Tran - Adventures in Starry Kitchen: 88 Asian-inspired Recipes from Americas Most Famous Underground Restaurant

TO EVERY SINGLE SOUL

WHO HELPED MAKE

STARRY KITCHEN A REALITY

AND TO CILLAN, BY FAR THE

BEST THING I EVER MADE.

WORK HARD, PLAY HARD,

AND KARAOKE.

HI, IM NGUYEN. IM NO ONE SPECIAL.

I MEAN, IM JUST A VIETNAMESE-AMERICAN KID WITH A MOM AND DAD WHO LEFT THEIR HOMELAND AT THE END OF THE VIETNAM WAR AT THE RESPECTIVE AGES OF SIXTEEN AND SEVENTEEN, CAME TO THE STATES, GOT KNOCKED UP, HAD A KID WHO WAS A PICKY EATER (ME), MOVED TO THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS, GAVE BIRTH TO MY MUCH MORE ARTISTICALLY TALENTED YOUNGER SISTER VIVIEN (NOT ME), AND WORKED NEARLY AROUND THE CLOCK MANAGING LOCAL 7-ELEVENS TO AFFORD US A BETTER LIFE.

I (barely) grew up on chips and queso, hamburgers and hot dogs, and other kinds of standard American fare (T.G.I. Fridays chicken fingers and their long-forgotten creole mustard are still my JAM. Ohhhhh yes!). I resisted eating Vietnamese food because I couldnt understand being just Vietnamese growing up (the diaspora dilemma). In a magazine interview, my mom threw me under the Vietnamese heritage bus and told them I ate only burgers and hotdogs, and I was constantly bullied for being a Chinese kid (those kids are more educated, know better now, and Im even friends with somemy contribution to society). I went to college locally where I stuck to delusions of being a doctor, so much so that I even took the notorious eight-hour medical school entrance exam, the MCAT, during which I realized I didnt want to be a doctor and proceeded to take the best and most influential nap of my life.

All that time, I never thought about how food played such an integral part in my life. My first job was as a bag boy at a grocery store; my afterhigh school hangout was my friends Indian restaurant (and the buffet line was subsequently my study area of preference); and my big dream as a kid was to host and pay for a dinner in a luxurious revolving ballroom restaurant like the one at the top of Reunion Tower in Dallas for ALL my friends. I used to eat like a football player, and my favorite personal sport was to see how many Thanksgiving dinners I could squeeze into one day (I believe five was my recordno amount of tryptophan is gonna put me DOWN!). A dot.com job gave this doe-eyed twenty-one-year-old kid a personal expense account that grew to nearly $25k per month, which became my fine dining and wine education (but not much wine because my tolerance for alcohol is laughably low), and I surf more food porn than any straight man should ever admit to (I cant help it, theres so much of it).

To put it simply: I love food.

Lets level with each other here right from the start. I am literally the biggest fuckup I KNOW! I have friends who are far more successful, make more money, have seen more of the world, and have contributed much more to society than I have. But recently I figured out that I have one God (or similar deity)given talent: I am stupid enough not to give a flying fuck about anyones opinion. And when I have my mind set on something, I try over and over and over again until I succeed, prove peoples opinions wrong (the greatest fuel to my man-child-like drive), oron the not-so-rare occasion when I fail and fall on my facelook like the biggest fool trying. My soul begs for completion, and begs to see if an idea really is as idiotic as people think it is. Thats the best way I can describe... the one thing I am best at.

This realization didnt become evident until I accidentally delved into the restaurant business with my wife, Thi, my Kitchen Ninja and Starry Kitchens not-so-secret weapon. Calling my profession an accident may sound unappreciative (and its not meant to because I have so much respect for all small business owners), but owning a restaurant wasnt our original dream. But it made sense as the next step of a far-fetched idea, born out of unemployment, about running an underground and definitely illegal restaurant out of our tiny apartment in North Hollywood, California, right in the heart of Los Angeless infamous (San Fernando) Valley.

Back in the mid-aughts, Thi started cooking all sorts of fantastical Asian dishes, taking pictures of them and posting them on Facebook. (This was pre-#foodpornrevolution, and when taking pictures of food [with film] was still wholly owned by Asiansbut not anymore.)

Then in 2008 the economy went to shit. Thi lost her job in advertising the next year and vented on Facebook about finding another job in advertising, as one does. The response was unanimous: Advertising? Pffft! YOU SHOULD COOK! After about two months of cajoling and finally coercion, we hosted our first lunch service out of our tiny apartment.

We flyered three hundred apartments in our building and advertised on Facebook our restaurant, which we called Starry Kitchen. We debated the name for no longer than... one minute, and named it after This favorite Cantonese cooking show at the time on the TVB television network from Hong Kong (drop this on any Cantonese-speaking person in the free world, and youll get instant street cred), which we knew wed be stuck with if whatever this would become worked.

It wasnt fancy. We buzzed guests in, directed them to take the elevator upstairs, then set them up on our communal patio shared with other residents (and future Starry Kitchen confidants) full of random chairs in the middle of a concrete high-rise paradise. I sat at a little folding table with a printed picture of our dog and mascot, GQ (who was more recognizable and well known than we personally were in our complex), taped to the front of the table, and took orders for plates of This version of Asian comfort food directly influenced by the Kogi revolution happening in LA at the timesuch as Vietnamese Thit Kho (braised coconut pork) or Korean kalbijim (braised Korean short rib stew). There was a suggested $5 donation, and after guests voluntarily dropped money in the box (I never touched it) I yelled the order back into the apartmentlike at your favorite greasy-spoon diner. Our friends came out to support us (we knew we could guilt them all into at least one meal). But then, surprisingly they liked it! In fact, they loved it. And those friends brought friends, and friends of their friends brought more friends.

The party grew so much that we added a Wednesday dinner service. Yelp reviews began to pop up, which brought in even more people. Our patrons were pretty random, but my favorite group was the game developers, dominated by my small cadre of friends who had graduated from Carnegie Mellon. If anyone was the catalyst for our explosion, it was them. Suddenly, our apartment became the No. 1 Asian fusion restaurant listing in all of LA on Yelp.

Then, LA Weekly found us, which brought us patrons from San Francisco and New York City. As we began to receive more press, we got even biggerbig enough that the health department found us.

But even when the health department thought they had us, I was already in negotiations to take Starry Kitchen into a real establishment with proper permits. I offered myself to become their poster child