Avid Denver diners may know that chef An Nguyen, who owns acclaimed Vietnamese restaurant Dân Dã in Aurora with her sister Thao, previously ran the likewise laudable Savory Vietnam in Athmar Park. They may know that another Nguyen sister, Thoa, operates Bánh & Butter Bakery Café just steps from Dân Dã on East Colfax Avenue, and that still another, Thu, oversees New Saigon Bakery & Deli on a stretch of South Federal Boulevard known as the Little Saigon district.
What they may not know is that all of these siblings grew up working at the original New Saigon, the beloved restaurant their parents, Thai Nguyen and Ha Pham, ran for decades next door to the space where Thu’s bakery now stands. To this day, it’s widely credited with introducing countless locals to Vietnamese cuisine.
And when An, Thoa, and Thao open Rễ Tre on that very spot on July 3, they just may do the same for a new generation.
The Birth of “Bamboo Root”
“It was our playground,” said An. “Thao [worked] the front of the house, the registers, serving tables. Thu and Thoa . . . did the boba drinks and ran to-go [orders], things like that. I did [some] serving, and I also helped in the kitchen. It’s really funny, because my mom didn’t put pressure on any of them to cook in the back, but she put pressure on me—I think she saw something in me.”
Thai and Ha finally retired in 2017, and New Saigon underwent various changes in management before shuttering for good in 2024. As all five of their daughters were out living their own lives (the youngest, Kha, recently earned a degree in physical therapy), they tried to sell the property.
“We grew up in this neighborhood, but because we are so familiar with it, we all wanted to go away from it,” explained Thao. “It was nowhere on our agenda that we would want to take over any of this.”
But the right buyer never materialized, “and being a realtor, I’m like, ‘Why are we leaving property vacant?’ added Thao. “The entrepreneur in me [decided to] talk to my sisters about bringing it back to life” in the form of a new restaurant. Despite her devotion to Dân Dã, An agreed that the timing might be right.
“Every time I came down here, I saw that more and more businesses were vacant, and what was once a booming and bustling area for the Vietnamese community was starting to die,” she said. “I began to feel an obligation to return and [try to] revitalize the area the way we were able to revitalize the Aurora Cultural Arts District.”
The sense of obligation grew as the sisters thought about their family as a microcosm of that community. Thoa, for one, admitted, “it gets me emotional, because my dad has always talked about how I took my first steps as a baby at this restaurant, you know? It matters to our parents that this isn’t an empty space anymore. And in a way, we daughters owe it to them. Culturally, that’s just who we are.”
The name of their joint venture, Rễ Tre, translates as “Bamboo Root,” and its logo depicts “two hands lifting up three bamboos, and under the bamboo are the roots,” noted An. “So it’s symbolic of our mom and dad lifting their three daughters up to run this business, and the five leaves on the bamboos represent the five sisters.”
That tribute to their parents is especially moving given the extraordinary risks Thai and Ha took and the sacrifices they made to provide for their children.
A Heartrending Bit of History
Thao, the eldest daughter, was a baby when Thai and Ha escaped Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. “We were boat people,” she explained, paraphrasing her father’s version of the story. “We left in the middle of the night, going into the ocean. My dad had to carry me to swim to the fishing boat [that] crammed in about 100 to 150 people. My mom couldn’t swim, so she had to take another boat to get to that boat—and she got pushed over and almost drowned.” But she survived, and “we were all stuffed under in the engine level of this boat.”
They drifted on the water for three days, Thao continued, “and then a storm hit. [We] saw an oil rig from a distance, [and] everyone on the boat tried to row toward it, but the storm hit so much that all the waves kept pushing the boat back.”
Luckily, the captain of the oil rig spied them and towed them in. “And because of that captain, our lives were saved. I get emotional when I talk about this, because we could have died that day. Then none of my sisters would exist; none of our kids would exist.”
