A Rollicking Vietnamese Sidewalk Cafe Pops Up at San José’s Most Nostalgic Strip Mall
These days, Lion Plaza doesn’t get nearly as much hype as San José’s newer, splashier Vietnamese malls like Vietnam Town and Grand Century. But OGs know the Tully Road strip mall as the heart of the South Bay’s original Little Saigon, and the plaza has never lost that grassroots community vibe.
Case in point is this Saturday’s Cà Phê & Bánh pop-up, which aims to recreate the feel of a Vietnamese open-air sidewalk cafe right out in the strip mall’s parking lot.
Organized by the Tully Road Eastridge Business Association, the morning cafe pop-up plans to deck out the parking lot with the iconic plastic red stools and tables found at coffee shops and street-side restaurants all over Vietnam — a point of nostalgia for so many Vietnamese Americans.
“We’re just trying to bring a little bit of Vietnam here,” Andrew Hong, one of the food vendors, tells KQED.
Hong, aka Droo the Baker, has curated a lineup of seven up-and-coming Vietnamese American beverage vendors and pastry chefs to headline the event. South Bay crowd favorites include Nha the Cafe, Caffeine Depot and From Em. Caffeine hounds will have their pick of matcha Einspanners, pandan milk tea and probably a dozen different twists on a classic phin-style Vietnamese coffee. Food-wise, there will be uber-trendy salt bread sandwiches, coffee-flavored Biscoff cookies and more.
The one pop-up I’m personally most excited to try is Hong’s own pop-up venture, Gong Dessert Shop, who will be selling pork-floss croissants (one of his signature dishes), pâté-stuffed puff pastry and what looks like a Vietnamese American take on a McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwich (!).
Hong says the original inspiration for that particular stroke of genius came when he had the recently viral $3.50 fried fish sandwich at San Leandro’s Chinese Bakery & Deli. He loved it, but his first thought afterward was, “This would be so great if it was the [Vietnamese] dill-and-turmeric fish,” aka Chả cá Lã Vọng, which is often made with grilled catfish.
Tweaking the original by frying the fish with panko breading, adding his own signature umami mayo and putting it all on a homemade milk bread bun is exactly the type of next-gen twist that makes San José’s Vietnamese pop-up ecosystem so exciting.
For Hong, however, the Cà Phê & Bánh is about more than just the food itself. Over the past couple of decades, he explains, Lion Plaza’s slowly lost a little bit of its luster, as the South Bay’s Vietnamese community has been drawn to newer, shinier malls on Story Road.
“My cousins told me stories,” says Hong, who grew up in Southern California but had lots of family in San José. During the plaza’s 1990s–early 2000s heyday, he says, “The parking lot during Lunar New Year was insane. It was definitely the original Vietnamese plaza mecca.”
No one knows better than Hong that business is slower is these days in the plaza, despite the fact that the food court remains one of the best in town. About 12 years ago, he and his sister moved to the Bay to take over the Lion Plaza location of Van’s Bakery, one the South Bay’s most famous and longstanding traditional Vietnamese bakeries, from their aunt and uncle. Hong says everyone he talks to about his day job tells him, “Oh, I know Van’s! My parents used to get my birthday cakes there all the time.”
“But what about now?” Hong says. “Our goal is to have them come back.”
More than anything, then, he hopes Cà Phê & Bánh is the first “baby step” in that process. He doesn’t necessarily want to reinvent Lion Plaza, he says. Lion Plaza has always been great. But now, he says, “We got a fresh coat of paint” — literally.
“It’s the same but also better,” Hong says about the strip mall. “It’s not stuck in the past.”
Cà Phê & Bánh will pop up in the Lion Plaza parking lot (1816 Tully Rd., San José) on Saturday, Oct. 17 9:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. Free admission; all food and drink will be sold a la carte. The event will also feature DJs and family-friendly craft activities.