What's the mark of a great restaurant? Is it an innovative menu that pushes the boundaries of our conception of food? Is it a team of chefs and front of house staff at the top of their game? Or is it something more abstract? That comforting, unexplainable sense that you're not dining out but you're dining with loved ones at home. After an evening at An’s, I believe I found the answer. Located at the end of a narrow cul-de-sac on Tống Hữu Định street in Thảo Điền, the restaurant, spa, and garden is a space that’s more than those three things combined. Visiting on an especially rainy night in September, I was guided by one of the staff—who shielded me under an umbrella—into an open, outdoor seating area. Easing into a rattan chair, I looked around and got that Narnia-esque sense I’d stepped through a closet into another world. Lush, blooming greenery surrounded me while spherical lamps glowed like full moons along the floor. Rain pitter-pattered on the roof. It’d continue to pitter-patter while the other guests arrived.
At the time, I didn’t really know what I was getting into besides what Garrett had told me. We’d been invited for dinner with a few other writers in Saigon. There were six guests but eight people would be dining in total. Also joining were Vanny, the founder and general manager, as well as Claudia, the brand manager. Once everyone had a glass of Riesling, Vanny, an immediately cheery, friendly lady with a slight Australian twang, said we’d begin with a tour of An’s. This hospitality, which had started the moment a staff member noticed me fast-walking to the entrance without an umbrella, continued for the rest of the evening. As Vanny liked to put it, at An’s you weren’t simply coming to a restaurant for a meal—You were being welcomed into their home, An’s home, which is a name derived from the Vietnamese word “bình an”, meaning, “peace”. An’s then is a home with peace, where though you might enter as a guest you’ll leave as more a friend.
We saw the lounge, “living room” where visitors could dine on an a la carte menu, went up to the spa which Vanny’s younger sister Annie managed, before ending the tour in what Vanny called the chef’s table, a private seating area a few steps away from the kitchen. Walking in, I once more got the sense that we’d been transported someplace else. White and shades of beige made up most of the room, from the lines of white string draped along the ceiling to the wooden furniture and walls. The lighting was soft and warm, giving off a dreamy glow similar to candlelight. Pops of colour came from the abstract paintings on the wall: a sadder blue on one, an earthier green on another, and an explosion of red separated into three frames on the last, below which was a line of jars containing all manner of homemade drinks. We took our seats. Vanny sat to my right and Garrett to my left. A kitchen island was in the center of the room. It looked so solid it was as if a sculptor had carved it from a rock that had been there for centuries, as if the whole building had been built around that rock. Behind the kitchen island stood Cường, the head chef. He was thin, wore glasses, and couldn’t contain a grin that made him look something like a boy who’d been given free reign of the school’s science lab. And so he would play and play.
Dinner began. This was An’s sixth iteration of their chef’s menu. Called Sắc, or "colour", it was divided into four sections of four dishes each, starting with Hello, followed by Get to Know, then Gathering, and ending with Lots of Laughs. The idea was based around that flow of interaction from when you first meet someone until you part as friends. You always begin with a hello, a greeting as introductions go around. From there, you get to know one another, asking questions, discovering shared interests and values. At that point you can gather, coming together over your shared interests and values and recognising each other’s humanity. Finally, laughter. It’s time to rejoice in this newfound connection, rejoice in the joy and happiness it brings. More so than this, colour also plays an integral role in An’s chef’s table menu, with each dish focused on a single hue resulting in a journey through all spectrums of the rainbow. Alongside the food, An’s had curated three drink pairings: non-alcohol, Vietnamese wine, and International wine. Garrett and I, taking Vanny’s advice, went for the Vietnamese wine.
