 I always use this analogy that why do you spend so much money taking care of your car like maintain it like put tons of money but use premium gas but why do you not put like quality food into your body Vietnamese food is one of the most popular cuisines in Vancouver often known for their hearty comforting boulevard and a crispy airy light banh mi sandwich and today I'm going to bring you behind the scenes to banh mi treban to visit a good friend of mine land where we get to see her secret sauce in combining french and vietnamese culture into a very unique dining experience let's go check it out banh mi treban is located in Richmond an area just south of Vancouver which is known for offering world-class asian cuisine they open from 10 a.m to 8 p.m and their main clientele are those looking for a unique cafe style dining experience as well as indulging in delicious vietnamese food made with the best possible ingredients hello land thank you so much for having us here today um super honored to be here because i'm actually a regular ever since you opened your shop this place is just super unique not like any typical vietnamese restaurant so please tell me more about what's the concept the concept is pretty much really home style vietnamese cuisine but a lot of the food like the bread is also from france which came to vietnam and gave us that influence so i wanted to bring that to our community here in richmond and of course all of the low mainland right and it's super well received and that's why you guys have been super busy and like line up out the doors every single day ever since you guys are open so which is like that concept works and like when i look at your menu it's something that is truly inspiring because you're one of the top ones at first ones to do like organic local and also just super good food that you'd feed your family and that's why me and my family always comes here i'd feed my one-year-old from you as well so tell me more about that it's basically comes down to how i grew up my family my parents is super cooks and they love cooking nutritious food and that's probably where i get my inspiration from yeah and they always bring in good quality ingredients they of course they never feed their children anything less than than the best yeah so just the influence on my parents what we put in our body is so important um so that's what i wanted to introduce to the public and of course our patrons and our customers um to advocate people putting good food in your body is a priority it should be done within everybody and meeting the family just like you but you bring your your family here yeah so can we get to see some of the behind the scenes absolutely all right let's go check it out now when it comes to the menu banh mi trevon offers a combination of traditional flavors with fine dining flair land spares no expense using the best and healthiest ingredients possible striving to serve nutritious Vietnamese food that she is proud of so whether you're eating a banh mi made with custom hand rolled bread or pho made with triple a grass-fed beef you know you're eating food that's not only delicious but healthy for you as well so this is our station for the condiments for our pho basically a little bit of everything the beansprout the basil lime all the essentials to go on a bowl of pho and this is our salad station uh it has basically all the main ingredients of our salad and then of course some ingredients for our veggie pho and a spring roll so this is where we do our spring wrap our salad rolls everything is so neat and tidy it has to be efficient so when it comes when we have a lot of orders all cooks and a chef needs to know exactly where they go so and of course we replenish as as it gets done so this is where of course our our baby yes this is our pho broth which we cook with two three different types of bones we simmer it for about 12 to 15 hours daily this is where all the flavors coming from is our spice bag oh that's so cool what's in it is is star anise our some cilantro seed uh cinnamon yes uh cardamom pods and then the other bag is basically all the good stuff all the healthy onions and your shallots and that's what all the flavors are coming from wow and that's why you need to like why like 12 hours to extract all the flavor from absolutely so that's where we get the deep and then we take them all out yeah and then of course we flavor them with a little bit of salt frist loss uh some rock sugar so all the flavors is from the bones this is what i grew up with is my mom and dad cooks real ingredients in terms of getting the flavor from the actual ingredient itself instead of taking shortcuts because what they're feeding their children what i'm feeding my family and my children here is very important to me and that's what i want to bring to our patrons and our customers it's about just home style food home style food are we up next is their banh mi your that's really famous too our banh mi is actually the creation that i'm super proud of please show me welcome to our banh mi station um the bread is i considered my baby it took me about five years to cultivate the recipe to make sure that i get the the bread that i grew up eating when i was in vietnam growing up i just wanted to create something that for the next generation to understand what the first banh mi that that came to vietnam was so this is pretty close so i hope oh please show us show us uh so alex will show you how to make it so how many do you guys go through a day on these guys hundreds hundreds of banh mi yeah and it we go through a lot putting on the day especially weekends it's never ending never ending yeah they get like this big bar it's like hundreds of bammies wow just destroying this that's okay just destroying it doesn't look nice and then you put it on the plate right like this beautiful beautiful good job oh i'm hired absolutely anytime when you walk into bar mitre ban the first thing you'll notice is the french vietnamese fusion decor these added features really help to give the restaurant a wonderful cafe vibe that draws in people looking for a special dining experience through talking with flan it's clear that she knows what she wanted her restaurant to be and isn't distracted at all with what other people are doing in the industry and with a total investment in the range of six hundred thousand dollars it's clear that she isn't afraid to go all in to bring her dreams into fruition my beautiful creation thank you thank you for giving me the opportunity to create this does this pass this is good not good for first try i know i have so crumbled up i really have very high standards when it comes to my bummy good first attempt thank you thank you um so tell me tell me more i know this is like 10 years in the making and prior to this you have no restaurant experience whatsoever true um i mean it's always a love of cooking that i never really get a chance to dive in so while working in the corporate world um i take a lot of notes and doing a lot of research and development in terms of what i'm gonna do what what can i do it