Tranquility envelops Executive Chef Nghiêm Minh Đức as he gracefully orchestrates the evening’s experience at Nous Dine. The meticulously crafted courses, each designed with a purpose, unfold like verses of poetry, unveiling layers of narrative much like quietly-spoken Đức himself, once you get to know him.
Đọc bài viết bằng Tiếng Việt
The sense of calm is important. Nous Dine offers Saigon’s most intimate dining experience – only ten seats set around an L-shaped counter within touching distance of the Nous Dine team. They call it ‘capsule dining,’ inspired by Japanese capsule hotels.
An Intense Immersion Into The Industry
It’s a world away – both geographically and temperamentally – from Đức’s intense immersion into the industry, when he was juggling two jobs on an extended Australian visa after graduating in dental technology in Melbourne, “wearing a lab coat in the daytime and a chef’s apron in the evenings.”
At Purple Peanuts, he worked under Chef Daigo Nakai, an obsessive, perfectionist Japanese chef, as Đức remembers him.
He made Đức’s life hard – a typical schooling in the kitchen with the occasional hurled insult, or even a hurled tray of burnt onigiri – while also nurturing his talent, promoting him from the cold station to the hot station, and soon to the position of sous chef, as his right hand man.
“By then, I’d realized a lot of things,” Đức remembers. “I could not only cook, but I could also manage the team – who could be extremely stubborn and rebellious.”
By the time Daigo left to work in Germany, Đức realized his future was in restaurants. And, as a sign of the bond between them, Daigo, who was also a musician, left Đức his sound system and his collection of beloved vinyl records.
The Intimate Nous Dine Room Allows For Extra Responsiveness
Later, Đức worked at Michelin-starred chef Nobuya Matsuhisa’s Nobu, and the way of serving Japanese omakase menus around a counter is similar to how they do things at Nous Dine.
“In terms of the space and interaction with guests there are similarities,” Đức smiles, looking around the small dining room. “I love to converse with guests and the cozy set-up allows us to be very responsive. I can adjust the pacing of the courses easily, and I can even customize the portion size for each person if they’ve eaten the previous one quickly, or slowly.”
Moving On
Of course, the set-up provides some constraints too. The place needs to be immaculate – not always easy in a crumbling old apartment building like the one Nous Dine is in at 42 Ly Tu Trong – and the preparation needs to be on-point. “You can’t be hopping around like monkeys looking for things while the guests watch on,” Đức says, shaking his head.
In the period since he joined, they’ve fine-tuned their communication in the kitchen too. “It’s very succinct now,” Đức laughs. “‘Dishcloth.’ ‘How much longer for the lamb?’ ‘Bring out the sauce!’ and so on.
However, shortly Nous Dine will move to another location, spreading its wings while retaining the positive aspects of this first up-close-and-personal space. Here, the overzealous apartment building’s security insists on closing the gate at 10:30PM, which means Nous Dine can only offer one sitting that begins at 7PM six nights per week.
The new space, at 123 Le Loi Street, District 1 will be three times bigger. Inside, there’ll be two spaces – one, a capsule dining restaurant much like the one we’re in now, and an all-day-dining style restaurant next door. “In terms of dining experience and culinary philosophy, it will remain unchanged,” Đức assures us.
Happily Ever After
The penultimate menu before they move, the wedding-themed ‘Happily Ever After’ was perhaps the most fully realized one yet – conceptual with lots of rye observations, combining hard-to-find local ingredients paired with the best international produce.
“Humor and playfulness are important to us,” Đức asserts, reminding us of the times, during previous menus, they let guests cook their own beef for a mini banh mi or then they played snippets of Christmas movies during last year’s ‘Movie Marathon’ menu.
“For me, laughter is an essential ingredient that makes a meal delicious and memorable.”
An Egalitarian Approach To Developing The Menus
So, on the ‘Happily Ever After’ menu is a dish called ‘All I Had For Breakfast,’ a snatched brunch dish because the bride and groom are usually too busy placating guests than eating themselves.
Then there’s the ‘Always A Bridesmaid’ dish, inspired by the practice of single Koreans eating black bean noodles on April 14th every year to avoid being single, “something similar to how Vietnamese eat red bean soup on the seventh lunar month.”
But the fun, carefree execution belies some serious planning. First, they zeroed in on the wedding theme, to fit this time of year – the end of the rainy season in Saigon is a time lots of couples decide to get married.
Then they explored the theme in a very egalitarian fashion – researching the customs and traditional dishes served at weddings in different countries, and allowing all the Nous Dine team to pitch in ideas.
After that, the pragmatics of service – working with suppliers to find ingredients available during the menu’s three-month run, then testing and refining the dishes, while striving to minimize ingredient waste, “until we achieved absolute satisfaction.”
The relationship with suppliers is especially important, Đức says. For this menu, they sourced H’mong black chicken and the Sapa black pork, “ingredients that are as hard to work with as they are to source. They require a lot of effort to prepare in the right way, but, in doing so, they enable us to share with diners a part of the story about the life and wedding customs of ethnic minorities in the regions where these ingredients are considered specialties.”
Decorating The Space To Amplify The Theme
They usually decorate the space to amplify the theme. For ‘Happily Ever After’ that meant the team folded 1,314 origami paper cranes – a number that’s significant because it sounds like ‘forever’ in Chinese – and hung them from the ceiling.
Every night they put two columns of paper flowers outside the door too. Even the menu was designed to look like a wedding invitation.
“And we’ve been taking polaroid photos for each guest, which you’d get if you ever attended a traditional wedding in Vietnam,” Đức smiles.
This Is Storytelling Cuisine
Although stunningly original, Nous Dine feels part of a movement in narrative-driven modern Vietnamese restaurants here. They’ve recently collaborated with like-minded bars and restaurants like Du Bar, Elgin, Yazawa and Botea.
“I definitely feel there’s a movement,” Đức nods. “At Nous Dine, we refer to ourselves as storytellers, so let’s call the movement ‘Storytelling Cuisine.’”
The final menu at Nous Dine, before they move, will be a special limited-time-only menu, served for two weeks, from mid-December, featuring his favorite dishes from all the menus served at Nous Dine. “If you want to understand our culinary style, this would be the time to experience it.”
It’s something of a greatest hits menu, a bit like the greatest hits in Chef Daigo Nakai’s vinyl collection, only, as always, Executive Chef Nghiêm Minh Đức will serve it up with far more calm than his former mentor and friend might have done.
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