Under CieL Dining’s Limitless Sky

Parisian skies. In the morning, a soft gray, like the limestone buildings below. By afternoon, the clouds break. Patches of blue peek through, stark against the gray-stone city. By evening, the sky deepens to rich purples and oranges, especially on crisp, clear winter evenings. “I’ve traveled to a lot of countries, but the Parisian skies are one of the most exquisite things I’ve ever seen,” Viet Hong remembers. ‘Ciel’ means sky in French, so he called the restaurant he co-founded CieL Dining.

Paris, where he was studying in 2015, was where Viet Hong’s culinary dreams kicked in. 

So the word ‘ciel’ had been on his mind since then, and during his time at Monkey Gallery, during stints at Noma and Sézanne, and still when the errant chef finally returned to Saigon in 2017.

There’s a video shot a year before opening of Viet Hong and his co-founder, Liam, that looks like a nature documentary. In it, they wade through thick jungle growth into what appears to be an abandoned lot with a ramshackle building at its center. 

But this wasn’t some exotic expedition.

This was in Thao Dien, somewhere between Ngo Quang Huy and Le Van Mien Streets, where they’d discovered their future restaurant buried under years of neglect and overgrowth.

They tore down everything. 

What emerged from the demolition was CieL — the letter ‘L’ capitalized “as a tribute to Liam’s companionship and our shared memories.” The restaurant exists in perpetual contradiction: a monument to modern dining tucked into Thao Dien’s sleepy residential side streets, part of the neighborhood’s hyper-speed development and completely removed from it.

There’s an inconspicuous entrance that you double back on, missing it the first time. Down the long alley, a lush garden unfolds with graffiti-covered walls — street art sprawls across surfaces while inside minimalist Scandinavian furniture draws clean lines. 

Beyond the horseshoe-shaped shared table for diners is an open kitchen that buzzes with activity, and beyond that are massive windows framing the garden like an NatGeo screensaver, palms swaying lazily in the breeze.

The Sky’s A Feature Of The Design At CieL Dining

The sky — a bright blue or flushed with storm clouds, or an inky black at night — is a feature of the design. There’s a hidden skylight near the kitchen, visible only to staff. “We couldn’t paint the sky on the wall, so we brought the real sky into the restaurant,” Viet Hong explains. 

So, the skylight overhead lets in more than light — it lets in the whole world.

It also serves as his note to look up sometimes — a reminder to never stop learning. “Before, I thought I was very skilled compared to my peers, and my ego was a little inflated,” Viet Hong confesses. “But when I went out into the world, I realized I was just a frog in a well.” 

“We Cook Whatever We Love”

Like that opening to the world above, at CieL Dining, Viet Hong’s unbound by culinary borders. He draws influences from everywhere — Danish minimalism, Japanese precision, French finesse — the same way the menu draws from whatever hemisphere offers the best ingredients.

His travels transformed everything, he admits, particularly his design aesthetic. When he and Liam presented his concept for the restaurant to the architects, Eight-T, they immediately recognized its Scandinavian influence, a direct result of his time at Noma in Denmark. 

“We don’t want to limit ourselves,” says Viet Hong. “Our place is a personal expression of Liam and me. So, we cook whatever we love.” Still, there’s often a Vietnamese soul to the dishes.

With Vietnamese Soul

Take his signature cod grilled with Huế-style fermented tofu — not new to his repertoire, as it previously featured at Monkey Gallery, but embodying his DNA of combining premium ingredients with Vietnamese spirit. “That’s why I use Huế fermented tofu instead of the Saigon variety, which is of Chinese origin. Huế fermented tofu has a unique, distinctly Vietnamese flavor.”

Then there’s the mapo tofu rice bowl with shirako and Comté cheese — a dish born from cold Tokyo winters that somehow feels at home in tropical Saigon. “This dish warmed me during my two years working at Sézanne in Japan. Although I was in Japan during winter, the mapo tofu made me feel most at home.” 

He explains the dish’s evolution: “Mapo tofu is actually a variation of Sichuan-style tofu, but it’s a signature dish in Japan. While the Chinese use Sichuan pepper, the Japanese use sansho pepper. In my version, I combine both. To add umami, I use Comté cheese. The combination of tofu and cheese is not my idea; the Japanese have been using it for a long time.”

CieL Dining Works With The Best Ingredients Regardless Of Origin 

The dish is indicative of his approach to ingredients. “I choose the best ingredients I can source, regardless of their origin,” he shrugs, pushing back against the industry trend toward hyper-local sourcing. It’s a stance born from pragmatism as much as philosophy. “There are many great Vietnamese ingredients, but unfortunately, we can’t use them all at the moment due to the uneven development of Vietnam’s F&B and agricultural sectors.”

He elaborates on the challenges: “Some incredibly delicious ingredients are only produced on a small scale, making sourcing them extremely difficult. For example, there’s wild boar in the Northwest, but the logistical challenges of transporting it to the South are significant…”

Land And Sea 

Pressed to pin down the culinary style, he explains: “We strive to explore the best that both the land and the ocean have to offer. That’s it.” This philosophy extends to their fusion of Western and Eastern culinary cultures, from French to Japanese, Vietnamese to Indian — a reflection of their shared travels and experiences.

“CieL is a world where the lines between restaurant and home blur,” he explains. “And this should feel more like your home than ours.” This philosophy extends to every detail, from the way servers move through the space to how dishes arrive at tables — nothing feels performative or staged.

More Than Light

In fact, during service, chefs wander outside to pluck herbs directly from the grounds in view of the diners through the window behind the kitchen, a bit of theater that makes diners feel like they’re watching someone step through the screen into their meal.

It’s this seamless integration of environment and cuisine that defines the CieL experience.

So, while everyone else is busy following trends and ‘Vietnamizing’ their menus, CieL remains defiantly itself, occasionally picking greens from the garden, at other times sourcing from Japan, or Europe, or wherever.

“I don’t like doing what everyone else is doing,” Viet Hong shrugs.

In a city obsessed with authenticity and local sourcing, CieL Dining is a restaurant that simply sources the best ingredients it can find, regardless of passport. Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is admit you’re not bound by borders — especially when you’re cooking under an limitless sky. If you take a moment to look up once in a while.