Brenda Tran at Vietnam Café Express
6/4/2025
Brenda Tran is an indomitable spirit. She survived as a child battling hunger amidst the bombings of the Vietnam War. Her Vietnam Café Express has survived COVID shutdowns and ever-dwindling traffic at the Merle Hay Mall food court. In our mind, she has endured multiple upheavals with the patience of Job — and considerably more ingenuity.
We asked her to lunch, and she suggested meeting at her mall café at 9 a.m. Before then, she is serving coffee and breakfast to elderly mall walkers. After 10 a.m., she is cooking, serving and running between tables and her kitchen.
Like Brenda, Vietnam Café Express represents the beating heart of the Merle Hay-Hoover neighborhood. The east end of its restaurant bay is a shrine to 15 fallen customers, more than one a year since she opened. Her father has a place there.
“My first 12 customers are only six now. I love my older customers. When I was 8, it was the old folks who gave me something to eat and share. All these (photos) were my customers. I miss them all so much.”
Brenda began her entrepreneurial career at age 8, out of necessities of war. How?
“We were farmers, so we grew vegetables. I traded vegetables for sugar and made candy, cooking it with flour and rolling candy balls. When I was 8, I would wake up and go to school, come home and drop my backpack and gather dead wood to burn for cooking. It was war, and we had no electricity or gas, so I made candy after I gathered some wood. I can still see myself riding a bicycle. I was too small to sit on the seat, but I pedaled from village to village, or hitched a ride, to sell candy balls. I traded candy for rice – 10 balls for one bowl.
“I still remember when the bombs dropped; we would shelter under a jackfruit tree. Most people dug holes to hide from the bombs. The holes are still there as reminders to never forget.”
Jackfruit grow to be some 35 pounds and have killed many people when they fell. The idea of a sheltering jackfruit tree seems like a metaphor for Brenda’s life of managing relative perils. How did her family get from the “shelter” of a jackfruit tree to Des Moines?
“In 1969, my father had to leave us, or the Viet Cong would have put him in jail. The U.S. Navy took him away. We lost track of him till we got a letter that he was alive and in San Diego. We were refugees in England then and found out we could go to the U.S. But the paperwork took more than six years. Finally, we were reunited April 25, 1986, in Des Moines. By then, he was an electrician and had a job here.”
The culture shock must have been stunning?
“I was 17 and a half and spoke no English at all. So, I immediately took language lessons and started high school at Hoover. I graduated in four years, but I was 22. I remember the first time I rode the bus here. I got off at the wrong stop, because I’m a nosey girl. Then I got completely lost.”
How did the 22-year-old high school grad become a restaurateur?
“During high school, I cleaned houses and offices. Afterwards, I started working at Broadlawns in food service and the registration office. Then, I was made interpreter for the hospital. I also started making egg rolls and spring rolls, and people loved them. That was important to me, that I brought a part of my culture to Iowa and people liked it.
“At night, I still worked housekeeping. I remember saving money to buy a car. When my brother and I bought our first car, it broke down right away. The engine caught fire. We couldn’t even push it out of the way on Hickman. I swore to never buy another $800 car.”
While we talked, Brenda was watching her phone for white smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney. An hour after our interview, a new Pope was selected.
“Jim, the last time CITYVIEW interviewed me was the day a new Pope was elected. It’s pretty amazing that here we are again. After I married, I promised myself that my children would go to Catholic schools. That is why I started the restaurant, to make that dream happen. Fifteen years ago, I chose between opening a nail shop and a restaurant. I am a licensed nail practitioner, too. I settled with a restaurant so leftovers could feed my kids.”
Has Brenda considered leaving the mall and opening a stand-alone café? (Her food deserves it.)
“People ask me that a lot. I probably would have when my lease ran out after COVID. But the mall told me that the Buccaneers would be coming to one of two new skating arenas. Then that didn’t happen, and there’s only going to be one arena. So, I am trapped in a lease, and I am behind on my rent.
“But I feel a loyalty to the neighborhood and to my customers. I still live in the same house, three blocks from Hoover, where we reunited with my father. During COVID shutdowns, my customers kept me going. Some would run food orders out to the street for pick-ups so I could stay in the kitchen. I really want them to have a place to go.”
Mall food courts were de facto civic centers for the suburbs where they were birthed. Nothing has replaced them in that capacity. It must be scary?
“I come here early and leave late every day. One day, a man I didn’t know followed me out the door and then followed my car all the way home and parked on my bumper. I was frightened, but I confronted him before he got out of his car and he drove away. Sometimes now I ask mall security to walk me to my car.
“But I can’t quit, and I don’t want to. Every single day, I wake up and get going on hope. Once a week, I sing karaoke on a podcast in Vietnamese. That’s my release. If you want a healthy life, you have to get out and work for it. I believe in hope. I even buy a lottery ticket every week. I have to believe that all my hard work will pay off somehow.
“My father died just before I opened the cafe. But I believe he would be proud of me.” n