Starting off, it would be impossible to speak of An’s without mentioning its level of service and hospitality. Excellent service is a bare minimum in fine dining, but the reality is, in a lot of these restaurants there’s a tendency for hospitality to start feeling a little stiff. You get the sense you’re being watched all the time—as if by crows—and relaxing becomes difficult. It’s the classic white-tablecloth experience, where guests talk in hushed, muted tones like they’re afraid of disturbing the army of chefs working in the back, preparing their meal not with steel and fire but tweezers and sous vide machines. This isn’t the case at An’s. They’re a young team and rather than trying to mask their youth in attempts to appear older and perhaps, more mature, they let their youth come through which in turn, imbues the dinner with an openness and ease. Vanny was a perfect example of this. Seated next to her, I got a first-hand experience of how welcoming, professional, and gracious a host she is, all the while being young and cheery enough to play along whenever I cracked a few jokes. Not to mention, the whole evening she was dealing with a cough she said she’d gotten from singing and supporting her friend at her recent wedding but not once did that take away from her spirit. It was thanks to this hospitality that the barrier between staff and guests broke down and this room full of strangers was able to gather and get to know one another.
Then there was the food itself. For one, some of the dishes were just too pretty to eat. As mentioned, given the theme of Sắc, every dish was a different colour which meant ingredients like a green watermelon, a purple aubergine, and an orange carrot were cooked and presented in such a way that subverted your expectation of how that ingredient should look and taste. Every time another dish was placed in front of me I found myself staring at it in wonder, marvelling at it with a curiosity like a child coming face to face with his first-ever lollipop. Then having my first bite, an unexplainable, almost ancient depth of flavour had me shaking my head back and forth, wondering, privately, How does this taste like that? The most memorable dish for me was the carrot cooked with crab roe, which, for lack of a better explanation, tasted more like a carrot than any other carrot I’ve ever eaten.
Of course, you couldn’t forget about the drinks. Their home-brewed blends of Vietnamese wine went from flavours like toasted rice and pineapple, sugarcane and keylime, all the way to native quince and plum mango. It was funny how whenever we had one sip a server would come around to fill our cups with more, and at one point I had to hold in a laugh when I noticed three glasses in front of Garrett, each filled to the brim with a different coloured liquor. It didn’t take long before we had something of a buzz, but it came smooth and giddy. And like that, the evening rolled onwards.
Besides the hospitality, food, and drinks, I’d be remiss not to mention the numerous minutia that alongside one another made the experience feel like one expertly choreographed whole. For one, there was An’s version of a fine dining restaurant’s pre-meal ingredient presentation. While these tend to feature a display of raw ingredients that will be prepared for the meal, at An’s, they opted for a painting done by famed botanical artist Phan Thị Thanh Nhã. Chef Cường explained each part of the painting before the framed image was shown around the table, and it was impossible not to marvel at the elegant simplicity of Thanh Nhã’s depiction of the ingredients we were about to eat. Besides that, Garrett and I learned that the team at An’s had done some prior digging into who we were. This meant that not only were they calling us by our first names from the moment we entered, Claudia, the brand manager, even knew that I’d published my first novel, Neon Night, in June. Perhaps this is normal when you’re dining at these kinds of establishments, but the revelation came as a shock. While I know it’s their job, it felt sincere and as silly as it may sound, I felt seen. Thank you for that Claudia.
We cook for you like how we cook for our parents. As the mâm cơm (a traditional Vietnamese family meal served on a platter) came out, signalling the start of the Gathering part of the menu, a light shone on these words written on a fourth, white painting that had gone unnoticed up until then. Alongside the ethos of bringing you into their home, this philosophy is at the core of An’s. Though it’s been some time now since I dined there, blips of the evening come to me every now and again, and in those moments I’m reminded of just how special an evening it was, just how much it did feel like I was being treated with a tenderness reserved for loved ones. Once the menu concluded, we were given handwritten letters thanking us for coming, a few photos were taken, and chef Cường, still with that same grin that hadn’t left him the whole service, guided us through the homemade drinks lining the shelf above which hung the abstract explosion of red I’d first noticed at the start of our dinner. We had some parting shots, Vietnamese style of course with the một, hai, ba, dô! So leaving the chef’s table, we went out into the back garden where Vanny explained a lot of the ingredients at An’s were grown. The rain had stopped. The air had that sweet, damp quality of a neighbourhood after it'd been doused in rain. Where am I? I once again wondered, until it came to me. I’d emerged from that Narnia-esque world and returned to the one I’d always known. Back in Saigon. Back in reality.
- Find An’s Saigon
- Follow An’s on Instagram & Facebook
