Water Damage Restoration in Madison Heights, MI

MADISON HEIGHTS — The city of Madison Heights is home to many Asian-American businesses. To celebrate the fact, the city’s Human Relations and Equity Commission is planning a lantern festival where attendees can enjoy authentic Asian food, music and dance.

The free event is called Paradise Eve, and will take place from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, May 31 near the bandshell at Civic Center Park, 360 W. 13 Mile Road.

The HREC is partnering with Dasian Media and 168 Group, lining up live performers, food vendors and more that fit the theme.

The HREC is also fundraising for the event. Madison Heights City Councilman Quinn Wright serves as the council representative for the HREC. He said sponsors are needed and that sponsorships can be arranged by emailing quinnwright@madison-heights.org.

“We’re looking for sponsors for the lanterns themselves,” Wright said. “We would like the big lanterns, but there might only be the smaller ones, because of the costs of tariffs and shipping.”

He explained that the lanterns are usually made of paper material and vary in size and shape. Attendees will be able to build and customize smaller lanterns with battery-powered lights, which they can place on a stage for all to see. They can then take their lantern home at the end of the evening.

The large lanterns, meanwhile, could reach sizes comparable to a refrigerator or small car, he said. Those would be preassembled by organizers and set up around the venue for ambiance.

As for the live entertainment, there will be a DJ playing K-pop and J-pop hits, as well as traditional Chinese performers. Food and drink will run the gamut of Asian-Pacific culture, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and more.

But the lanterns will likely be the highlight, he said.

“We want ones that the kids can put together so they can familiarize themselves with the culture by making them firsthand,” Wright said. “The plan is to have some space erected where we can display them and share them with the community. There will be several styles, and everyone will have the opportunity to make them their own by coloring them, or the way they assemble them.”

Wright and the HREC also spearheaded the event “Rev’n in the Heights,” which made its debut last year and will return to Civic Center Plaza this year on Sept. 13. That event celebrates culture in another way, bringing people together over their shared love of cars and cooking.

The event features unique and exotic cars lined up in the parking lot. Chefs square off in a juried barbecue competition, while guests enjoy something to eat and drinks from local food trucks.

“It was such a success,” Wright said. “Rather than going in blind and trying to figure it out ourselves, we partnered with local car enthusiasts and small business owners to make it possible. It’s the same idea with this lantern festival, partnering with Dasian Media and 168 Group.”

As for the HREC, its mission remains the same.

“We want to make the city a more inclusive place — not only in its programming, but also in its policy,” Wright said. “To be inclusive means to consider all of our residents with particular needs. This could include making sure our policies are inclusive of their culture, or their disability, or their identity. We want to make sure we’re being intentionally inclusive, and that we’re not being unintentionally exclusive.”

This approach can be seen in an upcoming project by the HREC, where special boards will be installed at local parks. The boards feature illustrations and phrases that help nonverbal or less verbal individuals to express themselves. They can point to the elements of the board to communicate their thoughts and feelings in a way that’s more comfortable for them.

“We’re looking at ways we can be more compliant with (the Americans with Disabilities Act), and also more inclusive with it,” Wright said. “So not just meeting the standard, but going above and beyond. We want to meet the needs of all our citizens.”

Emily Rohrbach is another member of the Madison Heights City Council. She serves as the council alternate for the HREC.

“This lantern festival will bring us all together to celebrate Asian-American culture through food and dance and music and light. People always say, ‘Oh, Madison Heights has my favorite Thai restaurant,’ and ‘Oh, I love the Vietnamese restaurants there.’ So this acknowledges that, and celebrates how we’re an important place for their communities here in southeast Michigan,” Rohrbach said. “It’s really just a very special opportunity for our city.”

With a new home, this long-standing grocery store is the heart of metro Detroit’s Vietnamese American community

By Tony Vu

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Fifty years ago, Saigon fell — and with it, the world shifted for millions of Vietnamese families.

What followed wasn’t just exile. It was a resurrection, drawn from the grit and determination of a people who had lost everything but their own lives. From the ruins of war came everyday efforts to hold onto something sacred in a foreign land: bowls of steaming hot pho in cold Midwest kitchens, backyard herb gardens seeded from memory, and pantries stocked with the faint smell of a faraway home. In metro Detroit, these acts of preservation were made possible by places like Kim Nhung Superfood, the heartbeat of a community that refused to forget where they came from, even as they learned how to survive somewhere entirely new.

