooking or eating as a child. You'll remember a lot of work. Oh, work, okay.

Quyền Phan: 1:24

Like we grew up. Humble. So we, we always work early. I was cooking rice since I was like, probably five, six years old.

Michael Dugan: 1:36

Oh my gosh. Okay. And when you were doing that, were you working in restaurant?

Quyền Phan: 1:41

No, it was more like the homestyle. Okay, open fire just cooking rice. Making sure rice is ready when my parents came home from work or came in from the fields. Okay, don't have high low temp. Back in the days we will use a bamboo shoot a bamboo stick. Oh, drill a hole in it and use it like a flute so I can blow air into the fire. It wouldn't make the fire. The heat rises or lower. You would lower the fire by spreading the call out. You would increase the heat by blowing on it with a bamboo pipe. Those are some fun memories. I remember just having black circle or charcoal mustache.

Michael Dugan: 2:23

Oh my gosh. From the smoke.

Quyền Phan: 2:26

Yeah.

Michael Dugan: 2:27

Wow. Okay, were there any favorite things that you'd like to eat as a kid?

Quyền Phan: 2:32

Again, we always pretty humble. Okay. Actually, morning time was pretty good. There would be a kind of like a local lady that would walk by the farm. Just like an ice cream truck. Okay. And she would have kind of like a sweet dessert breakfast. Ooh, soy milk. Okay. It's almost like it's like a steamed rice cake. It looks like a honeycomb. Okay. There's people who've made it really popular in the United States now. And

Michael Dugan: 2:59

What is it called in the United States?

Quyền Phan: 3:01

Honeycomb cake,

Michael Dugan: 3:02

honey cupcake. Okay. Yeah,

Quyền Phan: 3:04

I think that's that's one way to say it because it looks exactly like a honeycomb inside.

Michael Dugan: 3:09

I see. Is there a Vietnamese word for that one? Bah, bah. Okay.

Quyền Phan: 3:14

It's translated into beef, beef cake, but let's get none to do with beef. Oh, interesting.

Michael Dugan: 3:20

Okay, I see. So loosely translated into beefcake.

Quyền Phan: 3:23

Yeah, I wouldn't call it that. It just more is beef. So man is any type of cake. So but I'm not sure why that name came about.

Michael Dugan: 3:34

And so you grew up in Vietnam? Yes, sir. Okay. And how long were you in Vietnam.

Quyền Phan: 3:40

Untill I was nine, nine. Okay. And so then did you move to the states? Did you move somewhere else? We migrated through an immigration process, okay. And ended up in the Philippines for sat like at a kind of like an educational refugee camp, okay to learn English to transition for seven months. And then we came to Washington.

Michael Dugan: 4:03

And oh, so you came to Washington. So like the Renton area or a different part of Washington, Spokane, Washington Spokane. Okay. I've been to Spokane a few times. We both live in Washington just for our listeners. So if you're tuning in for the first time, Quyen, and I live in Washington State, and he actually has an amazing restaurant called Anchovies and Salt. That is literally a few blocks from my house. And I've been there three times. And his grand opening has been the beginning of January, essentially, of 2024. So love your food. And that's how we got connected. And that's how we're having this conversation today. So Quyen, when you were growing up, was there anything you wanted to do? Like when you got to the states? Did you have a thought I want to do this. Like, I want to be a fireman. I want to be a zookeeper. Those were things that went through my mind as a child, but

Quyền Phan: 5:01

I know I have big dreams. I want I wanted to be a basketball player. Basketball player

Michael Dugan: 5:07

really? Okay. Yeah. Well, how do you know what position you want to play?

Quyền Phan: 5:11

I played point guard.

Michael Dugan: 5:13

So you knew then. Oh, wow. Okay, so did you watch basketball in Spokane?

Quyền Phan: 5:17

I did. We played a lot of basketball on the playground. Okay, I live next door elementary school. So cool. There was like a half a block walk. Okay. We spent all day on the playground.

Michael Dugan: 5:30

I got it. Were you any good?

Quyền Phan: 5:31

I liked the think so not that good. It was fun.

