Chom Chom graduate opens his own Vietnamese restaurant, Xuan, in Hong Kong

Vietnamese-American chef John Nguyen was cooking French and Italian food in Michelin-starred restaurants when he decided to cook Vietnamese food instead
He trained in Vietnamese restaurants in the US, then joined Chom Chom in Hong Kong. Now he’s opened Xuan, where he gives some of the dishes a modern twist

Food and Drinks

Bernice Chanin Vancouver

Published: 12:45pm, 4 Jul 2020

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In the past few years Hong Kong has seen Vietnamese food gain in popularity thanks to restaurants that have modernised the cuisine, such as Chom Chom, Viet Kitchen and its successor Moi Moi by Luke Nguyen, Nhau, and now Xuan, helmed by Vietnamese-American chef John Nguyen.

The restaurant’s name is pronounced ‘sung’, and Nguyen says it has two meanings: seasons, and the name of a 17th century female Vietnamese poet called Ho Xuan Huong; it was rare at the time for women to be educated and live independently. Her femininity and bold spirit inspire Nguyen, 45, in the kitchen.

Dishes served at Xuan include braised beef tongue salad, crispy spring rolls with grouper and crab, and chicken rice. But Nguyen’s hands-down favourite is the 24-hour beef broth, topped with slices of Angus prime rib, braised beef tongue and oxtail, and served with deep-fried dough sticks, pickled garlic and house-made chilli sauce.

“When I say 24 hours, I cook it for 24 hours. You can see the difference in my broth compared to anyone else. I learned you can't cheat on a good broth; after six hours the bone hasn't had enough time to enhance the flavour of the broth,” says Nguyen.

Braised beef tongue salad at Xuan. Photo: Xuan

The recipe for the broth that uses oxtail came from his mother. When he was younger, Nguyen didn't think much of Vietnamese food – to him it was hardly on par with Western cuisines that were rated with Michelin stars.

Like chefs Peter Cuong Franklin, who opened Viet Kitchen for about a year before moving to Ho Chi Minh City, and Nhau's Que Vinh Dang, Nguyen was also trained in French and Italian cuisines, and worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in Los Angeles and New York. But a fateful trip to Mexico City 10 years ago made Nguyen realise cooking the food of his homeland was his calling.

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“I ate at Pujol [ranked 12th on the 50 World's Best Restaurants 2019 list] and I thought the food was amazing. Then my mind started thinking, you know, I could do this to Vietnamese food,” he recalls.

Nguyen returned to Los Angeles and announced to his father he would stop cooking Italian and French food and would instead focus on Vietnamese food.

He worked at The District by Hannah An, a Vietnamese restaurant in West Hollywood where an elderly woman came in a few times a week to teach him a few dishes; he replicated them, and added his own twist.

Nguyen opened Hanoi House in New York in 2017.

In 2017, he opened Hanoi House in New York, with a menu of traditional and modern dishes, where they charged as much as US$50 for a bowl of pho.

Towards the end of 2018 he came to Hong Kong to work at Chom Chom. “I came here so that I could go to Vietnam once a month, sometimes with my boss, sometimes on my own and go to different places,” Nguyen says.

He left Chom Chom after a year and had planned to go to Ho Chi Minh City to work, but the coronavirus pandemic put an end to that. As a result, Nguyen had to look for a job in Hong Kong, and landed one with the restaurant group that is behind restaurant chains Nha Trang and Bep.

At Xuan, Nguyen reinterprets Vietnamese cuisine; some of the dishes are traditional, others have a modern twist. He aims to use local ingredients as much as possible, such as yellow chicken for the chicken pho, and seafood such as grouper and crab to replace the filling in typical pork fried rolls. In a nod to sustainability, Nguyen uses every part of the animal, including chicken skin that is made into a cracker served with chicken paté.

Set lunches start at HK$158, while dinner will feature nine small dishes, like tapas, of whatever fresh ingredients Nguyen finds in the market, as well as à la carte items. Aside from the signature beef prime rib pho (HK$138), diners can elevate their pho experience with side dishes such as roasted beef bone marrow, fresh farm egg, chicken heart, chicken liver, or crispy chicken skin.

There's also a chicken pho (HK$128), the broth very flavourful and with chunks of chicken meat and rice vermicelli. Banh xeo, a large savoury pancake, gets a makeover, being served black thanks to the use of squid ink.

It was a meal in Mexico City that got John Nguyen thinking he should be cooking Vietnamese food. Photo: Shutterstock

There is a braised beef tongue salad (HK$118), for which the meat is slow cooked for 12 hours, and accompanied by thinly sliced green mango, carrots, and chunks of pomelo and fresh herbs with a citrus dressing.

Nguyen hopes that, through his cooking, diners will discover more about Vietnamese cuisine.

“The most important thing is for you to keep trying new Vietnamese food. There's so much more than soup or sandwiches,” he says.

18 Lun Fat Street, Wan Chai, tel: 2891 1177

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Chef goes back to his Vietnamese roots

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