Fran, the Maker of Splendid Soup

This is Frances DuLac and her dog Phi, as I met them a few Sundays ago for coffee at a small place on Pape Ave (See a French and a Vietnamese version of the picture). She runs an extremely successful catering business built on the Vietnamese Pho soup. It was, as she told me, an accident until it wasn’t. She made Pho from a recipe on a calendar and her friends went nuts. When the pandemic hit, with not much else to do, she perfected the recipe and started selling first to friends or phone orders and then on her website. She can hardly keep up with demand, had to hire three cooks and a delivery service. This natural talent for Pho, where did come from she asked herself and then dug into family history (a box with letters, photos and documents her mother had). Turns out, her great grandmother Linh Pham, born in Qui Nhon, Vietnam in 1934, was a famous beauty. Jacques Dorléac, a French colonel fell deeply and totally in love and, in 1954 when the French left Vietnam, took her to Paris. They got married (his family did not attend: Jacques et sa meuf d'Indochine, alors!). On April 12th 1961 a daughter was born: Françoise Paulette Louise. When the colonel died in 1972, the family helped them go to Canada on condition to change their name (they picked DuLac) and never contact them. Linh and Françoise bought a small house in Toronto, on Broadview Avenue and lived there quietly until January 1990 when Linh died of pneumonia and Paul Chayse, boyfriend to Françoise, moved in. On November 16th, on the holly feast of St. Matthew the Evangelist and Apostle, their daughter was born. They briefly considered naming her Matilda (closest to Matthew) but they chose to honor the Vietnamese grandmother where it all flows from: the beauty and the art of Pho.