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ST. LOUIS STANDARDS
[ S T. L O U I S S TA N D A R D S ]
All the Accolades Mai Lee’s importance to St. Louis’ food scene cannot be overstated Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
B
ack when Lee Tran opened ai ee in the early s there was no social media, Yelp or laughably large number of food publications to get the word out about her new restaurant. It was just little Qui Tran on his bike, riding up and down Delmar like Paul Revere, cold-calling people to give his mom’s new place a try. “Back then, people ate differently, and their philosophy of dining was different,” Qui says. “People would go where they would go, and they wouldn’t steer from that, so their question was how to get your new restaurant into their rotation. So, what you do is you buy your son a bike for his twelfth birthday that he thinks is a gift but instead you put menus in it that weigh what feels li e pounds and have him ride up and down Delmar leaving them at homes and retirement homes. That’s why I have no shame now; it helped me in life, because I’m not afraid to speak with anyone. I was always put in those uncomfortable situations when I was growing up.” Now at the helm of the ship of both Mai Lee and Nudo House, Qui looks back with nothing but awe at what his mother was able to achieve with her restaurant. The second oldest in a family of eight children, mama Tran grew up cooking alongside her grandmother and parlayed those skills into jobs in area Chinese restaurants when she, her husband and children immigrated to St. Louis from ietnam in . Though she knew how to cook — and was quite good at it — no one would give her a kitchen job. Instead, she worked as a waitress and took
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RIVERFRONT TIMES
Founder Lee Tran turned a disastrous start in business into a pioneering restaurant, introducing generations to Vietnamese food. | ANDY PAULISSEN every opportunity she had to soak up as much knowledge about the business as she could, carrying two and sometimes three jobs at a time to help support her family. Qui’s father, too, worked tirelessly to help the Tran family make ends meet, working as an auto mechanic at a shop on the Hill by day and a janitor at night. Because their busy schedules meant little time at home, Qui would often find himself either helping out his dad or in a booth at the back of one of his mom’s restaurant jobs, doing homework after he got off school. In ee Tran partnered with a woman named Mai to open Mai Lee in a small storefront on elmar oulevard near I . Originally conceived of as a Chinese restaurant, Lee shifted her thinking after her business partner abruptly departed and left the Tran family not only scammed but in debt, never to be seen again. The hardship turned out to be a blessing in disguise. “My mom realized that she needed to do something different ui says. he figured she didn’t have anything anyway — and even more so, we had nothing
JANUARY 5-11, 2022
riverfronttimes.com
When the Tran family arrived in St. Louis, the whole family worked to make it. | ANDY PAULISSEN and debt. It was one thing to not have anything, but it was another to not have anything and be in the hole. So, she decided to do Vietnamese food with whatever ingredients she could find. It was very difficult but that was the start of
Vietnamese food in St. Louis.” Mai Lee was not a hit right out of the gate, not because of the quality or taste of the food, but because St. Louis diners were simply unfamiliar with Vietnamese cuisine and, at the time, not all that likely to
