A New San José Food Stall Specializes in Vietnamese Rice Cake Omelettes

Located at the intersection of Tully and King roads, the Lion Plaza shopping center is in many ways San José’s original Little Saigon — a hub for homesick Vietnamese Americans since the mid-’80s, though it’s since been eclipsed by trendier malls like Grand Century and Vietnam Town. But in the mornings, the supermarket’s food court still fills up with hungry diners getting their phở or bó nè fix. And since August, there’s been an exciting new addition: Bột Chiên, a stall specializing in its namesake dish — Vietnamese omelettes topped with fried rice cakes.

Bột chiên isn’t strictly a breakfast dish, but at around 9 o’clock on a recent Sunday morning, the dining hall’s tables filled up with hungry diners feasting on the lacy, golden-brown omelettes heaped with pickled vegetables and, often, stretchy melted cheese.

Owner Tu Nguyen hadn’t always planned on getting into the restaurant business. He’d been an auto damage appraiser for State Farm for 15 years when he decided to buy CreAsian Bistro, a Vietnamese fusion spot in Pittsburg, from a friend in 2016. Soon after that, he invested $150,000 to transform a Quiznos into another Vietnamese restaurant called Anh’s Kitchen. But running the two restaurants at the same time turned out to be more intense than he’d bargained for.

“I had a restaurant with 73 items,” says Nguyen. “I said, ‘What can I do to simplify this?’”

Nguyen decided to step away from his restaurants to focus on something simpler and more affordable. He and his wife, Lan Vi Tang, wound up opening the bột chiên stall because that had been Nguyen’s favorite childhood dish. His aunt had sold the rice cake omelettes while she was at a refugee camp in Malaysia in 1980, and he grew up eating her version of the dish, which he insists is better than what you can find at any restaurant.

Bột chiên is a simple dish, but Nguyen’s attention to the individual elements makes the process quite labor-intensive. While other Bay Area restaurants make bột chiên with packaged rice cakes, Nguyen commits two hours to make his from scratch. “The dough is where the money is,” he says, explaining that the starch in the rice cakes retrogrades rapidly when refrigerated or frozen. They’re noticeably more tender and chewy when freshly made.

Nguyen’s rice cake recipe begins by hydrating rice flour and reducing the liquid on the stove over low heat while continuously stirring. Once the mixture transforms into a thick paste, it’s poured into a tray and steamed until it sets into a jiggly block. (An electric mixer would jam up as the batter thickened, so Nguyen does everything by hand.) The dough then gets cut into bite-size cubes, which are fried until they’re crispy on the outside yet chewy on the inside.

A popular street food in Saigon, bột chiên may have been originally inspired by chai tow kway, a stir-fried radish cake and egg dish from the Teochow people, who migrated to Vietnam from China’s Eastern Guangdong province starting in the 18th century. Unlike a French omelette that requires low heat and gentle folding, the eggs for bột chiên are cracked directly into a blistering hot pan around the crispy rice cakes, then scrambled vigorously until the underside of the omelette gets lightly crunchy and golden-brown.

Eating the dish is mainly a textural experience. You start by clasping the crispiest rice cake between your chopsticks before anyone else at the table can call dibs. You chisel it out of the omelette like an archaeologist, then pile on some pickled carrots and daikon for brightness and crunch. A dash of the accompanying sweet-and-savory soy sauce concoction is the finishing touch.

Nguyen offers three variations of the dish: classic, mozzarella and taro. My favorite is the mozzarella bột chiên, in which the melted cheese binds the scallions, pickled vegetables, egg and rice cakes together into one harmonious bite.

While most of the restaurants in Lion Plaza mainly serve full-sized entrees, Nguyen likes to think of Bột Chiên as an appetizer spot with a small, focused menu. “At first I had 12 items,” says Nguyen. “Now, I’m down to eight.” In addition to the assorted bột chiên, those items include calamari, chicken wings and beef jerky papaya salad. He’s also carried over customer favorites from CreAsian like his Vietnamese beef carpaccio — paper-thin slices of beef briefly marinated in lime juice and topped with roasted peanuts, sliced chiles, mint, basil and fried onions.

For Nguyen, the decision to open in the Lion Plaza food court was a personal one. Growing up in San Francisco, he had fond memories of visiting the plaza when it was one of the Bay Area’s very first Vietnamese food hubs. He’s excited to feed the community and has started brainstorming new dishes like garlic noodles and meatball stew with bánh mì.

“I’m hoping that in the future people know we’re here,” Nguyen says.

So far, he says, people from as far away as Sacramento have made the journey to eat his bột chiên. A hundred-mile drive for an appetizer might seem like a lot, but that’s just the kind of dish it is. When the craving hits, you have to have it.

Bột Chiên is open Tuesday through Sunday 9 a.m.–5 p.m. inside the food court at Lion Plaza (1818 Tully Rd., San José).