A restaurant that once introduced countless Miamians to Vietnamese cuisine from a 36-seat storefront on Southwest Eighth Street is now the subject of a stage musical. SOUP: The Musical made its world premiere in Miami this week, tracing the decades-long friendship between Hy Vong founders Katherine Manning and Tung Nguyen from a 1975 refugee sponsorship in Coral Gables to the beloved Little Havana restaurant they built together.
The production, based on the memoir Mango & Peppercorns, is running at The Mandelstam Theater at 8530 SW 57th Ave in Coral Gables through August 23, as reported by Miami New Times. Gil Kaufman directs and wrote the book for the show, while composer Jim Camacho wrote the music and lyrics. According to the outlet, the musical traces Nguyen and Manning’s journey through war, displacement, friendship, family and the restaurant that came to define them both.
The real story behind the show began in 1975, when Manning, then a graduate student and waitress living in Coral Gables, sponsored 17 Vietnamese refugees through St. James Lutheran Church, per the New Times report. It was through that sponsorship that she met Tung Nguyen, who had fled Vietnam while pregnant and came to live in Manning’s home. The two women went on to open Hy Vong together in 1980, giving the restaurant a name that means “hope” in Vietnamese.
From a 36-Seat Storefront to a Cult Following
Hy Vong operated as an intimate 36-seat venue on Southwest Eighth Street in a Little Havana neighborhood otherwise dominated by Cuban cuisine, earning a devoted following for its slow-paced dining experience and dishes like bánh cuốn, according to Miami New Times’ archives. Over its 35-year run, the restaurant picked up local honors including Best Vietnamese Restaurant in 2008 and 2012 and Best Restaurant in Little Havana in 2015 from the same publication. In 1989, writer Rafael Navarro described Hy Vong as a bite-size marvel of a place on Eighth Street, a line that has followed the restaurant’s reputation for decades…