For decades, the Madison Heights business has been more than just a grocery store. It’s been a cultural beacon and gathering place for generations of Vietnamese families across Michigan. When Hang Phonrath and her family took over Kim Nhung Superfood in 2007, they were unknowingly stepping into a legacy — one built out of necessity, resilience, and a deep love for the taste of home.

That legacy began decades earlier in Garden City, Kansas, a town best known for meatpacking plants powered by its immigrant workforce. Long before Phonrath took over, it was her aunt and uncle, Kim Le and George Nguyen, who built the region’s only Asian grocery store. It became a magnet for Vietnamese workers from all over Kansas. “People from Topeka, Wichita — they’d drive hours just to get their groceries there,” Phonrath recalls.

Eventually, the family moved north to Michigan and brought the store with them. They named it after the two girls in the family: Phonrath’s aunt, Kim, and her daughter, Nhung. And like its Kansas predecessor, Kim Nhung Superfood quickly became more than just a place to buy rice noodles and rau răm in a region without a formal “Little Saigon.”

Courtesy photo

“You always heard people say, ‘Let’s go to Chợ Việt,’” Phonrath says, using the phrase for the ‘market’ that is central to Vietnamese life. “Then one day, we realized — Kim Nhung is Chợ Việt.”

Phonrath hadn’t planned on running a market. She grew up in Colorado, where her entrepreneurial parents, Ba and Điệp Le, ran a lawn service and once owned a restaurant. At the time her aunt and uncle offered to sell the business, Phonrath was running a nail salon. But something in the timing felt right. “I was 29,” she says. “We thought, ‘What do we have to lose?’”

So they packed up and moved to Michigan — and stepped into something much bigger than they expected.

Phonrath and her siblings didn’t just keep the store alive. They helped it evolve. Tapping into suppliers in L.A., Houston, and Florida, they expanded product offerings and made sure their community didn’t have to hop on a plane to find the flavors of home. “We wanted to make sure people here weren’t limited by what they could get in the Midwest,” Phonrath says. “We brought what we knew.”

But it wasn’t the variety that made Kim Nhung indispensable. It was the people.

Customers brought in mail for translation. Dropped off packages. Shared stories. Leaned on the store for far more than groceries. “We were the middlemen for everything,” Phonrath laughs. “It was more than a business. We became part of people’s lives.”

And sometimes, those lives would cross in unexpected ways. “I remember a moment when two elderly friends ran into each other in the aisles and exclaimed, ‘Oh my god, I haven’t seen you in ten years!’” Phonrath says. “And I’d be standing there thinking, I see you both every week — but they just kept missing each other. This place brought people back together.”

And now, that spirit has only grown — along with the store itself.

The new Kim Nhung Superfood opened in April just down the road, in a space at 29411 John R Rd. originally slated for Amazon Fresh. Now, it’s something far more meaningful: 25,000 square feet of market space, a fresh seafood section, a bakery, and a beer and wine license. What’s coming next is a 10,000-square-foot food court with seven independent vendor stalls. Each will spotlight a different culinary tradition, turning the market into a full-blown cultural destination.

“We want this to be a place where people feel welcome — where they can explore,” Phonrath says. “Not just Vietnamese people, but everyone. We want this to be your neighborhood grocery store, where you can also learn and celebrate.”

She’s even considering keeping one of the stalls open as a flexible space — for chef demos, pop-ups, or first-time food entrepreneurs. Something that could double as a launchpad and incubator. “There’s so much potential,” she says. “We just need to make it accessible.”

That idea — that food can be both a tool and a bridge — isn’t new. But in the hands of Vietnamese refugees and their children, it becomes something deeply rooted and radically resilient. It’s survival, turned into flavor. Memories, served hot.

