Group Final Project Proposal
After an extensive research study on the Vietnamese American community, our group has decided to continue an in depth study on two communities--specifically in San Jose and San Francisco. We have narrowed our study into studying one of the many businesses--the restaurant business, which has helped shape the Vietnamese as they developed the communities of San Jose and San Francisco. We will look at four established restaurants in each of the communities. Specifically, the restaurants we choose to study in San Jose are Pho Hoa and Vung Tau. We chose Pho Tau because this restaurant is a part of a large franchise of restaurants around the world. This restaurant was started in San Jose which would be good to analyze and conduct an interview with the owner. Also, Vung Tau is acknowledged as one of the best Vietnamese restaurants. In San Francisco, we will look at the restaurant, Anh Hong which we already ate at, so we will make a critique on it. And lastly, we will look at one of the San Francisco based "Pho Hoa" and make comparisons with the one in San Jose. At the end, we will compare and contrast those restaurant businesses in San Jose with those in San Francisco.
The reasons why we chose to study the Vietnamese American restaurant business was because we felt that this form of business was an example of one of the ethnic enterprises that helped shape the Vietnamese as they settled into America. Recalling to our midterm project, we covered the community development and accomplishments of the Vietnamese Americans. One being the success of the restaurant business as it stands as being the second largest Vietnamese American enterprise with 2010 restaurants in the US. What we hope to find is that the Vietnamese restaurants are better than the San Francisco restaurants. The reason why is because there is an actual Vietnamese community in San Jose and none in San Francisco. Therefore, a Vietnamese community will have a better knowledge of their own food and its presentation.
To conduct our study, we will first do some preliminary work before visiting both sites. Jeanne and Regina will talk to Professor Chung on November 4 and ask him if he knows of the restaurants we chose to visit and if he knows of any of the owners he recommends we conduct interviews with. The rest of us will search the World Wide Web and San Jose phone books to find information on the restaurants that we choose to study. In addition, we will find some background information about each restaurant. Lastly, we will have some sample guideline questions to ask which include:
All group members will visit the two communities in one day on November 8. At the sites, we will each sample a wide variety of their food and each will give it a critique on a 1 to 5 star scale. Also, we will rank the service and cleanliness (1-bad, 5-excellent). We will conduct our interviews following our sample guideline. Lastly, we will take photographs of each site.
Upon completion of our studies on the Vietnamese American restaurant business in San Jose and San Francisco, we hope to compile an honest critique of Vietnamese cuisine in the Bay Area to be viewed on the WWW. In addition, we would like to honor the hard work the Vietnamese Americans have put into their restaurant businesses.
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