Some people like to take weekends off. Not Doris Hồ-Kane, owner of Carroll Gardens bakery Bạn Bè.
During the week, she’s a caterer, an archivist and a mother. She spends her time hosting events, writing about marginalized Asian American women’s history, and caring for her three children. Then, her weekends are filled with running her Vietnamese bakery, from 1:00pm–5:00pm on Saturdays and Sundays, selling exclusively desserts and drinks out of a hard-to-spot window on Sackett Street in Carroll Gardens.
The Carroll Gardens bakery is called Bạn Bè, which means “friend” in Vietnamese. The name is a reminder of Hồ-Kane’s childhood in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas.
“I was born in America, and my parents were both refugees from Vietnam,” Hồ-Kane said. “Family was always really important. And, growing up, I kind of felt like I didn't fit. I kind of straddled the line between Vietnamese and American.”
Because she yearned to fit in, Hồ-Kane has always cared deeply about her friendships — sometimes to her parents’ dismay.
“My parents would always be like, ‘Bạn bè, bạn bè, friends, friends, you're always with your friends.’ So it's kind of always stuck with me, but I’m reclaiming that. Friends are great. Like, you know, chosen family.”
Hồ-Kane said her bakery is the first Vietnamese American Bakery in New York City.
Hồ-Kane started selling Vietnamese baked goods in response to the pandemic in 2020, wanting to return to the comfort foods she had eaten as a kid. Her business began with a Vietnamese version of classic Danish butter cookie tins. She received 14,000 cookie tin orders, which took two years to fulfill. While she whittled down the cookie waitlist, she opened up her storefront to customers in 2021.
Pandan, a tropical plant whose leaves are often used in Southeast Asian cuisine, is at the center of several of Hồ-Kane’s go-to desserts.
“Through a Western lens, [pandan] would be described as like the Southeast Asian vanilla,” Hồ-Kane said. “But it's much more than vanilla. I feel like it’s its own main character. It's grassy; it has notes of floral, it’s a little melon-ish, as well. And the color is just spectacular. It can go from a pale washed-out green to a bright jade green, to a true Kelly green.”
Hồ-Kane didn’t grow up eating pandan since Vietnamese grocers didn’t arrive in Texas until the 1980s.
“When it started appearing in these new Vietnamese grocery stores, it was just like, I don't know if it's... it was like in my DNA or something. There was recognition in that flavor,” she said.
Bánh bò nướng is one of the pandan-infused sweets currently on offer. This honeycomb cake is fluffy and porous, with a pandan-green interior.
“There's a chewiness, a bounciness, a crunchiness,” she said. “It’s important in Vietnamese desserts to understand that it's not only the taste, it's also the textures.”
Hồ-Kane also regularly makes jellies shaped like flowers or pieces of cake, flavored with pandan and Vietnamese coffee. These jellies are intricate, multilayered beauties; firmer and more chewable than American gelatin treats. The difference in texture is due to a seaweed-based gelatin, which also makes them vegetarian.
The Bạn Bè menu rotates but usually features the same flavors: Hồ-Kane also makes a pandan-flavored waffle, Vietnamese coffee, coffee-flavored cookies, pandan-flavored drinks and sometimes banh mi. If she can’t locate an ingredient, she won’t compromise her vision — instead, she won’t sell the product that day.
Despite frequent requests from customers, she also doesn’t plan to open more days of the week. Hồ-Kane hopes the limited schedule will continue to make a trip to Bạn Bè feel special, like a destination.
“It's not close to the subway line,” Hồ-Kane said. “And the signage, you have to kind of be in front of it [to see it], which I know from a business perspective, people are like, ‘That's dumb.’ But for me, I've always loved those hidden treasures, those little scrappy mom-and-pop places where you can really feel the love in every bite.”