wasn't really this to begin with it was always about something what can i do to really bring back the um the homestyle vietnamese food that i've always known and you took this really seriously that you went back to Ho Chi Minh to learn from the bus to bring the these recipes back to Vancouver um yes because like you said i have no zero culinary experience but i know my food i know exactly what i wanted i know i know what i want to bring to market so i was lucky to to work with four of the top chefs in vietnam to make this a reality so you shared with me a little bit more about your your focus on good ingredients and in relation to the cost of good souls is much higher than compared to other places like your bammies like 10 bucks whereas like outside and i know you don't keep track of other people but they're like six dollars but now i understand that what the ingredients right there's actually when i entered the industry i've learned so much in terms of there's grades in food there's grades in everything so in produce meat um so produce they have grade a which is premium like a they listed a bc so a meaning the top and then same with meat so they have like if you go to Costco you see like triple a and sometimes there's like uh wagyu or triple a double a in the single way and then there's much called utility so that's like the lowest cut of the beef so we buy at the top and everything that we bring in all ingredients so we buy the the the gray the top gray um a tenderloin is grass fed so it's harder to get because there's only two pieces of tenderloin in the cow and if we use grass fed that's even even harder to source so that was our biggest challenge was trying to no matter how much they increase it we have to bring it in because we have to maintain that right standard so your cost is like much higher than industry standards it's much much higher but again at the end of the day for me is about it's about the food choices that we we put out you should invest a little bit more money into your body like i always use this analogy is that why do you spend so much money taking care of your car like maintain it like put tons of money but use premium gas but why do you not put food like quality food into your body so like were you ever afraid that if you charge ten dollars about me that people would not come like because that would be what i'm afraid of for me day one that's what i wanted to do is that i um i've done a lot of research is the market that we're the niche that we are looking for so if people are looking for good quality that's what we want to target that's really what makes you stand out it's not about standing out or not wilson is me just really introducing really good good food basically quality home style food to whoever wants our food so yes we may be a little bit more expensive but i hope that our customer appreciate what we put into our dishes you know what i really love about what you just said is that you're not really creating something for like tackling a fad or like hey you know what i want to be better than you you're so focused on yourself and you're so focused on just staying on your own lane that's exactly what makes you special and that that's what makes you successful is because you're like this is my vision my focus and people that appreciate that and respect that would come and that's exactly what happened i think like your passion actually overspills as well as as you treat all your staff like your own kids you're like the big mama because they really haven't come in like all your staff they're so young and yet they're like the manager of this their house of you basically you train them from the ground up everyone comes in with no experience and you give them opportunity you train them well and in turn your guest feels that is that part of what you always wanted to do it's not what i always wanted to do i think it's just a part of me because i feel my staff is my number one asset so when i first started out in working um i had good mentors so i think i'm giving it back to i think young people need a chance no matter how you are where you grew how where you educated everybody needs a first chance so i'll bring in anybody who wants to work and wants to learn they can be have no experience they can be as clean as they can i'll train them so as long as they have that good work ethic it's about their character and their integrity is that that's what i hire i base my hiring based on that not experience yes having experience great but no experience even better because i can train them from day one so what are some of the big plans for me well i mean we're we're just expanded the space eight months ago from where we started so um considering i'm really happy with where we are right now uh expanding is in the picture but we just don't know when right i love to grow my team and give my team an opportunity to grow with us uh where we're we're gonna go um expansion isn't the works again we don't know when with what's happening in the world right now it's very difficult um but we're always looking for growth we're always looking to improve we're always looking to be able to offer our customer or the community a chance to taste our food whether if we have one location two location the three location um it's it's something that i'm looking forward to i i something that i i do want to share is that you have such a great foundation for a business because i remember you were telling me that you turned down multiple franchise request like because you want to make sure that the heart and soul of me is there and that you don't want to dilute that and this you told me this what a year ago something along the lines of that and yet you're you're just so like you know what i got to do it right i got to do it right so that's also something that i'm like wow we're not in a hurry to grow i think we need to focus on what we built here the foundation that we've set and we need to be able to continue to put out what we've envisioned from day one so we need to continue that consistency and that quality in the standard that we set we have high standards and if we can't continue with that how can we open another one so if we can continue that and just excel and continue to grow and if the next location happens to be in the picture we'll work through that we just have to continue and move forward and be innovative and that's i think that's the word that that i really instill in my staff is that we gotta really be a leader in terms of innovating what we do here and not focus on what everybody else does do what you can do do what you can do best and then just focus on our initial vision thank you thank you for that last lesson for us i am super honored to be here i'm honored to be interviewed and sitting here talking to you thank you let's do a yeah so there you go the secret sauce behind banditry bonds smashing success land's philosophy is simple cook good food that you would feed your family and treat your employees like your family thank you so much for watching and i'll see you guys in the next episode of the secret sauce