A New Destination for Salted Egg Desserts in the East Village (2024)

In certain circles, the highest compliment you can give a dessert is to say that it’s not too sweet. On the other hand, in Vietnam (and within the Vietnamese diaspora), the harshest criticism is to call a dessert ngán, which loosely translates to meh.

“That is the mark of death because it means your food does not excite the palate,” said Brian Tran, the co-owner of Là Lá Bakeshop. This new Vietnamese bakery opened in the East Village over the weekend, one of a handful from an Ontario-based chain and the first one in the U.S.

“Vietnamese like textural variety,” Tran said. “If there’s not a dance of different things happening in your mouth, your food is ngán as hell.”

Là Lá Bakeshop — at 73 Second Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets in the East Village — specializes in layered desserts that are the opposite of ngán, in flavors that are popular throughout East Asia like their signature salted egg yolk cake.

Là Lá Bakeshop

“Every Vietnamese person who has lived in Vietnam in the past 20 years knows exactly what this cake is,” said Tran. Salted egg has grown in popularity in New York, too, most recently appearing in croissant form and as the seasoning for fried chicken. It’s essentially salt-cured duck egg yolks, which have a rich and intense yolk flavor. Là Lá Bakeshop’s salted egg cake consists of fluffy chiffon layers interspersed with gently sweet salted egg cream, salted egg crumbles, plus a smattering of chewy pork floss. For the uninitiated, pork floss is dried and finely shredded pork that looks a lot like the fuzzies on your sweater and tastes like sweet jerky. The combination of salted egg and pork floss seems like it wouldn’t work, but it does, delivering a double dose of umami that “isn’t quite sweet, isn’t quite salty,” says Tran.

Tran and his partner, Harry Pham, started the bakery out of their home kitchen in Toronto during the pandemic in 2020. Pham had been an avid hobby baker in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, before moving to Canada. Freshly out of work as a sales associate at Muji, he developed a recipe for pillowy roll cakes that became a hit with the Vietnamese Canadian community, leading the couple to open their first brick-and-mortar location in downtown Toronto in 2021. Now, they manage three bakeries, soon to be four, across Ontario.

The inside of Là Lá Bakeshop is painted a cheery shade of yellow, golden like a salted egg yolk. A sleek and brightly lit glass case displays neat rows of cream-filled milk buns, individual tubs of layered mini cakes, and full-sized cakes in flavors like taro and pandan sticky rice, the latter of which has a thick layer of glutinous rice. The popular Durian Supreme cake is filled with a generous amount of the famously stinky fruit.

“We’re not trying to convert anyone; our durian cake is for the durian lovers,” said Tran. There are also playful riffs on a tiramisù, with flavors like Vietnamese coffee and matcha pandan.

Là Lá Bakeshop

Tran and Pham have been working with their longtime business partner Michelle Pham and New York-based Tung Pham to open Là Lá Bakeshop. Harry, Michelle, and Tung are recent immigrants to North America and they share an image of Vietnam that is modern and rapidly developing, in contrast to the nostalgic sentimentality that persists among older generations of the Vietnamese diaspora. With Là Lá Bakeshop, their collective goal is “to present a younger, more forward-thinking vision of Vietnam,” as Tran put it.

The store’s branding, designed by Tran himself, reflects this contemporary vision of Vietnam, from the music to the elegant ginko leaf motif. Stick around long enough and you’ll probably hear a song by Vietnamese pop star Hoàng Thùy Linh, who had that one viral TikTok hit. He didn’t plan the real ginko tree growing outside the bakery, though, shedding its fan-shaped golden leaves. That was fate.

So far, the updated look and feel of the bakery, along with its menu of cakes that are all the rage in Vietnam, has appealed to customers who want a taste of the latest trends sweeping East Asia. It’s a welcome addition to a growing community of Asian bakeries in the neighborhood, like Ando and Lady Wong, where ingredients like salted egg and pork floss feel right at home. It marks a growing interest in Vietnamese bakeries across the city, with the opening of Bánh by Lauren in Chinatown and Bạn Bè in Carroll Gardens.

“Of course the New York food scene is competitive, but people find their niche; they survive,” said Tran. “I believe that our community is strong enough that we can thrive.”