Co Loc Fried Rice-Flour Cake

A bot chien cart tied to a woman who grew up in an orphanage

The vendor is Mrs Nguyen Thi My Loc, who works alongside Mrs Mai; the two met at a school for children with disabilities and have leaned on each other for several decades. Mrs Loc grew up in an orphanage and has worked at many trades, from lacquerware to selling bot chien, to put her daughter through school. Bot chien is a dish of Chinese origin that has become Saigon street food: rice flour dough cut into blocks and fried on a flat griddle with egg, eaten with shredded papaya and a blended soy sauce. She fries the dough from white right through to golden and crisp instead of using caramel colouring to make it look golden quickly; both the pickles and the soy sauce are made by her. Because the cake is crisper than many people are used to, anyone who prefers soft bot chien will find it different.

English text: machine translation from the Localis platform — proper names kept in Vietnamese.