Homestyle

Dou Dou Café showcases one family’s unique cooking at its finest

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Dou Dou Café

Donnal Chung dreams of revolutionizing the restaurant industry. In his culinary fantasy world, there would be no chains, no menus with tables of contents and you’d never see a taco at a pizza restaurant. Instead, the dining landscape would be populated by small mom-andpop shops where people from every culture, creed and class share the recipes unique to their particular families. He believes every family has one such dish, and in turn, every family could run their own tiny, hole-in-the-wall shop. But what they’d serve would not merely be sustenance; it would be a window into their lives, and all those unique dishes, when patched together, would tell the story of the community.

Chung’s vision is grand, almost Pollyannic, but it’s sincere and one he carries out through his tiny Richmond Heights eatery, Dou Dou Café, which originally opened in 2019, then reopened roughly two years later after a pandemic-induced hiatus. The temporary closure was not catastrophic for Chung and his wife, Frances Pham, for one important reason: They operate the tucked-away cafe just for fun — a position of privilege that Chung admits allows for such an idealized view of what a restaurant should be. His actual livelihood comes from the adjacent salon, Donnal’s Hair Design, which boasts a roster of high-profile clients cultivated over 30 years in business, some of whom fly in from far and wide to sit in the artist’s chair.

Chung, a Guangzhou native raised in Hong Kong, is passionate about his field — a profession he came to after working a soulcrushing job as a watch manufacturer he took to please his physician father. However, the one thing that has always bothered him about the job is how difficult it is to find a proper meal when he gets off work. Craving something nourishing after a long work day, Chung consistently found himself walking into restaurants right before they closed — if they were open at all — or having to make do with grab-and-go items that lacked substance. His only respite was Pham’s home cooking, which she would spend hours preparing for the sheer joy of it. The pair and their son, affectionately known as “Dou Dou,” (pronounced dough dough) would sit down to dinner together after a long day, savoring Pham’s outstanding dishes and often dreaming about how won- derful it would be to share her talents with friends and neighbors. They’d also muse about setting up a kitchen right by the salon so Chung could pop in and out whenever he was hungry. Eventually, those ideas merged, giving birth to Dou Dou Café.

A passion project through and through, Dou Dou Café operates at the pleasure of Chung and Pham. Though its stated hours are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m. seven days a week, it’s not uncommon for the family to shutter when they have other commitments or when they run out of food — something that happens regularly due to the small-scale nature of their operation. “If the light is on, we’re open,” Pham says, prompting diners to eschew the on-demand, customer-is-always-right ethos that permeates current restaurant culture in favor of one that is more akin to being invited into someone’s home. Doing so results in an utterly soulful experience. Pham learned to cook at a young age from her mother in her native Ho Chi Minh City (she refers to it by its pre-communist name, Saigon), and she’s never worked in a commercial kitchen. As such, her food is homestyle through and through, made from scratch in small batches every single day. You feel lovingly nourished eating dishes such as chicken noodle soup. It’s the quintessence of comfort, made with a delicate chicken broth infused with the mere suggestion of anise and black pepper and punctuated with the sharp flavor of freshly sliced scallions. It’s a stunning base for the silken flat rice noodles and filets of fork-tender white meat chicken that round out the dish.

Pham offers two other equally thrilling soups. The first, a beef pho, is shocking in how it can be both delicate and powerful at the same time. The broth is so light in texture, yet it’s packed with warm spice that counters the lusciousness of the accompanying rare beef slices. It’s gentle, whereas the Spicy Lemongrass Beef Noodle Soup is a wallop of rich spice and perfume. Here, the beef broth is slicked with fiery chili oil that starts out as a gentle burn on the roof of the mouth, then builds to lip-tingling heat after several bites. It’s not heat for heat’s sake but instead delivers layers of flavor that reveal themselves with each spoonful.

Pham’s plump spring rolls marry fresh herbs, greens, slowcooked beef and shrimp in a sticky rice paper roll. Here, the sauce is key — not one-dimensional hoisin or peanut sauce as is sometimes served with the dish but a complex concoction that has elements of fish sauce funk and sweet chili. The sauce, garnished with crushed peanuts, is apparently so addictive that regulars beg to buy in bulk, to no avail.

You understand why Pham cannot mass produce her food when she describes how she makes her pork belly. The multi-step process involves cooking the belly, icing it down to remove excess fat and then glazing it with soy and honey; the result is equal parts tender meat and soft fat, each occupying its own distinct space in each bite rather than merging into a gelatinous hunk as is often be the case with pork belly.

Beef lettuce wraps are equally extraordinary. How she gets the beef to be both tender yet caramelized is nothing short of magic. Accented with a mouthwatering sweet soy nectar, the meat is stuffed into a crisp lettuce cup, resulting in a bite that is at once warm and satisfying, fresh and cooling.

Pham bases her recipes on her experiences growing up in Saigon, her mother’s ideas about food, her Chinese background, and her and Chung’s own preferences. This means that her version of a dish might be different from one you’d find in Hanoi, Da Nang or even other Vietnamese restaurants here in the United States. And that’s exactly the point. As Chung insists, every family has something to offer to the culinary landscape; Dou Dou Café is the thrilling proof of his point. n

Dou Dou Café

Spring rolls $9.50

Beef noodle soup ...................................... $18

Pork belly and rice $18