The then-small family settled in an Indonesian refugee camp for about a year before making their way to Denver, where Thai had relatives who took them in. “We had this small bed in a room that we shared with my grand-aunts,” recalled Thao. “My parents would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning to work three or four jobs.”
One of those jobs just so happened to be at New Saigon, where Ha became a cook. When the opportunity to purchase the restaurant arose in 1987, Thao said her parents worked night and day in order to pay off all the debt ownership required. Forty years later, they’re still working.
“My dad basically one-handedly revamped this entire restaurant by himself, so it looks totally different: elegant, modern, and traditional all at the same time,” explained An. “And my mom and I have been working in the kitchen together, R&Ding dishes.”
But make no mistake: Rễ Tre is their daughters’ restaurant. “People [who] are excited for us to come back maybe expect what it used to be,” acknowledged Thoa. “But I think they’re in for a treat if they just keep an open mind and see the change in the generations, the fusion of a modern concept mixed with traditional flavors.”
A Day-to-Night Dining Extravaganza
Rễ Tre will open at 10 a.m., Tuesday through Sunday, as their idea of a quintessential Vietnamese coffee shop. Thoa, who in addition to offering “the full experience” of java filtered tableside over condensed milk, will of course be providing an array of pastries à la her bakery Bánh & Butter. But that’s far from all the restaurant will serve: An has in store what she described as a whole “Vietnamese brunch menu.”
Think bò né, or steak and eggs, which she called “a great street breakfast food that ties all the sisters’ restaurants together,” pairing her beef tenderloin au poivre and skillet eggs with Thu’s baguette and Thoa’s chicken pâte. And mì vịt tiềm, a soup featuring “fork-tender duck thigh” in an herbal broth with egg noodles. And then there’s the broken rice plate, “a traditional morning dish for the South Vietnamese,” in her words, topped with pork in various forms as well as a fried egg.
Come 4 p.m., the dining room will undergo a transformation as the Nguyen sisters commence dinner service with a completely different menu. And while it won’t be wholly unfamiliar to fans of Dân Dã or Vietnamese cuisine in general—including staples like green papaya salad and bò lúc lắc (“shaken beef”), vermicelli bowls and fire pots—An’s excited to introduce some new dishes to the mix while reprising some old favorites.
The seafood section of the menu serves as a prime example. In addition to sizzling XO abalone (a prized marine snail that’s rarely found on Mile High menus), An is also bringing back the tamarind whelk snails that “didn’t do too well at Dân Dã,” she admitted, but “based on the demographic, we know people are going to order them here.” The same goes for steamed cherrystone clams in lemongrass-garlic fish sauce, while the “bird’s nest” of crispy noodles with stir-fried seafood and veggies is a nostalgic nod to New Saigon.
And the list goes on, from phở-seasoned steak tartare to fried softshell crab to massive rice-paper wrap platters for groups. To cap it all off, Thoa will eventually be offering a selection of desserts: taro crème brûlée, for instance, and what she referred to as her “elevated” take on chè ba màu, or three-color pudding with red bean, mung bean, pandan, and coconut. But because Rễ Tre boasts a full bar, Thoa’s first order of business was to design the cocktail list.
“It’s kind of my baby—I did a lot of research into regional influences to create the flavor profiles,” she said. Take the Saigon Affair, “a really fun play on an Old-Fashioned. We use coconut sugar and cardamom bitters to give it the spice that Vietnam is all about.” Or take the Moonlight on the Mekong: “It’s inspired by a Moscow mule,” she explained, “but we use kumquat and tangerine . . . fruits that the Mekong [Delta] is known for.”
A wine list is also in the works—but as Thoa noted, “We’re trying to roll things out slowly. We have a vision, and that vision isn’t going to happen immediately.” After all, it’s been a long, long time coming.
“Our parents came to America with nothing to build a life in an unknown country,” An reflected. “But that’s not our story. Though it’s rooted [in] what our parents created, we’re Vietnamese Americans building our own story now.”
Rễ Tre is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. 630 S. Federal Blvd., Denver, no website
