At 3:30 p.m., Ms. Mai's Knead cake shop on Nguyen Van Troi Street, Nam Dinh City began to be crowded with customers. The owner and staff quickly fried the cake to serve customers.
"The restaurant has been open for more than 30 years, many teachers and uncles have been my customers since their school days, coming to eat knee cakes. Now that they have returned, they bring the whole family, children and grandchildren to eat," said Ms. Tran Thi Mai, owner of Mrs. Mai's Knead cake shop.
According to the restaurant owner, to make delicious pillow cakes with crispy, golden crust, not salty, fragrant but less absorbed by oil, the family recipe is to make the crust unable to be revealed. Inside is the filling made from many different ingredients including meat, wood ear, bean sprouts, vermicelli, carrots, duck eggs...
In addition to the special cake crust that the restaurant owner did not reveal a secret to, when enjoying the pillow cake, Ms. Mai also has a sauce with a harmonious and sweet spicy flavor.
Ms. Mai's Knead cake restaurant is only open from 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. but is always crowded and often out of stock in just the first few hours.
Ms. Bich Nguyet, a Hanoian diner, shared: "I currently live in Hanoi, and occasionally just return to my hometown, so I really miss the taste of Mrs. Mai's pillow cake. The cakes here have a thin, crispy crust, served with sweet and spicy chili sauce, very delicious but not too much. Every time I return to my hometown, I visit the restaurant, but sometimes I " miss" the restaurant because I'm out of stock when I'm late. The current price of the cakes I buy is 12,000 VND/knee cake".
Sharing more about her knee cake restaurant, Ms. Mai said: "In the coming time, I will make more cakes so that customers coming to the restaurant still have cakes to enjoy. This time the weather in the North is cold, so the number of customers enjoying rice paper is also higher.
Depending on each day, I will make the right amount of cakes, sometimes even a few hundred cakes a day are not enough to sell. In addition to pillow cakes, my family also sells side dishes such as shrimp skewers, squid skewers...".
