Two small restaurants Lạc Thiện and Lạc Thạnh —at Hue's Thượng Tứ Gate have become famous for serving rice pancakes stuffed with bean sprouts, shrimps, and beef. A single family runs the shops. Lạc Thiện, well-known since before 1975, has only seven tables, but it is always full of Vietnamese and foreign customers patiently awaiting their turn.
A deaf, slender young woman with a cheerful smile works at the stove, pouring rice-powder paste into round pancake moulds. She signals arriving customers to sit down and prepares tea for them. Although she says nothing, her eyes seem to ask, "How many pancakes would you like?"
A handsome young man brings a colourful tray to the table. The half-moon-shaped cakes are bright yellow on the white ceramic plates. Then there are the bowls of thick dipping sauce dotted with sesame seeds and plates of fresh green vegetables: lettuce, basil, bean sprouts, sliced green banana, and sweet star-fruit.
According to Nguyệt, the young man's wife, the Lê family has three brothers and sisters, all of whom have been deaf from birth. Nguyệt's husband, Lê Văn Trung, is the elder brother of Lê Thị Thanh Ngọc, the woman at the stove. Ngọc has been helping her mother sell bánh khoái since she was ten years old. In the Hue dialect, "khoái" means "smoke," referring to the fact that the pancakes are usually served hot.
Ngọc became the main cook after her mother retired. She, her brother, and her younger sister Yến own and operate four restaurants. Trung runs Lạc Thạnh and Lạc Thiện. Yến and her husband run another shop next door, and Ngọc owns a shop in Ho Chi Minh City. All the restaurants are popular, especially since economic reforms began in late 1986.
Nguyệt fills her pancakes with shelled shrimps, sliced beef, sliced lard, and fresh bean sprouts. Her pancake moulds made of cast iron are the size of a child's hand and a centimetre deep. As soon as a customer arrives, Nguyệt ladles batter into a heated mould. When the pancake turns yellow, she adds to half of the pancake a slice of beef, a small piece of fat, some shrimps, and bean sprouts. Then she flips the other half of the pancake over on top to form a half-moon shape. More important than the cakes themselves, however, is the dipping sauce (leo), a thick mixture of dozens of different ingredients. The sauce is the decisive element differentiating each shop.