In just nearly 4 hours, starting at 5:30 pm, Luc Tinh Kitchen Restaurant recreated the atmosphere of celebrating Tet in an ancient Southern village, from the busy days before Tet, happily decorating the house, buying flowers and fruits, preparing cakes and candies to the time of lighting incense and respectfully inviting ancestors to come home to celebrate Tet on December 30th.
From the gate, pots of bright yellow chrysanthemums and a blue car full of Tet flowers lead visitors into the “village”. On both sides of the road are still marigold bushes - a popular flower during Tet in the South, along with rows of jars and pots that every house has. Besides, familiar regional songs such as Bai Hat Dat Phuong Nam, Ly Cay Bong, Banh Bong Lan are sung passionately as if inviting visitors to return to their hometowns, to the nostalgic Tet holidays.
Ms. Doan Thi Thu Thuy, owner of the Luc Tinh Kitchen Restaurant, shared: “I grew up in Mien Dong so I loved Tet in the past. In my memory, from the 23rd of December, when the Kitchen God returns to heaven, people start to bustle about preparing for Tet. Around the 26th of Tet, there are flowers and fruits; around the 29th, it is even more fun and busy. The Tet market is bustling, not only selling all kinds of things but also a place where children play gourds, crabs, fish, and tigers, and people tie grasshoppers with coconut leaves... so I want to tell that story in this program.”
In the soft, yellow light of the oil lamps, the entire space of Luc Tinh Kitchen is tinged with nostalgia, revealing the image of villagers busily preparing for the upcoming Tet. In a small corner, a family is wiping banana leaves to prepare for wrapping banh tet; another family did it earlier, so the sticky rice, mung beans, and fatty meat are ready and they are wrapping the cakes together. In another corner, a woman is wiping her sweat, hastily cooking a pan of coconut jam, and another family is pouring sponge cake, busy cooking savory dishes for the Spring days. Also here, customers can not only find simple dishes of the countryside such as fried bananas, banana candy, bird's nest cakes, corn cha... but also see with their own eyes how these interesting dishes are made. If they like, customers can stop by to taste a piece of jam, a bowl of sweet soup, a sponge cake to know the taste of Tet in the past.
Luc Tinh Kitchen also takes advantage of the large lake in the middle of the restaurant to recreate the space of a river wharf. On that river wharf, there are several boats carrying flowers and watermelons docked so that customers can choose to bring home to display for Tet. On both sides of the river are boys and girls singing and responding, so that after each farewell, some people still feel nostalgic.
And as a way to remember ancestors, Luc Tinh Kitchen also recreates the scene of children and grandchildren cleaning the altar, wiping the glass painting, polishing the bronze incense burner, and preparing a flower vase and fruit plate to burn incense to welcome ancestors home to celebrate Tet.
At the end of the Spring outing and Tet food tasting, the restaurant sent guests home with bamboo baskets containing delicious dishes such as banh tet, sausage, ginger jam made by the kitchen, in the space of gentle music: "If we miss the appointment this afternoon and don't come back. Then this spring will be sad. It will be sadder than the old apricot trees. And spring will forget to wear new clothes. The old appointment is still intact."
Yes, who wouldn’t be sad and miss Tet like that when they say goodbye or miss it? The lyrics of that song and the images of Tet in the Southern countryside that Luc Tinh Kitchen recreates seem to be reminding people living far away from home to return to their families during the Spring days to celebrate a truly happy Tet. And if anyone wants to see the old Tet again, wants to “date” with old people in this village, they can come back the next Tet, when the “villagers” are preparing to celebrate a new Tet.
To successfully organize this event, the restaurant spent a whole month preparing the idea, ordering flowers, mats... from the West with the purpose of decorating in the Southern style, and also finding the right way to prepare some old dishes. This is not a ticket sales program but just a special event organized by the restaurant to introduce to friends, close customers and some representatives of the diplomatic corps to know more about how people in the South celebrate Tet.
