Don’t miss the bánh khọt at Hên Vietnamese Eatery in Cherry Hill

Growing up with a mother who was a professional chef, Andrew Ma vividly remembers the Vietnamese street foods that flowed from their home kitchen in West Philadelphia for after-school snacks and frequent weekend get-togethers. Crisp spring rolls. Lacy-edged half-moon rounds of crunchy bánh xèo pancakes. Deeply steeped phở. And there were also the bite-sized delights of skillet-sizzled bánh khọt, the semi-sphere-shaped mini-pancakes studded with pork and shrimp that he’d pop right into his mouth.

“I was always there in that kitchen with her cutting up the vegetables, and I got hooked,” says Ma, whose mother, Thi Nguyen, owned a restaurant in Upper Darby called Saigon City that’s now closed.

Ma, 43, spent most of his worked life in the building trades. But he finally achieved his own culinary dreams by opening Hên Vietnamese Eatery in Cherry Hill in 2018. He’s part of a wave of second-generation Vietnamese immigrants across the Philadelphia region who arrived to America as young children and have now taken the entrepreneurial torch from their parents. The colorful strip-mall space, which Ma built, is handsomely designed with rustic wood paneling and references to Vietnamese culture, recast with a modern touch.

And Ma’s menu is thoroughly inspired by the food he grew up eating: “I want to make my mom proud.”

From the sweet-and-salty beef tenderloin cubes of wok-fried bò lúc lac to the bò lá lốp bánh hỏi of grilled betel leaf beef rolls served alongside pressed vermicelli cakes and a bouquet of herbs, and the turmeric-tinted mì quang noodles, Hên is serving-up an array of carefully cooked Vietnamese classics. I would have devoured Ma’s beef carpaccio, too, had the thin-sliced rib-eye beef beneath its nước mắm dressing with crunchy shallots not been a little too sinewy to chew.

But I found myself particularly transfixed by the bánh khọt, those bite-sized half-spheres of turmeric-tinted batter made from coconut milk and rice flour that are sizzled in a cast-iron pan filled with rounded divots that give each little bubble cake multiple textures, with crunchy edges that snap against creamy, pudding centers that hold the savory nubs of ground pork and tiny shrimp.

It’s a particular specialty that has been surging on Philly menus over the past few years at places such as Gabriella’s Vietnam and Càphê Roasters, where it’s an occasional special. It’s also one of the most requested specialties at Hên, where Ma tops them with scallion oil and coconut milk. I wrapped them up while still warm in bundles of herbs and pickled carrot laces, then give them a lusty dunk in nước mắm dip, and I was totally transfixed. Now that Ma’s mother has just returned from a revisit to Vietnam, she’s given her son another bánh khọt twist to pursue — tinting them herbal green with pandan leaves.

“I tell her, ‘Mom, it’s so hard keeping staff here now as it is. Relax!’” says Ma, who also hopes to soon revive the popular Vietnamese rotisserie chickens he paused due to staffing at the outset of the pandemic. “But I also know she’s always just trying to sharpen me up.”

— Craig LaBan

Bánh Khọt, $12, Hên Vietnamese Eatery, 2087 Marlton Pike East, Cherry Hill, 856-888-1578; heneatery.com