Six months after a devastating fire interrupted its original opening plans, Vietnamese restaurant Khue’s Kitchen is set to open today in South St. Anthony Park.
Chef Eric Pham has been operating the restaurant as a pop-up for several years, including a 14-month stint as the resident kitchen concept at Bar Brava in Minneapolis, and he was planning to open its first brick-and-mortar location last August in the former Ngon Bistro. But two weeks before opening day, the building was destroyed in an overnight fire.
Pham regrouped and, with a tip from chef Gavin Kaysen — under whom Pham had previously cooked at Spoon and Stable — Khue’s Kitchen has set up shop permanently at MidCity Kitchen, a shared commercial kitchen and event space in St. Paul.
“There’s been an incredible community behind me and supporting me,” Pham said. “The pop-ups, for me, can only last so long. There’s always been, and will always be, an underlying feeling that I need to do a restaurant.”
MidCity Kitchen will remain a shared-use commissary, but Pham said most tenants work in the mornings and don’t really use the dining room, leaving plenty of time and space for a dinnertime restaurant like Khue’s Kitchen.
And Pham is no stranger to the Twin Cities restaurant scene: His family runs Quang, a staple Vietnamese restaurant on Eat Street in Minneapolis. His grandmother launched the restaurant more than 30 years ago, and his mother, Khue Pham — after whom Khue’s Kitchen is named — is a chef there.
But Eric Pham did not grow up in the kitchen at Quang. Khue Pham and her siblings, most of whom were born in Vietnam and fled after the Vietnam War, wanted their children to pursue higher education and professional careers outside the restaurant. The kids could help with prep and run the cash register at Quang, but Eric Pham said his mother had forbidden him from working in the kitchen or pursuing a job in restaurants.
And initially, Eric Pham’s decision to leave accounting school and become a chef put a major strain on his and his mother’s relationship, he said.
Chefs Eric Pham, left, and his mother Khue Pham speak at a pop-up event for Eric Pham’s new restaurant Khue’s Kitchen in 2024. Khue Pham and her siblings run Minneapolis Vietnamese staple Quang. (Courtesy of Eric Pham)
“Emotions were very high, and I wasn’t talking to my mom a year ago,” he said. “Now she’s seen that I can be successful and manage it, and she’s more supportive now than ever. But the moment I dropped out of college, she said, was the worst day of her life.”
Since then, though, the restaurant’s namesake has been central in helping her son refine his recipes and menus, Eric Pham said. The menu at Khue’s Kitchen is a mix of popular dishes from the pop-ups — including the super-popular fried chicken sandwich — and dishes that were harder to pull off in those impromptu settings, like roast pork with a fish sauce vinaigrette. Eric Pham is also planning a number of hearty vegetable-forward and vegetarian dishes.
As a Vietnamese-American, Eric Pham said his relationship with Vietnamese culture is different from that of his parents who were born there, and the food reflects both cultures. His mom often finds American food to be too greasy, he said, and when he was figuring out a Vietnamese twist on a fried chicken sandwich, he told her he’d only put it on the menu if she personally enjoyed it.
“Without my mom, I would not be cooking,” he said. “This is me championing their upbringing through my hands. These are some dishes that my mom, my grandma created and served us — and you’re going to get some American things that weren’t (traditional) but I think taste really good.”
Khue’s Kitchen: open 4:30 to 9:30 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays at MidCity Kitchen; 693 Raymond Ave. Online at khueskitchen.com and on Instagram at @khueskitchen.
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