At My Kha’s Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Glen Ellyn, all 14 tables are full. Trinh My Kha, the 51-year-old owner who escaped from Vietnam in 1975, glides from table to table greeting her customers by name, draping her arm over their shoulders in half-hugs and offering her signature laughter.
“I met one family,” she tells a customer, recalling one of her recent trips to Vietnam, “who needed a new roof on their house so badly, and I promised them I’d send them money to build it. I sent it, but when they took off the roof, the house collapsed.” She shakes her head in sad irony. “What could I do? I built them a new house.” That new three-room house cost her $4,000.
But My Kha does more than merely fork over cash for rehab. Her restaurant’s profits feed virtually thousands of Vietnamese villagers each year, as well as support three kindergartens, one day-care center and orphanage, and the annual salaries of nine teachers. In the past, she has given families money to start their own businesses; she has carted over computers, toys, clothes; she has paid for operations for handicapped and injured children; she has covered private school tuition for several older children; she has brought over sewing machines, wheelchairs, reading glasses, money. Last year alone, she bought 2,000 pounds of rice, supplying 300 families around Dalat, in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
Trinh My Kha, whose parents were killed by the French — her father was a soldier and her mother was killed during an interrogation of her husband’s activities — grew up with her grandmother, which is where she learned to cook. My Kha’s cousin, Nguyen Huu, is her link to the villagers. Huu delivers money to women in the farming village of Phat Chi, where My Kha and Huu grew up and where the day-care center is now located. The women buy yarn to knit sweaters or thread to embroider tablecloths and napkins (many of which are on display or for sale in My Kha’s restaurant). A large number of these women are handicapped and can work only with their hands.
Although My Kha opened her first restaurant in Villa Park with the help of her brother and sister more than 10 years ago, before settling at her current Glen Ellyn location in 1992, it wasn’t until her first trip back to Vietnam in March 1993 that she decided she’d use her restaurant as a tool to feed more than just the hungry masses in the United States.
“I saw those children, and they all looked so sad. I wanted them to be happy,” My Kha recalls of her visit to Phat Chi. “They were all so hungry.” She tells how their parents were often gone for days at a time working on other farms in the area and how the children sometimes just wandered the dirt roads. She wanted to give them food and education and love.
The customers who see the numerous pictures of children from Phat Chi adorning the walls of My Kha’s restaurant feel the same way. The children sit on rusted swing sets purchased by My Kha. They kneel next to their pet pig purchased by My Kha. They stand under a photo of My Kha, at 16, smiling. They know who gives them what they have.
“I don’t want to pick them up over and over when they fall,” she says about the villagers. “I want to teach them to stand on their own. I cannot change the world; I just want to help a few people with my love.”
But in spite of her generous heart, My Kha is humble. She credits Nguyen Huu, her customers and other members of her family for making everything work. “It is Huu,” she says. “She is the one who does everything.” My Kha tells of what she wants to do in the future, the families she has not been able to help because money is always short and need is always large. She would help the whole of South Vietnam if 14 tables could cover it.
Susan Tate journeys from her home in Chicago to Glen Ellyn two or three times a week for My Kha’s lunch buffet. “I once counted the number of different vegetables in one of the dishes here,” she says. “There were 14, 14 different vegetables. You can’t re-create that at home. Every bite has different flavors.”
On this day, she is also trying on hand-knit sweaters from the women in Phat Chi. She decides on pink, then changes her mind and puts on the yellow. She holds out her arms and admires the sweater’s sleeves.
“Plus, the motive is important here. My Kha serves her food with love.” Tate grins. “I think it makes it taste better.”
Hector Munoz, a Glendale Heights resident who also visits My Kha’s two or three times a week, closes the book he has been reading and joins in the conversation. “I asked her to bless my food once,” he says. “You can’t ask that of just anybody.”
Munoz has been eating at My Kha’s for years and says it took only one visit to make him a regular. My Kha pats his upper arm and asks how he is today. He offers a warm smile, tells her the buffet is wonderful, as usual. This day the buffet has cactus fruit as a special treat.
When My Kha disappears into the kitchen, Munoz is thoughtful for a moment. “She’s very humble,” he says. “I think she’s good for this universe.”