Michael Dugan: 5:35

Of course. Playing soccer at school. And the way we played soccer was very different the way formal soccer is so there's groups of kids, right? So there's probably 30 kids on one side and 30 kids on the other and you throw the ball in the middle and they try to get the ball to the goal. But there's 30 Kids, there's no positions, right? There's just a group of people that move around on the field. And that's how I started playing soccer as a kid. were no rules. It was just kick the ball and try to score, right. That's amazing. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I always loved to playing soccer. When I grew up, I wanted to be an African game hunter. And that's what I really wanted to do. And what I mean by that is I wanted to go and rescue animals, in Africa and in different places. And when we were kids living in Washington, I lived in totem Lake outside of Kirkland, Washington. And I remember going on these little adventures in the woods and finding snakes and frogs and salamanders and all kinds of animals, and we collected them. And we actually had a neighborhood Zoo. So that's why I wanted to be an African game hunter. I was pretty young. And both my two brothers and my sister, we kind of put this suit together childhood memories really influenced you. So now you own this amazing restaurant, or you launched this amazing restaurant called anchovies and salt. What inspired you to open a Vietnamese restaurant?

Quyền Phan: 7:00

For this one in particular is my seventh venture I started in 2012 just a way to create jobs for family growing up restaurant jobs was always the lowest hanging fruit for my family members, my mom, my sisters who migrated to the United States late, it was just creating jobs, opportunities because they came to the United States around 2008, 2009. Okay, really hard times, right? We had a recession in 2009. And I started my first one in 2012. Wow, I have a background in in construction kind of started out of the recession as well, because I needed to create jobs for my brothers be in that they migrated here late, they don't have any English skills, just something for them to get their foot in the door. So that was working for me for a few years, until they could find something that could give them health insurance, young stability for the family farm, creating jobs for my brother in constructions. I became I went to start building out the first restaurant for my sisters saw the dynamic of the restaurant industry and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly kind idea. And just always thought I'm like, we can definitely do better than this. Oh, definitely excel at least

Michael Dugan: 8:20

Walk us through a couple of the restaurants just kind of some of the was the first restaurant Vietnamese. Yes,

Quyền Phan: 8:26

I took over a place called a Renton Delhi. It was in a in the strip mall Plaza, up in the rent in Highland. Okay, a hole in the wall, literally on the side of a building, the infrastructure was there. So it needed just cosmetic. The previous owners was struggling really bad. And they just want it to walk. I remember remodeling it in nine days. Oh, my gosh, the city came two days because they said I needed a permit just to move some electrical outlets. And that's when you start to learn about rules and regulation. Luckily, it was a super easy over the counter permit just to move a few outlets. I remember buying the restaurant on February 28th. And opening on March 9.

Michael Dugan: 9:12

Oh my gosh. That's quick.

Quyền Phan: 9:13

Yeah, no, gameplan No, nothing, just a we need to open because we can't afford to just pay rent and rabbits in that. Yeah. And it was wet, very well received, especially by the Vietnamese community because they saw that we had authentic food. So it was a follow up on me. And everything else. And I quickly realized how hard this was in terms of trying to give people such a big menu. Yeah, very much under appreciated because the stigma of Vietnamese food is that it's cheap. Nobody wanted to pay more than $10 for anything, oh my God, no matter how much love or how much quality ingredients you put in there, it was just this ceiling that we kind of self imposed on ourselves as a community in 2012, which is only 10 years ago. It was it's really hard to get anything to go above $10. Wow, one of the saddest thing I remember was that my competitors and my neighbors, they lower their price the whole menu down to 699.

Michael Dugan: 10:14

Because they were competing.

Quyền Phan: 10:16

Yeah, I was like, wow, this is the saddest thing. How, how do they use do that to themselves, just so that they can kill the competition next door? extremely sad.

Michael Dugan: 10:29

Yeah, I'm sorry. That's, it's tough enough in the restaurant business. I mean, oh, yeah. You've managed to succeed. So what happened after that?

