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.
Hy Vong closed its storefront doors in 2015 after nearly 36 years, but its legacy did not end there. The restaurant continued to make appearances through high-profile pop-ups, including a February 2022 collaborative dinner at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival alongside James Beard Award-winning chef Charles Phan of San Francisco's The Slanted Door, according to World Red Eye.
A Memoir Becomes a Musical
Nguyen and Manning's story first reached a national audience through Mango & Peppercorns, the memoir co-authored by Nguyen, Manning, Nguyen's daughter Lyn Nguyen, and writer Elisa Ung. Published by Chronicle Books in March 2021, the book chronicles the friendship between the two women, Tung Nguyen's journey from Vietnam to Miami, and the restaurant they built together, and it went on to win an International Association of Culinary Professionals Award in 2022. James Beard Award-winning Miami chef Michelle Bernstein wrote the book's introduction and hosted local culinary events celebrating the pair's contributions to South Florida dining, according to Chronicle Books.
The title itself carries meaning: it symbolizes the sweet-and-spicy contrast between Nguyen's pragmatic discipline and Manning's free-spirited nature, as well as the signature sauce that came to define Hy Vong's menu, per Chronicle Books.
Bringing the Story to Life on Stage
For SOUP: The Musical, Camacho brings experience from another long-running Mandelstam Theater production, having previously co-created and written the music for Mouse King, a reimagining of The Nutcracker that has run there as an annual holiday tradition since 2013. In a press release cited by Miami New Times, Camacho said Hy Vong became more than a restaurant, describing SOUP: The Musical as both an immigrant story and an American story.
The Mandelstam Theater, which operates in connection with The Mandelstam School and regularly hosts original local productions, is producing the show. John Camacho serves as musical director and Stefanie Roos as choreographer. The musical runs about 1 hour and 30 minutes including a 15-minute intermission, with performances at 7 p.m. on Fridays August 14 and 21, 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturdays August 15 and 22, and 1 p.m. on Sundays August 16 and 23. Tickets range from $50 to $65 and are available through soupthemusical.com.
