1 of 4
Crystal Wise
2 of 4
Crystal Wise
3 of 4
Crystal Wise
4 of 4
Crystal Wise
For years, Hao Tran has played an integral role in Fort Worth’s food and restaurant scene but usually as part of a team.
Under the banner of Hao & Dixya, she and business partner Dixya Bhattarai made a name for themselves for creating ridiculously inventive — and delicious — Asian dumplings. When she delved into the world of restaurant ownership, she did so as one of four partners in The Table, a market and culinary studio on the Near Southside. And, most recently, she and another business partner, Natasha Bruton, opened The Pantry, a quaint café on Magnolia Avenue that serves a mix of Asian and New Orleans cuisine.
But after years of being in a band, so to speak, Tran has gone solo. In mid-January, the 54-year-old Fort Worthian opened Hao’s Grocery & Café in the space occupied by The Table, which closed earlier this year after her partners decided to focus on another concept. And she’ll soon open Lao Che Lounge. Named after a villain in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” and located next door to Hao’s Grocery, Lao Che will be a gathering spot for pop-up dinners, cooking classes, and other special events.
Tran’s two high-profile concepts come after a shaky year that found her at odds with Bruton, who, like Tran, is also a schoolteacher by day. The Pantry opened last August, but by the end of October, Tran had left.
“There’s always challenges to having business partners,” she says. “But this was affecting my love and heart for the food itself. I decided it might be time for me to do something by myself.” (Bruton has continued running The Pantry on her own.)
Tran has transformed The Table space into a culinary market with an emphasis on Asian cuisine, local and regional foods, and specialty items you might not find elsewhere.
Of course, Tran’s dumplings are up for grabs. “Our standards have been lemongrass pork and curry potato, but the menu will rotate with seasonal ingredients,” she says. “Recently, I’ve done vegan kimchi; beef and chive; purple potato, our TCU tribute; and black garlic shiitake and water chestnuts.”
An avid traveler, Tran sometimes dreams up recipes based on foods she’s had in other parts of the world.
Tran was born in Saigon in 1975 during an especially turbulent time in the country’s history. To say the least, it was a difficult time for her family. “We left Vietnam on the day of the fall of Saigon, April 30, 1975,” she says. “My mother, who was an only child, did not want to leave my grandmother. My grandmother said she was too old to go anywhere and would stay to watch over the house. Before we left, she had sown seeds in the hem of my mother’s shirt, pearls in my brother’s shirt, and cyanide in mine and my sister’s shirt.
“We could grow food, and if we got separated, my brother could live on selling the pearls, and as for my sister and I, she could not think what would happen to young girls in the hands of the Viet Cong, hence the poison. After my father passed away in 1983, my mother told me this story and took out the pearls. She had put them back as two strands and said she would give them to me and my sister when we got married. Each pearl is a year of my life that I got from not having to resort to the alternative and my mother and my grandmother’s sacrifices to give me strength when I need it.”
Her family was able to escape. “It was chaos, but we managed to get on a C-130 cargo airplane,” she says. “I remember it was so hot, we were packed in there like sardines.”
She and her family were transported to refugee camps in Thailand, then California, before Catholic Charities stepped in and sponsored them, moving the family to Arlington. “We were the first Vietnamese refugees to be brought to Arlington,” she says. “I remember my mother cut out this article from the Arlington Gazette. They had interviewed my father about leaving Saigon and how our experiences had been so far. In the photo he was barefoot and wearing a T-shirt with a frog on it. He didn’t care what he looked like. He was just happy to be here.”
Food became an important part of Tran’s life by way of her extended family in Canada, whom Tran would sometimes visit.
“My aunt owned a French Vietnamese restaurant in Old Montreal, where there are cobblestone streets lined with ethnic restaurants,” she says. “My uncle would pick up fresh lobsters at sunrise from the boats at the port to make their house special — garlic and cheese fried lobster.
“My grandmother also had an influence on me. I watched her cook on a wood-burning stove, preserving duck eggs or making soy milk from beans,” she says. “I would go with her to open-air markets, where I’d see live chickens, colorful fruits, and street foods. I can still smell the aromas of grilled meats.”
After graduating from Texas A&M in 1991, she moved to Fort Worth, where she spent three decades as a teacher in the Fort Worth ISD; she has also raised two daughters here.
“I would have to say, without a doubt, that they are my proudest accomplishment,” Tran says. “Their hearts, their kindness, and their laughter are what I’ll take with me wherever I go. And they will get the pearls when I’m gone.”