Quyền Phan: 10:38

I quickly realized that the business model wasn't sustainable. It didn't make sense to have the sales number but not the profit margins and putting in all the work, right. I'm always naturally growing up. Math is as always A strong suit in it my family. So Oh, wow. I ran some numbers quickly. And I said, Oh man, let me do a quick case study. And I looked up, what's the highest gross profit margin in the industry? And that's when I learned the chipotle model. Oh, okay. McDonald's, I think they net like 3%. Yeah. But you know, they own all the real estate, right? Chipotle was like, highest. They even as big as they are, there was netting, like around 11% at the time. Oh, wow. So as I said, Okay, so I started Googling, searching to see if there was any Vietnamese restaurants that had that concept. Okay. And there wasn't really any fast, casual Vietnamese restaurant in the country at that time that I know of. So I basically followed the chipotle way with Vietnamese food. It turned out great. took me four years to get any landlord to trust me. So I opened my first one in South Lake Union 2016. It was called Venus and now it's called Venus and sun of Vietnam is the acronym. Beautiful. Anything in Vietnam? That is, there's a lot of names. That is Vina this Vina? Vina food Venus. So I just thought Marina Sutton might be just the only thing that I could find that was not really a play on the word file.

Michael Dugan: 12:23

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Something unique.

Quyền Phan: 12:28

Yeah. And it's something I needed to trademark because I like, I'm a dreamer. So I always wanted to, like, Okay, how do I scale? How do I wrap a Vietnamese brand? How do I become like, Chipotle or Panda Express kind of idea. So I trademarked the name. I open February 24 2016. I believe it was crazy, because I have a handshake lease with my landlord. Oh, wow. I gave my life savings to this dude. Yeah, to walk away that that owned it previously. Because I love that location. But the previous owner, he didn't have any lease, but he knew he had Amazon all around him. He knew he had something good, so he wouldn't let go of it. I see. I approached the landlord really nice Turkish gentleman or school. So he's like, Yeah, I don't do leases. So I just looked them into is it man, if I pay you the rent, please don't kick me out. And he's a gentleman. So he's like, No, I work on a handshake. Oh my gosh, if I shake your hand, I'm not gonna kick you out. That's incredible. So I remember given a lot of money to the previous owner and asking him to walk in he did. It was instant success. Because, wow. Amazon country was growing 1016 Now, I'm located right there on Westlake and Denny right next to Whole Foods. Oh, that's incredible. And hopefully that time that whole food was the number one whole food in America. Okay, just floods of people walking towards that whole food plant. So naturally, I'm very visible that we had this very fast, quick concept. And it just did really well. We did well. So that was my first location. And that was, it was in the middle of very much urban neighborhood. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah. 2017 I saw Amazon was growing and they built our Amazon fulfillment center. Now in Kent. And I didn't know any better. I'm like, what they gotta be like 100 employees, no, like seven 800 employees and that giant warehouse, they are going to flip over to my restaurant to eat. So I open a second location in Kent right next to the Amazon fulfillment center. Wow, that worked out well. But to my surprise, the clients were from Amazon, because 30 minutes wasn't enough time for them to leave.

Michael Dugan: 14:52

Oh, okay

Quyền Phan: 14:53

To come eat.

Michael Dugan: 14:54

Yeah, it's not close enough. But

Quyền Phan: 14:56

Luckily we did very well. Wow. So that was more like an industrial restaurant.

Michael Dugan: 15:02

Yeah, that makes sense in Kent. Yep. Boeing maybe. Yeah.

Quyền Phan: 15:06

And then but Boeing at that time they left. That's right. When they, they all I was right behind Boeing. So they left that neighborhood in Kent. Oh, okay. But luckily, we still did well, well enough for me to test out. My my concept in a suburban area. I always told myself if I if my concept can survive in urban, suburban and industrial, then I have something that that would thrive if I plan on scaling at founder all Mongolian grill in Sammamish. That was shut down for a long time.

Michael Dugan: 15:43

I might have gone to that Mongolian Grill.

Quyền Phan: 15:46

Yep, it's right there in the Saffron Plaza up there. Yeah, I remember Sammamish doesn't have any Vietnamese food. I remember walking into the city to get a permit and it was a moment. I wish I could record it. Okay, when I submitted for permit, the whole staff inside the city hall came out and gave me a standing ovation.

Michael Dugan: 16:05

Oh, that's amazing. Oh my gosh, you're incredible. Wow. I'm really emotional right now. That is so awesome.

