Thierry and Tina Mounon have spent fifteen years building La Villa into Saigon’s most beloved fine-dining destination. The French restaurant in Thao Dien has evolved from modest beginnings into what the couple now calls “quiet luxury” – refined without ostentation, elegant without pretension. And so, fifteen years on, a color scheme that’s graduated from romantic pink to grown-up green, and a staff roster that’s barely changed since day one, Thierry and Tina reflect on all the little things that have happened from 2010 to right now.
So much has happened. All in this same space with its verdant garden and swimming pool outside, and with its sweeping staircase and illustrious, chattering cheese trolley inside. So many things, in fact, that Thierry and Tina are struggling to pick out the specific moments that stand-out.
“Actually, it’s the accumulation of little things,” Chef Thierry Mounon says. Subtle shifts and small moments. Like La Villa’s DNA evolving from a French restaurant into a fine-dining destination, guests celebrating special occasions, team members joining or leaving.
Since The Beginning
There haven’t been many of the latter, though. Most of the key members of La Villa’s team have been here since the beginning. “Mr Duc, our sous chef. Mr Huy, our pastry chef – who’s my brother – Mrs Phuc, our senior restaurant manager, Mrs Thuan, our senior sous chef – and she’s married to our sommelier, Mr Ton – they’ve all been here from the beginning,” Tina remembers. “All our key team members have been here for a long time,” Thierry agrees.
They stick around to be part of the daily reinvention of this restaurant that Thierry and Tina created, initially, as the kind of place they’d like to go. “We made La Villa to be the kind of restaurant Thierry and I love,” Tina says. The unassuming couple avoid noisy venues. Places crowded with people they might know. Anywhere trendy. “We like somewhere we can talk,” Tina nods. “Where we love the chef, the food, the ambience.”
Refined without ostentation. Elegant without pretension.
That’s why guests seek out their restaurant on Ngo Quang Huy in Thao Dien. It’s the large villa behind the gates on the right as you turn down from Quoc Huong Street.
There’s a fifty-year-old olive tree in the garden. Like the restaurant, it has deep roots and signifies the kind of warm welcome you’ll get inside. There’s a hush here, unlike the noise from the chaotic city streets of Thao Dien. “And perhaps there’ll be the scent of fresh bread in the air,” Thierry says. “Or the aromas of stock simmering.”
Tina, a self-confessed “countryside girl,” worked in sales and marketing in Saigon for Princess D’Annam Resort & Spa in Ke Ga Bay. “Great seafood – we still source a lot from there,” Thierry interrupts, mind always on produce. “A lot of our staff too.”
Thierry was Director of F&B at Princess D’Annam. When he suggested they open their own restaurant, Tina agreed – not knowing anything about running a restaurant or French cuisine.
As an introduction, he took her to La Fourchette, a well-known French restaurant in downtown District 1 at the time (that’s since closed). He ordered classic dishes – things like foie gras. “And I started to try and I started to listen,” Tina says, “and I started to love it.”
Invest In What’s Needed, Save The Rest
So they opened with a limited budget, and “our four hands, investing in what we really needed and saving the rest.” Their ambitions were as modest as their budget. They wanted to create a restaurant with good food. “And we improved and improved every day” until they embraced the tag of fine dining, and eventually the term ‘quiet luxury’ they’ve settled on today.
“I still remember the first three or four years,” Tina frowns. “I’d wake up in the night, thinking of any bad comment we’d had. It was scary, you know?” Thierry would calmly instruct her to ignore the personal ones. “If people don’t like it, personally, you can’t help it,” he’d tell her. And he’d remind her to focus on any comments on the quality of food, or the performance of the team, or if they’d been unfavorably compared to another restaurant. “That way it helped us to get a bit better every day,” Tina smiles.
After all, every day is a new day. “The thing is to never give up – every day is a new fight too. As any company, you have problems and you need to find solutions,” she nods.
The Real Quiet Luxury
Thierry is from Avignon, in Provence, in the South of France, “a beautiful medieval city, famous for the Palais des Papes, its theatre festival every July, and as the inspiration for lots of impressionist artists like Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne.”
After 18 years in Vietnam and 15 at La Villa, he still misses the seasons in Avignon. He calls it the real quiet luxury. “When you walk in the forest in autumn there, you feel like everything has its place.” He pauses. “What grows together goes together, right? Probably true for people too.” Then he stops himself. “No, that can’t be true – not in mine and Tina’s case anyway!” he laughs.
But that Provençal sensibility – what grows together goes together – still guides his approach to food.
La Villa Saigon: Sticking Around, Evolving Subtly
The menu at La Villa Saigon, which follows the seasons regardless of the city’s eternal sunshine, is led by the best produce Thierry can find – whether seafood from Phan Thiet, Hokkaido scallops, Alaskan crab or Brittany lobsters; beef from Satsuma, or cheese from Les Frères Marchand in France.
Some dishes stick around, often evolving subtly – like the lobster that he now makes in a more Provençal style, or the pithivier that they’ve started making with pigeon rather than duck this autumn – before Thierry takes them off the menu entirely, just to keep that spirit of reinvention alive. “Sometimes you feel that it’s time to take a dish off the menu, even though it’s very good,” he shrugs.
Thierry doesn’t do many collaborations – a source of inspiration for lots of other chefs. They rarely even dine out much these days. After all, they have three kids now, and two restaurants: La Villa and the breezier bistro-style La Fontaine, both in Saigon’s Thao Dien area.
So, all these innovations come in-house.
A Little Bit Old School
“Maybe I’m a bit old school about inspiration,” he smiles. “To me, a restaurant is a place where you come to discover the chef’s creativity, their dishes, their interpretations of a product. We try to focus on our own identity. I have my taste. I have the products I like. I like to bring people into that.”
Doing lots of collaborations, he feels, might just confuse the message.
“Creativity is a tricky thing though,” Thierry muses. “Sometimes you’re scared of not being creative enough. It’s what keeps you alive. We need to do new things.”
The restaurant itself keeps changing too. Thierry points out the plates they’ve hand-carried back this summer and the satisfyingly sumptuous new chairs, all in a lighter, brighter color scheme.
The pink color of the logo and the signage outside has been tuned out in favor of a timeless green. “Look, I was 23 years old when we opened and I was in love with the color pink!” Tina tells us unapologetically. “Pink is something romantic. It’s for couples. It’s for love. We opened a restaurant because of love.”
Now, the color scheme is very simple, classic and natural. “Quiet luxury should be simple, so now we stick to green.”
The Joy Of 15 Years Of La Villa Saigon
It’s maybe a small thing. But, like Thierry says, the joy of these 15 years of hard work, sleepless nights, and constantly striving to be better, is the accumulation of those little things. “It could be a laugh in the kitchen. It could be a very satisfied customer. The birth of one of our kids – who are a part of the restaurant as well. Staff coming. Staff going. This interview as well. Some awards that we may have…”
“The accumulation of little things,” Tina nods, tearing up a bit.
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