PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL DONAHUE
The Bach family poses at the Summer Avenue restaurant they have operated since 1981.left to right: Victor, Kylie, Joe, Solomon, Hanh, Han, and Ethan Bach.
Behind her restaurant, Hanh Bach has filled her garden with exotic plants, many of them used in her cooking. Lotus blossoms in a pool of water. The lotus in her garden inspired the name of her restaurant, says Bach, the owner of Lotus Vietnamese Restaurant on Summer Avenue. “I wanted a name that was different. And I like the flowers — they’re pretty.”
Walking among her plants on a recent afternoon, Bach picks strands of lemongrass, which she uses in her chicken, shrimp, and tofu dishes. “I grow mint, basil, hot pepper, lemongrass, and some Vietnamese flowers,” she says.
The garden also features Asian fruit trees, including Thai lime trees, which she moves to a greenhouse during the winter. “They don’t like the cold over here.”
For now, Lotus is only open for takeout. “We need to do some renovations to the restaurant,” says her son, Han Bach. “It’s going to take some time.”
But customers can still get their favorite items, including the popular banh xeo, which Han describes as a “crispy crepe” filled with bean sprouts, seasoned ground pork, and shrimp.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL DONAHUE
Owner Hanh Bach picks strands oflemongrass from the lush garden behind herrestaurant on Summer.
His mother learned to cook from her mother in Vietnam, says Han, the only one of her five children to have been born in that country. The others — Solomon, Victor, Bernard, and Kimberly Bach — were born in Memphis, where Hanh and her husband, Joe, moved in 1975.
“My parents were immigrants, so our sponsor first placed us in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas,” Han says. “I was ill and they needed to take me to either Little Rock or Memphis. They chose Memphis, because their sponsoring organization, All Saints Episcopal Church, was located here.”
This city proved a good fit. “When we came over, all the people in the church loved us,” Hanh says. “And we loved them. We stayed.”
Hanh never stopped cooking after she left Vietnam. “When I came to the United States I cooked for the family, for my friends,” she says. “I enjoy cooking. Anytime I have a day off I try to cook for my family. Make some of this, some of that. And pastry, too. When I came here I tried to make some money by making wedding cakes for my friends and everybody.”
She also got a job waiting tables at a Chinese restaurant. Things changed for the family when the Bachs invited their sponsors to their son’s birthday parties, where Hanh served Vietnamese dishes. “When they ate my mom’s food, they said it was great. ‘Hey, you should open a restaurant,’” Han says.
Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend are two other famous people who visited the restaurant in its early years. But, Hanh says, “I don’t know who they are, honey. They came in late at night, and I was back in the kitchen to cook dinner.”
Dr. Lester Hofman and his wife, Sterling, who were among friends they made after they moved to Memphis, were the driving force to get his mother to open a restaurant, he says.
Hanh and Joe liked the Summer Avenue location that eventually became Lotus. “We lived on Summer,” Hanh says. “We passed by here and saw the place was for rent.”
People were more familiar with “Chinese-American food” than Vietnamese food when his mother opened Lotus in 1981, Han says. “We had to slowly introduce it to people.”
Vietnamese cooking uses “a lot of herbs and spices,” some of which were difficult to find in Memphis at that time. “It was very hard to get a lot of our products. So, we had to make do with whatever we could. For example, we weren’t able to get Thai basil.”
Chinese parsley and cilantro were the closest things to it they could find locally.
His mother also cooked Chinese-American dishes, but, he says, “We made it with our own flavors.” Her “Vietnamese vermicelli” was one of them. “It’s shrimp. And we put roasted pork in it. With bean sprouts, green onion. It’s a curry noodle dish.”
People began ordering some of the Vietnamese dishes, including pho — “the traditional beef noodle soup of Vietnam,” Han says. “More people ordered the Chinese-American food, but every once in a while they would order Chinese-American food because they knew it better, but maybe order one dish to try the Vietnamese type.”
The restaurant soon became a success, but on a small scale. “Pretty much our restaurant has always been a best-kept secret,” Han adds. Customers hear about Lotus “by word of mouth. We never advertise.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY HAN BACH
The author with chopsticks.
The restaurant used to be open for lunch, but Hanh says, “I don’t see any business that way.”
She stopped serving lunch and went to dinner only. “So, for a long time I didn’thave anything to do and I cooked and waited on tables in a Chinese restaurant [Hunan Palace] on Mt. Moriah. I worked there in the morning. And take the kids to school and take them home.”
Then she was back in the kitchen cooking dinner for the growing number of diners, including actress Cybill Shepherd, Han says. Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend are two other famous people who visited the restaurant in its early years. But, Hanh says, “I don’t know who they are, honey. They came in late at night, and I was back in the kitchen to cook dinner.”
“We’re so close to the freeway people would stop by just to get a bite to eat,” Han says. His father, Joe, was at his usual stand in the front of the house greeting and seating customers that night. “I was so green at that time in this country,” Joe says, not really noticing the two rock stars. “I don’t pay attention because we have a full house,” but he still recalls they ate two vegetarian dishes.
When she’s not cooking at Lotus, Hanh is gardening behind the restaurant or working at her other job in banquet services at The Peabody. “I enjoy working,” she says. “I work all the time.”
“They don’t know what rest is,” Han says, referring to his parents. “They don’t know what a vacation is. I have to fight them to go on a vacation. If we go more than three days, they’re jittery. They can’t sit still. They can’t rest. The last time we closed the restaurant was this past July 4th. I made them go on a vacation. We went down to visit some family down in Texas near the Gulf.”
It was a short vacation. “We were only gone three days. They can’t go longer than three days.”
Han is proud of his parents and the legacy they’ve created at Lotus Vietnamese Restaurant. “My dad is always the face of the restaurant,” he says, “but my mom is the heart of it because she’s the cook.”
Lotus Vietnamese Restaurant is located at 4970 Summer Avenue.
