Michelle Le has a degree in finance and works as a CFO for a landscaping company. Her husband, Ram, is a general surgeon at Baylor University. They live in Fairview with her three children. So (with all due respect) why on earth do they even bother operating a concession booth at the Texas State Fair every year? And, more importantly, how did their new dish, fried pho, spark a storm of social media trolls leading up to the fair's annual Big Tex Choice Awards? The cause is the New Year's Eve party and Michelle's dream-building personality.
There are people in our lives who just say something. A person who enjoys talking about dreams. And Willy Wonka is all around us. These are the people who say, “If only we had the right engineers and the right chocolatiers, we could create a real river of chocolate.'' In Michelle's family, she is Willy Wonka.
About 10 years ago, her sister-in-law was ringing in the New Year, eating fried chicken and talking about her love for state fairs. She said, “Chicken skin is so good. Someone should fry it at the state fair.” That led to the next thing.we It should be fried. ” and “Let’s apply for a booth.”
To my sister-in-law, it was a far-fetched idea. But that wasn't the case for Michelle. She pulled out her laptop and began filling out her concessionaire application. She was Willy Wonka, making that dream a reality. Michelle says, “She started thinking about different products she wanted to sell and thought, “Let's try fried cake balls.'' And she said, “Fry lots of mashed potatoes!” So we started compiling this menu and included the application. ”
Restaurant experience is required to apply for a concession booth. Michelle started working in restaurants in 1999 to pay for books and tuition at Rice University and the University of Houston. She liked it so much that even after she graduated and got a job as an accountant, she continued working the dinner shift. Eventually, she opened her own restaurant in Houston, but her work hours were grueling and her family in Dallas intervened. Michelle says: She said, “Her parents need me back.'' They said, “You can't work 364 days a year.'' She was 26 years old. ”
In Dallas, she met Lamb on a blind date. He took her to Addison's Italian restaurant and paid for her dinner. “Think about 10 years from now,” she says. “He was like, 'I had to pay, but the money was gone from my student loans.'” That day, it was like $100? It probably cost a thousand dollars. ”
When Michelle and Ram got engaged, they bought a house together. However, Michelle's parents did not allow her to live with Lam until after her wedding. Although she had to wait seven months, Lam's parents had been living there since day one. And they still live together. “In Asian cultures, the mission in life is to take care of your parents,” Michelle says fondly.
Sitting with her youngest son at Frisco Chipotle, the only place I could catch her on a busy day, Michelle proudly speaks as her husband, connected via FaceTime, talks about his hard work. He smiled. “This is her job,” Lamb says. “She's our superwoman.” She wiped her son's chin while holding her phone, and she tapped the screen as multiple text messages came through. “An idea is just a dream until you execute it,” says Lamb. We have a dream story. she does it. ”
Back in 2011, Michelle clicked “Submit” on an application to exhibit at a trade show and was immediately rejected. But a few weeks later, a trade show called and offered to give them a booth. It would add a lot to her life full of status updates and carpools, but for Michelle, it wasn't an option.They are had To see that happen.
Today, Michelle and her family have three children, full-time jobs, and operate an Eat Krispies booth at the Midway each year. She explained for me the technical challenges of frying Snickers and Oreos. She laughs as she tells stories of Hot Cheetos disasters and bees swarming with chocolate syrup. On the day Big Tex caught fire in 2012, she was leaning forward with her head stuck in a malfunctioning fryer when people shouted “Fire!” She thought she was on fire.
You can tell she's completely obsessed with this part of her life, but it's also exhausting. “Basically, once the fair is over, her body is sore and tired for the next two months,” Michelle says. There is no way she can afford to keep her in pain and fatigue for two months. Ask anyone in the service industry about self-care. Ask parents of young children when was the last time they took a shower. You'll see a sparkle in her eyes when she thought she was just on vacation. Why would they do that?Because I can't do not have. Because when it's rewarding, it's really rewarding.
Le family's Eat Crispies booth offers standard products that are easy to prepare. Dip the Oreos into the batter, fry, and enjoy. Minimal preparation and staff training are required, resulting in fast and consistent service. Money comes in easily.
She never dreamed she would be so stressed out about family recipes.
congratulations. So the fair is giving you a choice. You can either stay where you are with consistency and moderate profits, or you can double down or do nothing and risk booth efficiency to get the economically equivalent Big Tex Choice Award. Obtained a giant stuffed teddy bear at Midway Sea. There is no doubt about that. Michelle plans to go after the bear.
Advertising your contest can create a frenzy of interest in your booth. And that interest turns into cash in your pocket. Of course, it also pockets the fair, as it requires at least 25 percent of the gross proceeds. The finalists are always smiling on TV, but it's no joke. These are businessmen competing for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“So this year, I was like, okay, let’s go all in,” Michelle says. She decided it was time for someone to do what was due. She needed to find a way to stir-fry the soup.