I know that firsthand. As a kid, I grew up making hour-long drives from the tiny farm town of Millington to Kim Nhung with my family. For us, it wasn’t just a shopping trip — it was a pilgrimage in a big station wagon powered by dried squid and Pocky sticks. My mom’s face would light up the moment we walked through the doors. She knew exactly which herbs to pick through for each dish and which brands of rice paper and noodles she trusted. She was in her element, the air buzzing like birdsong, reveling in the weekly opportunity to be unapologetically Vietnamese at Chợ Việt. For me, it was where the seeds of belonging were planted.

That sense of connection wasn’t just mine.

Mythy Huynh, a chef and food creator known as @mightyinthemitten, found herself in Kim Nhung after moving to Michigan from California. In a place where she often felt like the only Asian person in the room, Kim Nhung became her tether to home.

“I didn’t know where to find my community when I moved here,” she says. “In California, it’s everywhere — you don’t have to search for it. Here, it was like searching for a piece of myself,” she adds. “It reminded me of the tiny Vietnamese-Chinese market across from my elementary school in Northridge. The owner used to slip me coconut buns after school. Walking into Kim Nhung felt like stepping into that same kind of love and familiarity with tight aisles, fresh herbs, and the auntie at the register that knows your name.”

Courtesy photo

Huynh eventually deepened her ties by holding pop-ups, hosting dumpling classes, and sharing her love for Vietnamese cooking with others from the aisles of flavors she grew up with.

For her, the store wasn’t just about stocking up on pantry essentials. It was about reclaiming a sense of belonging — about finding a place where the smells, the sounds, and even the small talk felt like home.

Today, as a chef and founder of MaMang in Flint and The Good Bowl in Traverse City, I can trace everything I do back to those early trips to Kim Nhung. It gave my mom — and eventually me — the tools to keep our culture alive. Through her food, I found my purpose. I’ve spent my life carving out spaces where food tells our stories, where tradition becomes menu, and where identity is something you can taste and fight for. Without places like Kim Nhung, a whole generation’s memories could’ve been swallowed by everything we lost.

Thankfully they weren’t, and the story keeps unfolding.

Phonrath’s daughter now runs the front of the store: a new generation, holding down the register, greeting aunties and uncles with the same warmth we grew up with. There’s a young woman working the cash wrap who was literally in the womb when her mother used to shop there pregnant. There are teenagers stocking shelves who once came in on strollers.

That’s legacy.

That’s survival.

That’s home.

April 30 marked 50 years since the fall of Saigon. It’s a heavy anniversary — one that weighs on every Vietnamese American household. For many, it was a tragic end. For those who made it to places like Madison Heights, it was a lifeline, and the opportunity to make it mean something.

“We want to give the next generation something to be proud of,” Phonrath tells me. “This store — it’s not just ours. It’s everyone’s.”

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She’s right. What they’ve built was more than shelves and stocked produce. It was a north star — quietly guiding a scattered community home.

Over time, it became a cultural anchor. A launchpad. A community stronghold where memory and identity live, breathe, and grow. Where kids like me could feel connected to something bigger. And where now, as an adult, I can say thank you — not just for the groceries, but for the life, the flavors, and the future they helped make possible.

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Residents in Madison Heights, Michigan are expressing displeasure with one of their neighbors who has erected a sign on her property that calls President Donald Trump a "d---less rapist."

Fox 2 Detroit reports that the Madison Heights woman in question, who does not wish to be identified for fears of physical retribution, isn't backing down from displaying her obscene anti-Trump sign despite objections from the neighborhood.

The local news station quotes one of the woman's neighbors who expressed concern about children in the area seeing the profane attack on the president.

"Everybody’s like shocked and disgusted about it," they said. "Not obviously everybody feels the same way that she does. But why is she allowed to portray this horrible opinion in view of children?"

ALSO READ: 'Bobblehead' Rubio is 'setting a land speed record for making himself irrelevant': analyst

The woman, however, points out that Trump and his followers use obscene language with children present all the time.

"Trump supporters had signs that literally said F--- Biden," she pointed out. "That language was out there in front of all these children. That’s a curse word. Why were they not upset with that?"

While neighbors may object to the contents of the sign, it is true that Trump last year was found liable by a jury for sexual abuse and defamation against author E. Jean Carroll. Additionally, dozens of other women over several years have accused the president of sexual misconduct.