- [Dennis] When we were spitballing ideas for Di An Di,
we thought, you know, there's all this love
and care and attention for ramen,
how come we can't apply that same
love and care that you've seen other cultures do
with their soups, to the large catalog of Vietnamese soups?
- [Tuan] What we're trying to do here is
really take Vietnamese food to that next level where
the dishes here are from where we grew up eating
and then also where we traveled.
The menu is the latest of Vietnamese cuisine.
We just wanna duplicate and basically share to New Yorkers.
Dennis growing up in Houston
and myself growing up in Virginia,
there was a large Vietnamese community.
- I didn't realize how lucky we were
to grow up in these large Vietnamese populations.
Growing up, I really took it for granted,
having the access to all these great Vietnamese products
and all these great Vietnamese restaurants.
So moving here and being exposed to a community
that doesn't have a large Vietnamese population
made me really miss home.
We were really fortunate to have
a lot of these Vietnamese restaurants that
specialize in one particular soup or one particular dish.
We were just spoiled rotten by
how delicious some of these restaurants were
just because when you're able to specialize in one thing
you can really pour all your heart and soul into it.
There's a particular shop in Hanoi
that's doing a particular style of pho
that none of us had really experienced before.
It's cramped quarters, there's no service really.
You kinda have to bring your own bowl to your own table
and try to find your own seat.
It's worth the trip, worth the effort to eat there.
It really is one of the most delicious things I ate.
- [Tuan] A memorable experience, for sure.
- [Dennis] And it was just such a delicious bowl of pho,
it's something unique that I had not seen before,
and I knew that we had to bring that back.
- I'm getting hungry just listening to Dennis talk about it.
- [Dennis] It's the same structure of a pho.
You know, it's still a really flavorful beef broth.
You know, rice noodles, but they take the added step
of wok-searing their beef to add a little bit
of richness to the soup, so I kind of relate it to
like a Japanese tonkotsu, but the broth is very light.
They do this interesting thing where
they cut their scallions on a sharp bias,
which allows you to pick it up with your chopstick.
That way you get, kind of, the crunch.
They drop a poached egg in there,
so you break the egg and that adds
a lot more richness to it as well.
Fresh-cracked black pepper, which I wasn't really
accustomed to eating in pho either,
and that's something that we'd picked up,
and we try to do to all our soups.
Just those little touches, were really unique to me.
And I knew that we wanted to bring back
all that attention and detail that we experienced.
- And I haven't seen that iteration in the States,
I believe we're one of the first ones
to do the Pho Thin Ha Noi.
- [Dennis] There's, like, lots of
dry noodle soups in Vietnamese cuisine.
The first time I was exposed to it was
you know, growing up in Houston, there's a
Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Ga Somo,
but they specialize in chicken pho only,
and on the menu they have a dry style of chicken pho,
which is just a chicken pho, but
they add a sauce and they dress the noodles,
so it's almost kind of like a pasta.
And you get a cup of really delicious
chicken broth on the side, and there's really
no right or wrong way to eat it.
You can pour a little of the soup
inside the bowl if you'd like,
and kind of eat it like a traditional soup.
- [Tuan] The first time I had it, for me, it was an epiphany.
Houston is like 100 degrees during the summertime,
and I still crave noodles and pho,
so this was like the best of both worlds,
where I could have that dish, with my soup on the side.
- [Dennis] So with any of these sauces
that are rooted in tradition, it's very hard
to get somebody to tell you what it is,
so ours is very non-traditional,
but I think very equally as delicious.
We use some jasmine tea to add a little bit of
just lightness and fragrance to it,
a lot of dried shrimp, a lot of chili,
and it's more of, like a paste
than a sauce, that we coat our noodles in.
It's very reminiscent of the stuff that I ate at home,
but it is its own unique dish.
And I can't take credit for it either,
one of my chefs came up with it, so.
Our name's on the menu,
but it was his creation, not mine.
Rice paper, just being one of those staple ingredients
that every Vietnamese household has,
it's something you eat on a pretty regular basis.
One dish we do a grilled rice paper which we put on a grill,
and we kind of make like a pizza, or a quesadilla with it,
and it gets topped with egg, ground pork, scallions,
hot sauce, and some pickled serranos, and it ends up
looking like a pizza, it's a really beautiful dish.
It's something that is kind of a street snack
that we saw kids eating after school,
or after they went to see a movie.
It's always sold out on the streets.
Didn't really see it in restaurants ever.
- [Tuan] It originated in Da Lat,
which is like a central region.
- [Dennis] And you know we serve it here
on a really beautiful dish with
some scissors for guests to cut up, which is really fun,
but in Vietnam it's something that you just grab on the go,
you fold it up, kind of like a taco, and you just eat,
and it's really really tasty, really really crispy,
you get all, like the fat from the egg in there,
and then whatever meat's in there.
But that's one application of the rice paper.
The other rice paper is using it fresh,
where it's just dipped in water,
and used as like a summer roll, which I think
most people are accustomed to here,
and that's taking our banh xeo,
which is like a turmeric rice crepe,
adding a grilled sausage, which is a nem nuong,
and then putting some herbs, some cucumber,
wrapping it up, and making a roll with it.
I definitely didn't think that we were setting out to like,
let's figure out how many applications
we can use for rice paper, and I think
I was kind of surprised with how, oh man, we're really
utilizing every way that you can with rice paper here.
And I'm sure if we thought about it,
we could come with a million different
other ways to do it as well.
It's such a versatile ingredient,
and it's just, permeated all throughout our menu,
in different applications.
What we're seeing right now is,
there's starting to be a little bit of
a Vietnamese community here, which I think
we're really excited about--
- Which we're trying to build and cultivate--
- Yeah, you know we wanna be part of it.
We're seeing Vietnamese food, and all ethnic foods really,
being embraced right now in the media.
I think what you're seeing right now is
a lot of people just like Tuan and I,
wanting to share our culture, share our food.
You know, [we're] fortunate to know
all the Vietnamese restaurateurs here,
we talk about, there was this baseline
of Vietnamese restaurants that we've had here for a while,
and now you're starting to see that next generation of
restaurateurs really start to adopt
that same philosophy of trying to specialize,
and I think you're going to start seeing
a lot of that now, coming up here in New York.
As we get more and more attention on Vietnamese food,
I think you'll see a lot more people starting
to take chances, starting to take risks,
and starting to bring the stuff that they grew up eating,
and I think they're starting to
see a receptive audience here for that.
I'm really excited to see what happens next.