“Once I get in,” Michelle said of getting the booth. “And you're a Vietnamese family and what's the fried food you always eat? That's the first thing you think about.”
Michelle's father-in-law has been making pho for his family for decades. Ram says: “His father always dreamed of opening his own restaurant. My parents came here from Vietnam in the '80s. He's been making this pho for as long as I can remember. ”
The fried pho brought to this year's fair will use Michelle's father-in-law's soup recipe and will take hours to prepare. The wrap includes noodles, beef, fresh herbs and spices (some sourced from Vietnam), and bean sprouts. Each fried roll-up comes with soup, lime, jalapeño, cilantro, hoisin sauce, and Sriracha for dipping.
Unlike fried Oreos, this is an elaborate dish. And they plan to prepare everything fresh, without using refrigeration. Yes, we're just talking about frying here, but if you don't respect the game, you'll literally get burned. You need to plan for the best case scenario. What if it works? What if you win and you have to deliver this idea you've been testing in your small kitchen to a crowd of sweaty, half-drunk OU fans? mosquito?
Of course, you can test fry different rice paper packets for a year, freeze and thaw soups, and ultimately make it to the finals of the Big Tex Choice Awards. still There are moments when you regret your decision to participate. I've been covering his fair's food competitions for 14 years, and there's always controversy over the taste. This year has been tough.
When the contest finalists were announced in early August, a Vietnamese restaurant in Far North Dallas complained. The place is called Chris and John and serves a fusion dish called Forito. The owners complained that the dish the Le family submitted for the Big Tex Choice Awards was eerily similar to their “Vietnamese street food with a Mexican twist.” Online comment sections erupted with anger.of dallas morning news We've covered the story. The TikTok video was meant to calm the situation, but it only added fuel to the fryer's fire. Instagram also had a text-only carousel that has now been removed.
In both dishes, pho ingredients are wrapped in tortillas and fried. Then serve the wraps with some soup for dipping. That's a great idea. In fact, it was such a great idea that two different people came up with it independently. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Eat Crispies is not a stolen recipe from Chris and John.
But Michelle was devastated. She never thought in her wildest dreams that her hard work would cause a storm of anger on the internet. The Le family thought that making it to the Texas State Fair finals with their Vietnamese cuisine would be a great moment for their family and their culture. Instead, Michelle found herself having to not only deal with the expo's demands, but also her family's anger at being accused of dirty tricks and forcing her family to delete TikTok. Ta. (“I can be impatient sometimes,” Lamb admits.) She didn’t have time for that. She had to figure out a way to mass-produce freshly made fried pho. Ah, it was the first day of school for all three children. And her calendar told her it was time for her toddler's first dentist appointment. perfection.
But like Michelle said, full speed ahead. Once Big Tex reaches the finals, there's no going back.
If you're lucky enough to snag a ticket to the media-only fried food judging day, you better not be late. These flyers wait for no one.
But you get lost. And the smell is overwhelming. You really don't realize how much the fair smells of livestock and livestock-adjacent ingredients unless you go there when nothing is frying yet at the concession booths. Driving down familiar roads in late August can be eerie, and it's easy to get lost without Big Tex to point you in the right direction. Eventually, Briscoe found Carpenter Livestock Center.
It's 2pm on a Sunday, and a B-team of about 100 friends, family, influencers, and local media gathered here to testify to the Fried Church. An unlucky expo employee drew the short straw and watched Shania Twain, dressed in a Big Tex mascot costume, sing “Hey, I Feel Like a Woman” over crackling speakers. I have to walk around with adults holding me next to me.
Every Texas cliché is here, from felt cowboy hats to pink cowboy boots. That's exactly what foreigners think we do here on a daily basis.
Backstage, Michelle is nervous. Will the internet storm over fried pho hurt his chances of winning? Will the food speak for itself? She and her family only want what's best for Chris and John. This is to shine a light on Asian food in Dallas. She didn't want this to be anything other than positive. She never dreamed she would be so stressed out about her family's recipes.
In the audience, Michelle's toddler loses the item when the judge says, “Can you repeat the description of this item?” Also? “His aunt soothes him with what is believed to be the best fruit leather in the world. Ram's father calmly takes a 360-degree video of him in the crowd and patiently captures his 90-degree video of the rest on his iPhone. Combined with minutes of footage.
And, “The winner of the 2023 Big Tex Choice Awards for Best Taste: Savory is Fried Pho!” Carissa Kondoiannis, the expo's senior vice president of communications, expressed her emotions as she made the announcement. My voice was too choked up. “See?” she says. “We really are a family here.”
Michelle cried tears of joy and asked, “What would you do if things went well?'' The best-case scenario was brought to life by local news cameras. The entire Lu family is furious. Hugs all around. Children jump up and down. FOX News interviewed Lamb and he said: It's great for the fair. ”
Michelle stands next to him and smiles. That's pretty cool for Willy Wonka.
This article originally appeared in the October issue of D Magazine with the following headline: “Fried Pho controversy” Write destination [email protected].
