Saigon is a city of popups. It’s one of the best things about the place. On any given evening you can find some chef, barista, or bartender setting up shop for an experience that they’ll likely never repeat. It’s a one-off event. A chance for them to let that inner child go wild, tinker like a mad scientist as they come up with the kind of menu that at first read leaves you slightly befuddled as much as it makes your mouth-water. Having lived in Saigon for three years now, I’ve been to my share of popups. During that time, I’ve come to recognise a group of individuals who you could categorise as pop-up chefs: David & Naja, Kevin, Ezra—each of them, I hear, are gone now. Burned like bright stars on Saigon’s food scene and then with one final explosion of flavour, disappeared to return back from where they came. It saddens me to admit that I never got the chance to sit down for a talk with any of them, that their stories—like the dishes they created—have remained mysteries that I may never get to uncover the secrets to. Thankfully, however, there is one chef that I did get the opportunity to speak to.
Kiet was born and raised in Saigon. Coming from a well-off family, he admits he had a relatively easy, comfortable childhood. It was during this period that he first discovered his love of food, partially thanks to his mother who he described as an avid foodie. Though she wasn’t the biggest cook, she was always taking Kiet around to various restaurants to have a nibble of this and that, planting in the young boy the first seeds of possibility at what food could be. While Kiet’s mother sparked his lifelong love of food, it was his aunt who piqued his interest in cooking. He still remembers when his aunt handed him a wooden ladle when he was eight years old and instructed him to stir a pot full of bubbling bolognese sauce. Immediately the act felt familiar, as if he already understood why he was doing it. Then there was the time he heated up a plate of chicken on a stovetop and forgetting to put on a pair of gloves, ended up burning his fingers when he touched the plate. Despite the pain, even this incident couldn’t deter Kiet from falling more in love with cooking.
While his mother and aunt played pivotal roles in Kiet’s burgeoning love of food and cooking, there were other reasons as well. For one, his family owned a quán nhậu (local eatery) in District 9 so Kiet was always hanging out in the restaurant. Seeing the bustling environment day-in-day-out, he grew to love the energy and sense of camaraderie inherent in most restaurants. Besides that, there was a communal kitchen in his home in District 9 where staff who worked for his family’s company could cook and eat together. This also gave Kiet the sense that food was something more than just ingredients you prepared and ate—rather, food was a way for people to come together and share in a moment. It allowed for conversation, laughter, and memories that one could hold onto forever. At this point, the deal was all but sealed: Kiet would work with food in one way or another.
By the time Kiet was fourteen years old, he was cooking all the time. He mainly focused on international food back then given that he simply wasn’t aware of the diversity and richness of Vietnamese cuisine when he was younger. It’s that age-old adage about how the grass is always greener on the other side. Being young and curious, Kiet was more interested in learning about cuisines from different parts of the world—especially French and Japanese—as opposed to the one right at home. First it started with family meals but it wasn’t long before his entrepreneurial mindset gave him an idea. Why not sell some food at school? Bánh bò (a coconut flavoured steamed rice cake) and Basque cheesecake became Kiet’s two main items for sale. It’s funny to imagine how when a lot of his peers were busy playing video games or doing their homework, Kiet was at home prepping the ingredients for his next batch to sell. This goes to show that perhaps his eventual foray into the world of popups wasn’t that much of a surprise after all. He always had the brains and willingness to try things out, which is just what a popup chef needs.
More time spent cooking meant more opportunities beginning to present themselves to Kiet. One evening his aunt invited some guests over to the family home with the purpose of having Kiet prepare a dinner for them. He did a three-course menu and though he doesn’t remember what he cooked, it went down so well that he ended up getting paid. For the teenaged Kiet, it was just the confidence boost he needed. That first dinner was followed by an even bigger event: Kiet was asked to cater a fifty-person đám hỏi (pre-wedding ceremony) for a couple who were his aunt’s friends. Kiet prepared a five-course menu for the đám hỏi, featuring dishes like a beef wellington and his personal favourite, a deconstructed Caesar salad which meant a chicken mousse wrapped in romain lettuce, emulsified caesar sauce, and parmesan foam. Once again, Kiet was paid and it was thanks to these two events that he started to associate cooking not only with making people happy, but also as a means of making a living. Besides these grander parties, cooking also became a way to develop deeper bonds with the people closest to Kiet. None was this more true than with his grandfather, who Kiet said was as traditional a Vietnamese man as you could get. This meant that for the bulk of his life, his grandfather mainly enjoyed Vietnamese cuisine but once Kiet started cooking, he began opening up to the various flavours around the world. Kiet still recalls the eggs benedict he made for his grandfather, and how one time he devoured four portions of the dish. Soon after they found out his grandfather had cancer and he shouldn’t have been eating a dish so creamy and decadent, but the fact that he did is a memory that will live on in Kiet forever.
Once Kiet turned eighteen, he left Vietnam to go study a double major of marketing and food science in America. At the time he was dating a Vietnamese girl who was living in Canada so he often travelled to the country to visit her. This was how Kiet came to find his first real job inside a kitchen. One summer he’d decided to stay in Canada with his girlfriend and it was then he happened upon a Vietnamese restaurant. The place was run by three Chinese cooks and Kiet, wondering if they needed any help from an actual Vietnamese, offered his services. He was hired on the spot and what ensued was something of a crash-course into the intensity of what it means to be on the line of a real restaurant. Kiet would work fifteen hour shifts from opening to closing, leaving each night feeling absolutely battered and with nothing left in the tank. Though he reckons he was underpaid, he credits this experience with teaching him an important quality in cooking: endurance. As someone who’s worked in a kitchen before, I understand the idea. Cooking for a living is a tiresome, often inglorious job. Kitchens are crammed, furiously hot, and there are tools that can burn, cut, and chop you all around. Knowing how to perform for hours in such an environment is a skill in and of itself, and I believe is the one true mark separating the casual home cook from the seasoned chef. Kiet’s time at this restaurant proved that he had what it took.