Quyền Phan: 16:13

No, it was so fun. Because there's like, man, they've never had Vietnamese food. And this man was Highland. Wow. It was fun times. So I built that in 2018. I feel one a year with my construction background. Landlord was starting to believe in me and given me a little bit TI, but I save quite a bit because I did everything myself. It was me and my team. Now it's 2018. It went really well. Obviously, by the end of 2019. I was looking at expanding to Kirkland urban, the new Google Campus. Oh my gosh, yeah. Thinking that Google would anchor this place. It's a mixed use this building this apartment is people. But there's also Google workers, right? They have two three building there. Look at that pandemic hit. And I have such a great location that I signed, knowing that it was a pandemic, right. Yeah, but nobody, I couldn't foresee how long it would last. So I signed early 2020. We negotiated until probably late 2020. Submit it for permit, build out the construction during the middle of COVID. A lot of issues regarding supply chain and logistics and all that. We were still very blessed doing our own thing. So we It wasn't really too dependent on people.

Michael Dugan: 17:34

Oh my gosh,

Quyền Phan: 17:35

So I opened may 27 2021, three days on my son was born your son. You know, my son was born on May 24. Yeah, I was praying that he come out so that I can grand open and not have them be born in the middle. Yeah. So we did that. That was when I would think it was still 50 50 50%, half open 75% open. The pandemic was rough. So going through all of that sales was dropping like crazy, but then it picked up because our model was always met. Designed to be quick service to go paperback. Okay, yeah. So I did that. During all of this one of my friend called me and he goes, Hey, there's a location in Sodo, downtown Seattle is really good location, and they walk in away because of the pandemic. I'm always curious. So I take a look at it. I liked it a lot, shook hands with them, pending approval by the landlord. We negotiating what the terms would be. I saw the terms going forward, what lease they had, and the numbers just didn't work out. Okay. I said I couldn't do it. So I walked away from the deal. And they ended up walking away too, because the numbers independent I was hitting them too hard. Yeah. After the fact, the place was vacant. The landlord reached out to me and was like, Hey, can we renegotiate the lease give you a brand new lease. And that time, I'm thinking okay, COVID might be better now. Things would be better. And I got a brand new restaurant. Oh my gosh, why? Because it's already built out. Just needed. Some like cosmetic work, and a good deal by the landlord. I took that as well. And I opened that November 9 2022. Basically five restaurants in five and a half years.

Michael Dugan: 19:30

That's amazing. Yeah.

Quyền Phan: 19:31

But you know, the it started off all really good. And it's still like, a nice, I would say streamline business model. We got very lucky. Our model is kind of built for post pandemic and India. I expected so much more a lot of moves were wrong. Like the Amazon can't employees never came. Yeah. When I was in Kirkland. Only 5% of Google's employees probably back,

Michael Dugan: 19:59

right. Oh, because the pandemic?

Quyền Phan: 20:02

Yeah, they still not back. And when they do come back once a week or twice a week, Google gives them food for free. Right. So it was it's like how do I compete with this when my landlord gives the Employee Free food? Yeah. And then there's no employees coming in. And when they do come in, they get free food. Okay. And it was the same thing in in Soto because Facebook is a matter of is in the office is above the building. Okay. And it's been three years, two years. I haven't seen one Meta worker.

Michael Dugan: 20:38

Yeah, everybody pivoted to working from home. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.

Quyền Phan: 20:43

They come in, they would go into the elevator from the garage, they go up and they would go down and go home. Oh, wow. It's like it's not as vibrant as I thought it would be. Luckily, I mean, we're surviving. I prefer to be thriving. That's just the honest truth of this business or the restaurant world. Yeah, definitely put a lot more content out there. Like, better understand the story. The first thing when people look at my concept is this big corporate. It looks too beautiful for it to be Mom and Pop. Yeah, it's likely watered down. It looks too much like a Chipotle. These guys don't know what they're doing. The pre conceived notion of us being watered down, doesn't give people a fair chance to really judge our food. They don't understand that I cook my Pho for 24 hours, I cook my chicken Pho with pasture raised free range and chicken. I cooked my vegetable broth with 100 pounds of really good veggies. And we put so much love into the food. Oh, but people will not see that.

Michael Dugan: 21:49

I saw it. My wife saw it. That's why we've been back three times in less than two months.

