Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Lunch Lady’ lands in Vancouver to see the restaurant cooking her Vietnamese recipes

Ho Chi Minh City food vendor Nguyen Thi Thanh was made famous as the ‘Lunch Lady’ by Anthony Bourdain in a 2008 episode of his show No Reservations

A collaboration with a Vietnamese Canadian led to a restaurant named after her opening in Vancouver, to which she gives full marks on a first visit to the city

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Vietnamese food vendor Nguyen Thi Thanh (middle), dubbed the “Lunch Lady” by Anthony Bourdain, in the kitchen at Lunch Lady, a Vancouver restaurant named after her and on whose opening she collaborated. Photo: Niko Myyra

Published: 6:15pm, 16 Aug 2022

Since late June, Nguyen Thi Thanh has enjoyed walking the streets of Vancouver in Canada, trying lots of different food, and taking in the summer sunsets by the beach.

Thanh is best known as the “Lunch Lady”, a nickname coined by the late celebrity chef and raconteur Anthony Bourdain, who visited her street stall in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 2008. She is in Vancouver to visit a restaurant opened by second-generation Vietnamese-Canadian Michael Tran.

The restaurant is called Lunch Lady and is celebrating its second anniversary. Originally Tran had invited Thanh to the city in British Columbia, western Canada, in July 2020 for the opening of the restaurant, which offers elevated Vietnamese dishes, but the trip was postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite the delay she is excited to be in the city and impressed by Vancouver’s culinary offerings.

Food vendor Nguyen Thi Thanh at Lunch Lady, Vancouver, Canada. Photo: Niko Myyra

“I’ve visited a lot of restaurants, mostly Vietnamese,” says Thanh through her translator Han Nguyen, who is the restaurant’s manager. “Michael took me to many popular restaurants and I tried some Western food, but I prefer Vietnamese.”