Upon returning to the States, Kiet got back to studying. He landed an internship as a researcher for Blue Hill restaurant in New York City. As one of the pioneers of the farm-to-table concept in New York, Blue Hill gave Kiet a chance to experience just how much of an emphasis great restaurants place on working with the best and most seasonal produce. First he started off by working on the Blue Hill farm in upstate New York where he learned about fermentation and preservation. After that, he was moved to the kitchen where got into the more practical side of seeing how far one could go with cooking. One of his most memorable experiences working for Blue Hill came when they collaborated with the world-renowned Jewish deli, Katz’s Delicatessen. Through their experimentation they found that if you continue to smoke and dehydrate a beet over and over, the resulting taste is similar to that of pastrami. For Kiet, lessons like that showed how curiosity with ingredients can result in magical moments in the kitchen, proving to him the endless possibilities with cooking.
In the summer of 2024, Kiet returned to Vietnam. However, he didn’t want to just come back for a holiday. Getting in touch with two friends—Lộc, a chef from Okra (now at Little Bear) and Alex, a computer scientist—the three thought of starting a popup business. The name, Tin Tin, developed naturally and Kiet says it comes from the bell on your phone when you receive some money. There’s a feeling of celebration that comes from that, and the team wanted Tin Tin to elicit a similar response to those who heard its name. Initially, Kiet and Lộc took care of the food while Alex handled social media, numbers, and anything on the managerial end. For their first event they wanted to go big: a thirteen-course menu based on the Bible. They thought of where they could possibly host such an event before quickly realising that perhaps they were in over their heads. They scaled back and eventually landed on a six-course menu. With that, they got in touch with the W.A.L.L. in Thảo Điền and their first event was set. It ended up receiving a lot of positive comments suggesting the Tin Tin team continue hosting popups around town. By the end of the summer, they’d done three. The second was up in Hanoi at a restaurant called Hom Eatery. He still recalls how people loved the Vietnamese beef carpaccio so much that they kept asking for the recipe. Kiet and Lộc were happy to share. The third event was at Kiet’s home back in Saigon. It was a full-circle moment, the place that had ignited his passion for food and cooking many years ago was now hosting guests for a ten-course meal. As an intimate gathering, it was a way for the Tin Tin team to say thank you and goodbye. The atmosphere that evening was celebratory, though tinged with a somber mood. Lộc and Alex had gotten too busy with their own work to keep up with the Tin Tin project. As for Kiet, he was returning to the States for another year of studies. Though he knew he’d continue Tin Tin by himself when he returned, he wasn’t exactly sure what that would look like.
In March of 2025, Kiet was back in Saigon. He had an idea to test out tacos for two different reasons. For one, he simply saw a gap in the market for the Mexican dish and decided that he could be the one to fill it. Besides that, Kiet also recognised an inherent similarity between Vietnamese and Mexican cuisine. Each places an emphasis itself on a need to eat all parts of an animal and never letting anything go to waste. Essentially, what’s nowadays known as “nose-to-tail cooking”. In April, the first iteration of Tin Tin’s taco popup came to life, this time, with Kiet manning every position. It took place in Úb Stairs in District 1, and if the fact that Kiet was doing everything by himself wasn’t enough, he also broke his leg a few days leading up to the event. When it came time to start the show he was grilling meats with one hand and holding onto a crutch with the other. It was as much a display of determination as grit as it was culinary excellence. Over the three day event over two hundred people showed up to sample Kiet’s tacos. There were tongue tacos, smoked brisket tacos, birria with skin tacos, and on the final day he went all out with stomach and ear tacos. It was a great success and went to show Kiet that so long as he trusted his gut and cooked food that he believed people would enjoy, things would work out. Besides the success of the popup, Kiet’s first taco event was also where he met his girlfriend, Tú, from Walking Matcha. Tú eventually introduced Kiet to the team at HOME bar and their space served as the location for Tin Tin’s second taco popup. From there, it was non-stop. An event at Bong Kia Sen. Another at Que Kareem. One after another the Tin Tin name was being heard around town and along with it came the smell of deliciously grilled cuts of meat wrapped in fluffy and light tortillas.
Kiet’s been back in Vietnam for longer this time around, but in January of the new year, he’ll return to America for his studies. When I asked what he had planned for Tin Tin while he was away, he said he was going to try to figure out a way to maintain some brand awareness, most likely through content creation. Then when he returns, he can pick up with—hopefully—an even larger audience than when he left. But the journey doesn’t end there. Kiet’s still young and there’s so much of the world he wants to see, so much of its flavours he’s yet to taste. He dreams of travelling to Cuba—where his family has some business—and living there for a while. Apart from Cuba, he’s interested in Scandinavia given the importance the cuisine places on seasonality and fermentation, two areas that interest Kiet’s cooking mind. All in all, he’s sure to be back in Saigon eventually. Whether the next time you see a Tin Tin popup is for tacos or for something that hits closer to home, you can rest assured that Kiet will be behind it all. What started with stirring a pot of bubbling bolognese sauce has already taken Kiet a long way, and the only person who knows how far he’ll continue to go is the man himself.
- Follow Kiet on Instagram
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