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During French colonialism in Vietnam, Saigon in the 1930s, Ma Hai's small restaurant crowded and was busy with workers and porters. Her main menu was braised duck rice serving during the lunch time only.
Ma Hai couldn't even breathe when she was running her business by herself. She had to ask sisters and children in Matelot village (Ton Dan) to help out! It was found out that the Western people was hiring more workers to expand and build large-scale wharves like Mac Xay port (Marseille), bringing Saigon Port to the top 10 French international ports with busiest merchant ships in the world.
Every day, Ma Hai cooked four baskets of rice and sold them all by one o'clock in the afternoon. Ma Hai was very happy for her business, but when she came home at night and lay awake, she was still worried about the food cost. Because a plate of braised duck rice is sold for five Indochinese cents, not much profit, yet some people still complain about being expensive or ask Ma Hai to give them enough to eat.
At that time, broken rice and bran in Saigon and The Six Provinces were food for livestock such as pigs, chickens and ducks... to fatten up... so the price was as cheap as it was.
In 1939, a quintal of pineapple leaves sold in Tan An for only two Indochinese coins and five cents! A week later, it seemed that Ma Hai found a solution. Ma Hai went to the Old Market to buy good quality sheets, soaked them like sticky rice, then put them in a basket with pandan leaves to steam into rice to sell cheaply to the poor workers.
At first, Ma Hai's plate of broken rice only had fatty onion, a layer of fat, garlic and chili fish sauce mixed with sugar, and was sold for two Indochinese cents per plate, so it satisfied the budget of these workers. Suddenly happened: Three months later, everyone wanted to eat broken rice.
Ma Hai saw that it was a high sales volume, so she went to Abattoir, Chanh Hung, bought cheap pork skin, boiled it, sliced it and mixed it with hearing to make packaging for promotion. Then Ma Hai took the duck and mixed it with minced meat, mushrooms and vermicelli and grilled it like a sponge cake to make patties Broken rice is supported and praised by boatmen, truck drivers, and porters... "so delicious".
People at the Port called it "Ma Hai Broken Rice Restaurant".
The good news spread far and wide, some Western managers bought it to try and then praised it for their praise. After eating, they also told Ma Hai to grill them another cutlet for the next day. Of course, it must be having a knife, spoon and fork for them to be able to eat.
The "French style" of broken rice with fork and spoon came from here.
Born in 1940, it was not until 1950 that Broken rice (aka Com Tam nowadays) appeared in District Two and was a popular breakfast dish for alley residents in ancient Saigon. Thanks to Ma Hai, Com Tam "Grilled Pork Ribs" is today famous all over five continents and is one of the delicious dishes that many people love and choose as breakfast.
Followed the footsteps of the Saigon people who were exiled from all over the world in April 1975 when Saigon was invaded.
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