Quyền Phan: 21:54

Yeah, that's really not anyone's fault. It's our job of storytelling. We need to be the one to really connect with the community. And because I've been working so hard, you know, lucky my head down when, you know, building six restaurants in seven years, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's insane, to say the least. So I finally kind of like, okay, let's take a deep breath and start connecting with people have to kind of let the community know that the story is not what they think it is, or how they want to perceive it. But we have to take control of telling that story. And obviously, I've been living in renting for close to 20 years now. And I love Renton just geographically it's so convenient for sure. It's in the center of all of my restaurants, which is why I was really cheering for black rooster, which is the previous restaurant before anchovies. And so to succeed, he's like, I'm there all the time. Just doing I'm gonna eat here often. I'm gonna I love the location. It's like 200 lineal feet of waterfront. What can how can you possibly get that anywhere? Yeah, pretty much on Earth is like so. So I'm like, wow, this is amazing. I just couldn't wait for them to open because I love eating dumplings and taking my family out on the weekends can I do so me and my three kids and my wife, we always take the parents out for them some or gambling and is like, this is right in the backyard. But obviously the pandemic hit them and they gave up I think somewhere in 2000, 2021

Michael Dugan: 23:37

Yeah, a lot. Sadly, a lot of restaurants did our favorite place called Mogul Palace was an Indian restaurant in Bellevue, Washington, I'll tell you a Mogul Palace was incredible. The service the people the food, they just they had it in 22 years. And they just said they couldn't do anymore.

Quyền Phan: 23:56

That's the saddest part about it. It's like the positivity. It's like, people are rational. And it's like a eulogy. Or most people only speak up about how wonderful someone is. When at a funeral. The noise in today's world and especially online as people love to spread negativity, because that's that's how it's for lack of a better analogy is like misery loves company.

Michael Dugan: 24:22

You're so right. It's so sad to because you have an amazing place. And I mean, I have to just share this with you and our listeners. I remember the day that my wife and I were in downtown Renton on the waterfront, where your restaurant is located. We're walking along, and we see this opening Anchovies and Salt is going to be opening and Vietnamese cuisine. I was on fire. I just I wanted to walk in the door and you weren't even open yet. It was the Coming Soon sign. And my wife and I like we got to go there. And when we walked in, I'm telling you the experience there is so incredible. You feel like you're in another world and you walk in and I gotta tell you because you're feeling this negative and you need to hear this positive. Right? Have this experience going into your restaurant is not just going out to eat. It's having an experience in another world in another culture. And you walk in and it's so beautiful. It's so well laid out just has this magic and passion and positivity. I don't know how you did it. I wanted to ask you as another question is, how do you find the people that are so dedicated? It's tough to hire good staff. Right. But your staff is incredible. Like they're so attentive, they're so passionate about what they can do. And I spent 10 years in the restaurant business so I know this. I'm not bullshitting you. I'm like I can feel the hospitality when I walk in there through the whole experience. How did you do that?

Quyền Phan: 25:48

I think it's people always talk about creating the culture itself Yeah, in say a workplace for us is like we're representing the true essence of Vietnamese. Yes, people, not just the cuisine, right? Because I wanted people to be transported to feel like they didn't have to spend 10 $20,000 to go back home. Yeah, because I think the narrative in the travel industry is that Vietnam is one of the most hospitable country on Earth. And it's, and I have no doubt about it. But the dynamic of our culture we understand fully well that it doesn't pay to be grouchy doesn't pay to be obnoxious, or we're extremely humble, because we know that we come from extremely humble beginnings. We haven't even been freed for more than 100 years, it was always some type of oppression in our country, that dynamic of being able to join like the new world in terms of the prosperity in terms of economics. Why wouldn't we be the most hospitable country on Earth? When we're over here during my travel? I'm like, wow, the Vietnamese community and the food scene here. It's so sad. Yeah. Everything from food, to service to culture. I'm like, wow, I went back to Vietnam when I was 21 years old. And after 10 years, 11 years leaving, or 12, almost, I was just mind blown by the food. Because, obviously, as an eel, we was eating farmers food. And I, when I saw these things, I was just like, What in the world? Why does nobody give this to people? In Seattle? In California? Yeah, I started traveling, and I couldn't see it. I'm like, Oh, somebody's got to bring this to Seattle, because Vietnamese food is so so much more than it's like, if I had to debate somebody on what is the deepest food culture in the world by a million miles, right? We have 1000 years of Chinese influence and colonization or oppression, whatever you want to call it, right? 100 years of French colonialism. Yeah. And then there was a long period of Japanese influence there. And then we have the Vietnam War, which the US influences it's all over Vietnam. And to this day, US is Vietnamese Vietnam's number one trade partner, right? Because there is such a great migration of Vietnamese to the United States that our food like nowadays can be seen. A little bit of everybody's culture is within our food, right? But we have so much already at my by ourselves. And that's why I chose Anchovies and Salt is because it's the backbone of everything we do in terms of cooking. Yeah, it's this sauce. Right? Sure. It's anchovy paste sauce. These are the things that are so deep and flavors in natural umami, that the salinity and the depth of our food if you started out from like, from that and you start mixing in all these great fresh ingredients, there's so many things that just that I've eaten all my life in terms of enemies food. Yeah. And I'm looking at on the culture that I'm eating. I'm like, What Japanese food is just sushi. Ramen, grill food. I'm like, Man, I bet they don't sell a lot of Japanese food in the United States. They should. They should for sure. I'm sure it's a lot deeper than that. But it is very deep. Korean food is like, what they sell soups, and then they sell barbecue. When I go out for American food is like the state that salad this French toast and bacon and eggs. This new American when I start counting off my fingers is like, oh, shoot, I will probably need 10 Hands in order to count on my favorite Vietnamese dishes. And they all differentiate time in other day, in terms of region in terms of I'm like, holy smokes 30 up with 120 items on my menu at Anchovies And Salt.

