For someone who once hated to cook, Tuyen (pronounced “Twin”) Le is doing an awfully good job at her restaurant, Tuyen’s Asian Bistro.
The Vietnamese restaurant at 288 North Cleveland was packed on a recent Wednesday evening. People were ordering items, including her popular egg rolls and tofu lemongrass, from her extensive menu.
These were two of the popular items at her family’s old restaurant, Saigon Le, which closed eight years ago. Le, who does the cooking at Tuyen’s Asian Bistro, was a server, not a cook, at Saigon Le, which was at 51 North Cleveland.
And Le was a notorious server. “I used to be the mean one,” she says. “I’m the nice one now.”
Her mother did all the cooking when Le was growing up in Vietnam. “Just home-cooking meals. Vietnamese traditional food like hot-and-sour catfish soup. Homemade stuff.”
But when her family moved to Memphis, both of her parents had to go to work. And Le, who was about 15 at the time, had to do the cooking for the family because her mother told her to. “She said, ‘You need to cook this. You need to cook that.’ She just bossed me around. But I never liked it. She just forced me to do it.”
Le got a cosmetology license and was working at Regis Salon when her mother opened Saigon Le in 1992. Her sister, who also is named Tuyen (pronounced “Ting”) Le, and their sister-in-law worked with their mom at the restaurant. “They used to fight. Mama called me back. ‘Can you help?’”
Le thought she was only going to be there one day. “I stuck with her for 30-something years. We all worked together until later when the restaurant went down eight years ago.”
Notable Saigon Le customers included Woody Harrelson, Cybill Shepherd, and Jeff Buckley from MTV. “Nobody else in town had the little-bitty egg roll wrapped in lettuce and the sauce like Saigon Le.”
About four years ago, Le opened another restaurant, “New Orleans Seafood,” at the Tuyen’s Asian Bistro address. She served crab legs, lobster, and other items. “No Asian food.”
The ingredients she needed to make the type food at Saigon Le make became more expensive, she says. “After Covid, everything went up. I don’t have the money like I used to.”
People wanted Saigon Le back, so about a year ago, Le opened Tuyen’s Asian Bistro. “I spent $50,000. I bought a new air conditioner. I have to fix the floor. Get the gas stove.”
She narrowed her menu to just Vietnamese food instead of the additional Chinese cuisine she served at Saigon Le. The new restaurant is “very tiny. Only 10 tables.”
But the Saigon Le favorites are making customers happy. Tofu lemongrass is “lemongrass and the seasoning, garlic.” The noodle bowl is “house noodle bowl with egg roll, real pork.” Yellow egg noodles with wonton soup is another popular item. “I’ve got the full menu. I’ve got fried kimchi, shrimp on a stick. I’ve got lotus salad and seaweed salad.”
Le uses “fresh ingredients. I cook with fresh garlic, fresh sesame oil. I don’t use anything frozen or canned food.”
And, she adds, “I got all the customers back.”
She admits she had a gambling addiction when she was at Saigon Le. And that was evident when she was at the restaurant. She didn’t like being a server, but her mother forced her to be one, she says. “You can’t say no to Mama. Just do what you have to do.”
Le wasn’t “mean, mean, mean” to customers. “I didn’t throw the food at them. You give the customers food, but you don’t care how they eat, how they feel.”
She changed after she substituted cooking for gambling 10 years ago. “I didn’t know I was good at it until everything I cooked turned out to be good.”
Instead of playing blackjack, Le is now cooking, serving, or greeting people at the door at Tuyen’s Asian Bistro. Her attitude toward her customers is a lot different than what it was at Saigon Le, she says. “Just love them and treat them nice like family. All the customers are family.”