Trần Kim Loan

What she does each day

Trần Kim Loan is the head chef at Bếp Rơm. She grew up beside a wood stove in the Mekong Delta and cooked for twenty years in her family’s rice restaurant before opening Bếp Rơm in 2024.

Her day starts at the clay pots. She braises the snakehead on a low flame, makes the sour soup and the broth for the lẩu mắm, and tastes each pot before the doors open at 10:30. The kitchen pauses between 14:30 and 16:30 to prepare for the evening; in that gap she reworks the braising sauce and checks the evening bookings.

She also chooses the mâm (a set of dishes laid for the whole table) for each table. She asks how many are coming, whether there are small children, who eats mild food, and then suggests one grilled dish, one braise and one soup: the three legs of a Southern meal.

Dishes she is responsible for

The braises and soups: cá lóc kho tộ (snakehead braised in a clay pot), pork belly braised in coconut water, sour soup with snakehead, and the lẩu mắm. They all sit in Braises, soups and rice. She wrote a Southern meal: grill, braise, soup around one table, and tells more about the restaurant on the story page.

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