Michael Dugan: 30:02

Did you really? Oh my gosh,

Quyền Phan: 30:04

We didn't even scratch the surface yet. My shelf was like, Well, the word crazy. Sack I know. But this is not even half the things that I want. What do we do? So we need to strategize is like well, we're not selling food to people. We're selling a whole culture, right? Well, I've lived in different dynamic of our culture, we will break in like preconceived notion of what Vietnamese is or stigma that is attached to Vietnamese food that is, like things like cringe or dirty or cheap or ditches. $3 ban me is $5 Pho kind of idea, right? Gotcha. I want to California one time 10 years ago, and they had a place that was $2.99. Oh my god, man, this is crazy. We went into the kitchen and we we started r&d And all the dishes. And we just felt okay, this one is going to have to wait. We're going to have to find a different way to, to introduce this to people. Gradually, we finally ended up with a 60 items on the menu. That still crazy ambitious, right? We cut the menu in half. Yeah, we have three regions of Vietnam, we wanted to showcase northern Vietnamese food, southern and central.

Michael Dugan: 31:19

One of our listeners asked it, are there any influences of other cultures like French or anything like that in your cuisine?

Quyền Phan: 31:28

In Anchovies And Salt.? And so, in terms of this, no would be I think the best answer. Okay. But let's say we do a steak and eggs for breakfast. Right? There is an influence there. Of the baguette be in French. Okay. Sure. The steak and eggs is like, very American, right. But the way we eaten it, I mean, like every culture, eat eggs and every culture eat some type of beef, right? We've taken all of this 1000 years of, I would say, culinary influence. It just made it our own. A long, long time ago. Yeah. So I didn't put any of that into the, the menu. It's what I grew up eating on it. Let's make anchovy and salt fusion, or let's add something in, we are actually trying to go backward in time. Okay. I'm trying to go back like 50 years in time to where when my mom is growing up, and I want to be able to your mom, you know, like Vietnamese moms and grandmas. And I'm like, Hey, yes, you did you remember eating this? When you grow up? I curated this recipes based on your perception of foods, not what's new, what's not what's now the menu was curated, so that I could get Vietnamese moms to get out of the house. Okay, right to start lining up two hours at a gym someplace on Mother's Day. Yeah, right. Vietnamese moms would often like I would say they would not venture into a Vietnamese restaurant. Okay. Because they know themselves that this place doesn't really, right. It's, that's what people do as a business is they're not really selling a whole culture. They're not selling real Vietnamese food. And it's kind of sad to think of it that way. But if you're not gonna put the best ingredients you can we already have the ceiling in terms of food.

Michael Dugan: 33:22

Who we got going on in the background is that your daughter?

Quyền Phan: 33:25

It's my two year old son and my 10 year old son playing a little bit. Oh my god. You know what I mean, when I felt like Vietnamese food was super underrepresented. Yes. The fact that I've been here 30 years, and my mom has never stepped foot into a Vietnamese restaurant. Oh, wow. I couldn't find myself to bring her to one. Because she would just fall she would probably just chew me out. Right? Why are we wasting money on this when there's obviously there's no love put into the food? Yeah, you couldn't put love into the food if you was trying to sell and still make money off of it.