At the tiny Vietnamese restaurant Lilly’s Café, there is one big bowl of soup that brings the house. Because of the people here, it also comes with something that really hits home for me in these times we are living through.
It’s simply called shrimp dumplings soup, but when proprietor Lilly Vuong takes the order, she suggests all kinds of add-ons to spruce it up.
I always say yes, and so what I eventually get is a bowl teeming with springy yellow egg noodles, slightly chewy marinated mushrooms, strands of dark bok choy and ridge-cut carrots. Dumplings and shrimp bob around on a bronzy, aromatic beef broth.
It brings an exuberance that seems to jump out of the bowl. Or, maybe that’s just the way things feel when someone like Lilly takes care of you.
For the past 10 years, she has run her Lower Garden District café in a purple storefront almost obscured by a cascade of flowering plants. In a neighborhood that’s seen a great deal of change, it has for a decade been a rock of consistency. Lately, I’ve been learning to appreciate how this goes beyond the menu.
Through the pandemic, through the undulating waves of stress and tension we’ve all had to navigate, I realized I’ve also been drawn here for the special kind of hospitality Lilly cultivates. This is such a small restaurant, it feels like you're dining with everyone in the room. As Lilly goes from table to table, a sense of welcome and kindness radiates with her.
How do we keep ourselves positive and productive when there’s so much strife and discord?
Who else saw Lilly's on the @RachaelRayShow today?
— Ian McNulty (@IanMcNultyNOLA) August 9, 2022
It's one of my favorite restaurants, for reasons that start with the pho but go beyond the menu.
Here's the story I wrote on Lilly's - and Lilly - last summer and return to when I need some uplift https://t.co/ANUAjTitCP
Maybe we get a little more uplift from the people around us, the people we go out of our way to see. I feel better when I watch Lilly working her dining room. She does not just wait tables. She coaches them, she pumps them up. It’s like eating with the Ted Lasso of pho. Now that’s something you can take away after a meal, and I don’t mean leftovers.
