Out of Vietnam Gift Shop At Truc Orient Express Reopens

After three-and-a-half years in Vietnam, Trai thi Duong has returned to West Stockbridge. The 82-year-old matriarch behind the Out of Vietnam gift shop and Truc Orient Express Restaurant in West Stockbridge was visiting family in her home country when the pandemic hit. Now she’s back and reopening the businesses with the help of daughter, Truc Nguyen. The shop, which sells handmade new and vintage garments, ceramics, jewelry and many other gifts — purchased directly from small scale artisans in Vietnam — is open now. The restaurant is slated for a takeout-only reopen around Memorial Day.

The businesses, and the family behind them, have been an institution in the town for over 45 years and news of Duong’s return has begun to spread. On a recent Friday afternoon, as she sat on her large outdoor dining deck, locals popped by to welcome her, wish her well, and speak kindly of her husband.

Duong’s husband, Luy Nguyen, who passed away in 2018, was heavily on the mind of Duong and her daughter Truc, as they sat outside the shop. It was the eve of an anniversary of great significance. On April 29, 1975 in Saigon, Nguyen, a South Vietnamese naval commander, heard the emergency alert and evacuated his family to America aboard a naval vessel with the U.S. military he served with. Tragically, the oldest of Nguyen’s four children, six-year-old Lam, was visiting relatives, too far away to make the boat. It took another six years before the family was reunited.

When they reached the States, the family ran a diner in Connecticut. Duong learned all about serving American food but still made some Vietnamese dishes in the evening. A West Stockbridge businessman, Gordon Rose, was so taken by the dishes that he enticed the family to his town to open the Truc Orient Express in 1978. Not wanting to give his only daughter a big head, Nguyen said the restaurant wasn’t named after her, but rather he just happened to name both her and the restaurant after bamboo.

In West Stockbridge, Duong said, they found a community that welcomed and supported them.

“When they first opened here there was a line down and over the bridge,” said Truc Nguyen, adding that she thinks West Stockbridge embraced the family so quickly because of how hard they saw her parents working and how much they helped others. “It was important to my parents for people here to see Vietnamese people as not just the war, but for who they are.”

The community was also supportive of the Nguyens' struggle to bring their son Lam to the U.S. No one was leaving Vietnam at the time, but with the help of attorney Fred Rutberg (now president and publisher of the Berkshire Eagle) and the influence of a local friend of Senator Ted Kennedy, the boy, at age 12, was reunited with his family in 1981.

“We are lucky to land here,” Duong said. “Everyone tried to help.”

Truc Nguyen recalled that one of the reasons her parents insist they speak only Vietnamese in the home was so that when Lam joined them in America he would have no trouble talking to his siblings. The other reason was that they wanted to represent their culture and family legacy in their new town.

When relations between Vietnam and the U.S. normalized in 1995, the Nguyens began sponsoring relatives to move to America. They gave them housing and work at the restaurant. Over 20 relatives were able to save up money this way to start their lives in the United States.

Duong presents a finely lacquered dish with a design made from egg shells.

The store Out of Vietnam was started to directly support Vietnamese makers back in the country. After working nonstop to put all their kids through college, Nguyen and Duong began closing the restaurant in the winter months and spending half the year in Vietnam. They often traveled to remote areas of the country and found craftspeople —some injured from the war — making remarkable scarves, clothing, jewelry, woven baskets, and a distinctly Vietnamese style of decorative lacquer work.

“They went off the beaten paths to find traditional, local, regional things,” Truc said of her parents. “Because of all the years she’s traveled and purchased, no one else is selling items like these. There are things in my mothers shop made decades ago.”

The store is packed with beautiful things that are not just tied to a culture but to individual makers that the Nguyen family supports directly with their patronage. As business has slowed recently Duong tried to buy less, but she feels an obligation to continue to bring income to the people she worked with for years. Because of that, the store is quite full of merchandise at the moment.

“I understand what they need,” Duong said. “I came from a poor family in a poor country. I see what they need.”

Nguyen, a public relations professional, left a 30-year career in New York City to move back to West Stockbridge when her father passed. She also ran the restaurant seasonally while her mother was away. She’s hopeful Duong’s return will give locals and visitors another reason to shop and eat here this summer. The restaurant’s opening is being delayed a bit due to the labor shortage but Duong was able to persuade a couple of her grandchildren to come from California to work in the restaurant this summer. The reopening couldn’t come soon enough for the neighbors who stopped by to see Duong on her deck that April afternoon.

“West Stockbridge is so amazing,” Nguyen said. “We have to keep the shop going because… how can you close after 45 years? In this community there’s so much appreciation for the food and the shop, and the legacy my parents built.”

Out of Vietnam Gift Shop
3 Harris Street, West Stockbridge, MA
(413) 232-4204

Follow Truc Orient Express online for updates on seasonal opening date and hours of operation.