Pho the love of food: Dubai-based Vietnamese chef’s journey from cooking classes to global franchise
- November 22, 2023
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As 40-year-old Chef Lily Hoa Nguyen, a mother of two sons aged nine and seven, sips her strongly brewed Vietnamese tea in her restaurant, she recalls her journey to becoming a successful food entrepreneur. It has been punctuated by numerous difficulties, ups and downs, including a pandemic that almost shut down one of her outlets. Yet Nguyen steered through those rough waters. The love for food, along with a strong community has seen her through.
Born in the north of Vietnam and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen grew up in the post-war Vietnam of the 1980s and 1990s, where everyone she knew was struggling to make ends meet. Her own father, a sailor was away at sea for most of the year, and her mother was taking up different jobs to support Nguyen and her three sisters. One of the jobs her mother was busy with, was being a supervisor at a war factory. “She was supervising machines when it was fixing clothes, jackets and sweaters. She would wake up early in the morning and prepare sticky rice for us,” explains Nguyen.
“My father was a sailor, away at sea for most of the year and my mother took up different jobs to support us. I started cooking at the age of five. I was good at it. I helped my sister clean the vegetables and cooked rice in the electric cooker. By the time I was 13, I made all the meals in the house…”
In the afternoon, her mother would return and look after the small grocery store they ran at home, which sold necessities to people in the neighbourhood. As her mother was working hard to support them, Nguyen and her sisters took on the responsibility of household chores. “I started cooking. I enjoyed it, because I was good at it. My first dish was making omlettes for breakfast,” she says. Nguyen helped her sister clean the vegetables and cooking rice in the electric cooker. “As I grew up, I helped more and more. I would go to the market to get fresh food and prepare for the family,” she adds. By the time she was 13, all the meals in the family were made by her.
In 2012, Nguyen got married and shifted to Istanbul with her husband, who got a job offer in the city. To show Vietnamese cuisine food to expats, she started cooking classes in a showroom at the Good Asian Restaurant in the city with a friend. She didn’t anticipate the popularity of the classes. “We started together with a friend. At first the classes ran twice a month, and then once a week, and then became twice a week. People would come to the cooking class as they said it had authentic Vietnamese food, tasty and healthy,” she adds.
By 2016, she relocated to Dubai with her husband after he received a job offer in the city. She was determined to not give up on her cooking classes. “It made me feel rewarded and fulfilled,” says Nguyen. These classes of six students took place at her home for two years. Her students parked themselves at different cooking stations in her kitchen and brought their own chopping boards. There was a pervasive sense of community that food can bring out in people. “They really liked the classes, as it was interactive,” says Nguyen.
The dishes they cooked, sound mouthwatering, ranging from Vietnamese chicken salads, with the popular dish Pho, pronounced “fuh”, from the country. Pho is dear to Nguyen’s heart just like every other Vietnamese citizen; a soup dish with bone broth, rice, noodles and meat. The response to the classes were overwhelming, and it was her students who planted the seed of an idea in her mind.
“They told me that I should start a restaurant,” she says. She decided to take the next step and bring a taste of Vietnam to Dubai.
