Top Chef Hung Huynh Has the ‘Most Amazing Chinese Meal Ever’Last season’s Top Chef winner Hung Huynh, who previously cooked at Per Se, Gilt, Manhattan Ocean Club, and others, is back from a year and a half at Guy Savoy in Las Vegas — this week he started as executive chef at Solo. The Mediterranean-Asian restaurant happens to be kosher, meaning Huynh can’t use his beloved fish sauce or sherry vinegar. “I’m pretty limited to proteins,” he tells us. “I have to be a little bit more creative with my flavor profiles.” If Padma and Tom paid a visit, he says, he’d probably serve them his sweetbreads glazed with truffles and served with lemon-honey carrots. But forget what he’s cooking; we’re more interested in what he ate this week.
Openings
Saju Just Sneaked Into Midtown
While no one was looking, New York just got another high-end Vietnamese restaurant in Saju, at the Hotel Mela. The place is in what could loosely be called soft-opening mode, largely because they are still ten days away from a liquor license and are still BYOB. But the food, mostly classical versions of Vietnamese dishes, shows the kind of French influence that comes from colonial occupation, rather than “fusion cooking” per se. (The fact that a Frenchman, Osteria al Doge’s Phillipe Bernard, is a co-owner underscores its Gallic pedigree.)
NewsFeed
100 Students to Protest Saigon Grill
Update, 6:14 p.m.: Sit-in ends after 45 minutes, with the NYPD ordering protestors out of the Vietnamese eatery. Jamie Chen, who we spoke with earlier, tells us that she and her fellow students took over most of the tables on first floor. There were no arrests. The protestors joined noisy demonstrators outside, chanting “Boycott Saigon Grill.”
Update, 5:49 p.m.: Students, many wearing red, have taken over a number of tables inside the restaurant while television cameras whir.
In a planned demonstration reminiscent of sixties campus radicalism, at least 100 students citywide are expected to stage a protest shortly after 5 p.m. today in front of the trendy Saigon Grill on University Place. The demonstration is a statement against the lockout of some 33 delivery workers who refused to sign in March what they claimed was an illegal contract from owner Simon Nget, a Chinese-Cambodian refugee who also runs an Upper West Side Asian eatery by the same name. The protest is “definitely student generated and initiated,” says Jamie Chen, 20, a Columbia student reached during finals. She says her fellow activist Christina Chen,19, held a teach-in at Columbia’s Hamilton Hall a couple of weeks ago “to talk about the abuses” at the restaurant “and a lot of people want to do something about it.”
In the Magazine
This Week: Contents Under PressureThis week’s food section is all about pressure: A pastry chef has to cook every night for a president who hates pineapples and will send him packing at the first hint of progressive dessert-making; Vinh Nguyen, a first generation Vietnamese-American, rolls the dice with his Williamsburg restaurant Silent H, and, as far as Rob and Robin are concerned, comes up lucky seven; Jeffrey Chodorow, fresh off his battle with Frank Bruni and Adam Platt, opens a big new restaurant and hopes for the best; and four new restaurants open, surely hoping for the best as well. Even this week’s In Season is rife with tension, calling as it does for a delicate filleting operation that could easily destroy a beautifully roasted flounder. The New York food world is not for the faint of heart.
Openings
Boi to Go Brings Bánh Mì and More to Turtle BayThe Underground Gourmet is among New York’s fiercest bánh mì fans, and they welcomed Boi to Go, a new Turtle Bay Vietnamese sandwich shop, in this week’s Openings. The restaurant is sleek, neat, and casual; you can check out the menu (the latest addition to our vast database) here.
Boi to Go menu [Menus]
Openings [NYM]
Openings
Silent H Not Deaf to New York’s Pleas for Vietnamese“I don’t miss anything about California except Mexican food and Vietnamese food,” says Vinh Nguyen, a onetime UCLA premed who fell into the hospitality business as a bar back at Santa Monica’s legendary Father’s Office. Since moving east three years ago, Nguyen has found New York’s Vietnamese options sorely lacking, especially when compared to the home cooking of his mother, an immigrant who left school at 9 to sell street food in Hue. The problem, as he sees it, is laundry-list menus that are too hit-or-miss, combined with “atmospheres” defined by single-white-napkin dispensers and dirty bathrooms.
Openings
Bánh Mì, Oh, My: New Shop Challenges the Greats
It takes chutzpa to open up a báhn mì shop around the corner from the beloved Bánh Mì Saigon (not to mention Viet-Nam Banh Mi, which is a couple of blocks down), but newcomer Paris Sandwich is clearly hoping to one-up those cramped storefront operations — the restaurant has a clean, spacious, bright-yellow interior adorned with Fodor’s-worthy photos of the City of Light. Despite the chainlike setup (a “fast food” portion of the menu offers comfort dishes like a pork chop on rice and roti-style chicken accompanied by bread and dipping curry), owner Jimmy Ly’s own mother, Kim Phung, oversees a kitchen that bakes crispy, skinny baguettes for twelve types of Vietnamese sandwiches — everything from the usual pork-roll-and-liver-pâté variety to a faux-chicken version made with gluten. Ly also prides himself on the fact that his desserts — Vietnamese flan, green-tea waffles, and the like — are made on the premises and that the coffee beans were chosen only after he and his dad did some extensive research in the homeland. Sounds bon to us. — Daniel MaurerParis Sandwich, 113 Mott St., nr. Canal St.; 212-226-7221
What to Eat Tonight
Yes, Soup for You!
Last week we lamented the freakishly warm weather’s impact on the availability (and desirability) of cassoulet. Now that New York has finally hit a cold pocket, we’re taking the opportunity to recommend three soups that are the culinary equivalent of kicking back by a roaring fire. fire.
Openings
Michael Bao Huynh’s Vietnamese to be Taken to the Next LevelGood news for Bao 111 fans: Chef Michael Bao Huynh is opening Mai House, a much bigger, more ambitious restaurant, backed by the Myriad Restaurants Group (Nobu, Tribeca Grill, et al). He’ll be cooking straight-up Vietnamese food, but whatever it lacks in fusion flash, we’re betting will be made up for by the guy’s way with flavor. And the 4,500-square-foot, 120-seat space sounds like it’ll be lovely, with “hand-carved wood fixtures from Vietnam, crushed sunflower-seed walls, Zebrawood banquettes, a mother-of-pearl and bamboo butcher-block bar and Vietnamese lotus flower light fixtures,” according to the Myriad Group. It should open at the end of the month.
186 Franklin St., nr. Greenwich St.; 212-431-0606.
