Wall Street Journal
June 18, 1999
The Idea of a Twin Restaurant Is So Good
By SAMANTHA MARSHALL
It's Been Done Twice in Ho Chi Minh City
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALHO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- Restaurant impresarios and twin brothers Nguyen Huu Phu and Nguyen Huu Quy have a vexing problem. They've helped launched two successful theme restaurants here. Now it's time to establish a beachhead in the Vietnamese capital. They've even been approached by a wealthy investor.
So what's the issue? "I'm afraid we can't be separated," says Quy.
In fact, there's a lot riding on them being together. Last summer, the brothers helped open Sinh Doi, a restaurant staffed by sets of identical siblings in matching uniforms. Despite Vietnam's waning tourism market, Sinh Doi has attracted busloads of tourists and curious locals, who, when not complaining to the wrong twin about their tardy food orders, take pictures of themselves with the staff, and play guessing games over who's who.
But late last year, the Huu brothers became enmeshed in a financial dispute with the owner and broke off to open a new twins restaurant, also called Sinh Doi. It appears that the new Sinh Doi is upstaging the old. During the peak of a recent Saturday night dinner shift, a Japanese tourist and two Vietnamese women dining together on braised sea slug are the only customers at Sinh Doi No. 1. The rest of the three-floor double villa, which seats hundreds, is empty, and there's an air of desolation.
Just down the street, Taiwanese tour groups are filling up tables at Sinh Doi No. 2, which is about half the size of its rival. The mood is cheery, the service friendly and attentive.
The brothers decline to discuss their former partner, popular Vietnamese composer Thanh Tung, who is not a twin. And Mr. Tung did not return repeated requests for comment. But according to intense local media chronicling of the feud, the twins were promised half the profits, and received only 20%.
The brothers say the idea for the restaurant was theirs in the first place. They already had two theme restaurants (neither playing off the twin idea) in their native beach town of Nha Trang and the Central highland resort town of Dalat. So being twins, they didn't have to look far for their next gimmick.
But two is becoming a crowd in Ho Chi Minh City's twin-restaurant business. Both Sinh Dois are having trouble finding and keeping enough pairs of employees. On a busy Friday night at Sinh Doi No. 2, only four-and-a-half sets of twins are on duty. "When one is sick the other one might as well take a day off," sighs Quy, the younger Huu twin. "One twin is no good to me."
Sinh Doi No. 1 began with a dozen sets of twins, but the Huus' departure set off a small migration. The brothers at first had no trouble finding additional twin staff for their new restaurant because of their own network of friends. "We told two twins, and they told two twins ..." Quy explains. But some, mostly university students working for their tuition, have since moved on, leaving the second Sinh Doi with just five sets.
Meanwhile, the original Sinh Doi has slipped to four twins supplemented by 20 non-twin employees, most of whom stand idly by while the nightly laser light show beams over the restaurant's empty courtyard. But it's not the meager sideshow that's the problem at Sinh Doi No. 1. "The food here is lousy," says Nguyen Xuan Oanh, a young twin waitress there, as she serves the Japanese diner a seafood hotpot. Indeed, a menu of "chicken in fat," "criply chicken," and "hashed eel" leaves something to be desired. A plate full of greasy spring rolls and a bland, gelatinous crab -- spelled "carb" -- soup are tough to finish in their double portions -- the only twin theme on the menu.
Sinh Doi No. 2's menu boasts a variety of prawns, lobster and other seafood, also the specialty of the house at the Huus' restaurant in Nha Trang. During a taste test, the prawns were fresh, drenched in garlic butter and cooked to perfection.
But at both restaurants, the twins are more the draw than the food. Oanh and her twin sister, Nguyen Xuan Yen, came from Ben Tre province in the Mekong Delta a year ago to find their fortune in the big city. Dressed in matching blue satin tops and black skirts, with their hair cut to the same chin length, the two girls pose for the Japanese tourist's camera, then take his order for more beer. The Xuan sisters joined the original Sinh Doi five months ago, after reading about the exodus of twin staff to the new version. The 18-year olds had been working in a furniture factory before then, "but it was too dusty and the money here is better." Neither of them would consider working apart.
Nor would the brothers Huu. "We have the same heart," say the twins, who wear matching blue button-down shirts, khaki trousers, shoes, socks and eyeglasses, with the same model Mont Blanc pen in their shirt pockets. They were apart once, several years ago, when the two brothers drove in opposite directions to their restaurants in Dalat and Nha Trang. On the way, Phu, the elder twin, injured himself in a serious road accident. Quy was beside himself. "I knew the moment something was wrong," he recalls.
Their desire to remain by each other's sides makes the possibility of a new Sinh Doi restaurant in Hanoi unlikely, even though a rich Vietnamese woman has come forth with the funding.
Never mind, there's plenty of work to do at the restaurant here, beefing up the twin theme. One plan is to plaster the wall with photos of twins. (The brothers say they weren't aware of a twin-themed restaurant in New York City, which has a similar decorative motif.) Another is to draw upon an old Vietnamese wedding legend about twins.
The legend goes like this: Long ago, a set of twin brothers fell in love with the same woman. According to family tradition the eldest, be it by five minutes or five years, is always deferred to, so the firstborn twin married their beloved. One day, while the older brother was tending the rice fields, his wife seduced the younger twin, mistaking him for her husband. The younger brother felt so ashamed that he ran into the forest, where he eventually died and turned into an areca nut tree.
Distraught, the elder twin went looking for his brother in the forest and died on the same spot, where he became a tobacco vine growing around the tree that was formerly his younger twin. The wife, who went out in search of the twins, died next to the tree and vine, and turned into a betel nut. To this day in Vietnam, weddings are celebrated with betel leaf, an areca leaf and a tobacco leaf, to symbolize fidelity.
The brothers Huu plan to have this tree and vine growing in the middle of the restaurant, with a plaque recounting the legend, which will be tweaked slightly. The last line will read: "A long time ago twin brothers couldn't share -- but we can!"