Pleasure and Freshness: Traditional Vietnamese cuisine served at La Dalat in Temple
By Rachel Strickland | Photos courtesy of Tracy Dang
Even deep in the heart of Texas, it is still possible to get a taste of authentic food from countries around the world. One such place is La Dalat-Vietnamese Cuisine, which has been serving fresh and authentic Vietnamese food in downtown Temple since 2019.
On their website, the owners of La Dalat claim to serve the freshest food and the best experience. They also state that they “welcome customers with a friendly serving attitude and professional style so as to bring customers the best impression.” It’s not hard to feel welcome at La Dalat – from the friendly wait staff to the open and airy warehouse-style restaurant, the dining experience is a good one.
According to Tracy Dang, one of the owners of La Dalat, the restaurant is a family business. Her mother and brother both work in the kitchen, and they have been in the food industry for at least 20 years. La Dalat opened in May of 2019 and survived the COVID-19 pandemic with the help of friends and family who supported them.
Dang says, “We are still doing good because of the perfect team of family and friends who stand by the business.”
Dang and her husband, Henry Nguyen, who have both been in the food industry for over 10 years, moved to Temple from San Francisco in 2017 and decided to try their luck at opening their own Vietnamese restaurant in the Central Texas area.
“It was not easy to open a Vietnamese restaurant in Temple since many people I talked to had little experience with or understanding of Vietnamese food,” Dang remembers.
However, their gamble has clearly paid off as La Dalat is now a thriving hotspot for fresh, Vietnamese cuisine. Dang says that watching her customers enjoy their food is so satisfying.
“We are proud of our cuisine, and it is a pleasure to introduce it to everyone,” she says.
The restaurant got its name from the Vietnamese city of Đà Lạt, the capital of Lâm Đồng Province in southern Vietnam’s Central Highlands, which is where Dang’s family grew up. She says it is surrounded by hills, pine forests, lakes, and waterfalls and that they named the restaurant La Dalat as a reminder of their beautiful hometown.
Legend holds that Đà Lạt is derived from the acronym of the Latin phrase ‘Dat Aliis Laetitiam Aliis Temperiem’ (“It Gives Pleasure to Some, Freshness to Others”), which the French colonial government used in their official emblem of the city. In reality however, the name Đà Lạt is derived from the language of the local ethnic group, Lạt, and its original meaning is “Stream of the Lạt.”
One of the most popular dishes at La Dalat is phở, a kind of Vietnamese soup. Dang says that traditionally, phở broth is made by cooking beef or chicken bones for a lengthy amount of time, but the trick to making it healthier is to remove the excess fat on the top of the broth.
Unfortunately, this is a step that many restaurants skip, but she says that La Dalat, and other higher-end restaurants, make it a priority to make their phở healthier.
Dang says most Vietnamese dishes have a nutritious balance of protein, vegetables, and carbohydrates that allow people to eat more food, while still controlling their caloric intake. Dang praises phở because, besides being delicious, it also offers numerous benefits for the whole body, including improving the digestive and immune systems and providing rich amounts of calcium, iron, and both vitamins A and C.
According to Dang, the overall mission at La Dalat is to “provide a unique and relaxing dining experience — similar to dining at home.” She says that they strive to achieve this goal everyday by offering food that incorporates quality ingredients at reasonable prices, and by treating everyone that passes through their doors with dignity and respect, core values of the Vietnamese culture.
To learn more about La Dalat-Vietnamese Cuisine, visit https://ladalattemple.com/
