Fire Tears Through a Historic Vietnamese Restaurant Space in St. Paul
Late on the evening of August 11, a fire tore through former St. Paul restaurant Ngon Bistro, which was set to soon open as a new Vietnamese restaurant, Khue’s Kitchen. Khue’s owner Eric Pham says he arrived at the property around midnight, and waited several hours as the St.
“I think the reason why people loved the food and the service and everything was because I truly embodied the mindset of, like, no safety net, we’re all in, both feet in, not one foot out,”
Fire Tears Through a Historic Vietnamese Restaurant Space in St. Paul
A third-generation Vietnamese restaurant was readying to open in the former Ngon Bistro space, which was extensively damaged in the fire.
Pham started Khue’s Kitchen as a year-long pop-up at Minneapolis natural wine bar Bar Brava in late 2022, serving a modern Vietnamese menu of chile-flecked fried chicken sandwiches, caramelized baby back ribs, and more. Determined to open a permanent restaurant, he signed a lease in the former Ngon space earlier this summer — he’d recently finished hiring staff, and planned to open in late August. Now, blindsided by the fire, he’s uncertain what the future holds. “It’s been maybe the most interesting two days of my life,” Pham says. “When I die, it’ll be in the top three.”
Pham is part of a legacy Twin Cities restaurant family: His grandmother, Lung Tran, opened Eat Street restaurant Quang in 1989, and his mother, Khue Pham (for whom his restaurant is named) is a chef there. One of the most crushing disappointments of the situation, he says, is that he would have been taking over a historic restaurant space where generations of Vietnamese chefs have cooked — before Hai Truong and Jessica Ainsworth-Truong opened Ngon Bistro in 2016, Truong’s father opened Caravelle Restaurant there in 1984; years after that it became Pho Anh. Khue’s Kitchen’s new staff, ready to take up the mantle, was made up of Gen Z kids like Pham himself.
Pham says he poured his life savings into opening Khue’s — everything from “Tooth Fairy money” to his first wages at Quang, where he started working when he was 13, and Spoon and Stable, where he started at 19. “I think the reason why people loved the food and the service and everything was because I truly embodied the mindset of, like, no safety net, we’re all in, both feet in, not one foot out,” he says. He hopes he may be able to recoup a small portion of what he lost. In the meantime, he’s launched a fundraiser to help support his team.
