After living in Saigon for years, Tyler finally found it: the type of escape he was looking for. The goal when he redesigned the space was to transform a former office room on Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai Street into a living-room-style bar, aided by the last of his personal savings. What he wanted was simultaneously simple and complex: somewhere when it’s too hot, you can cool down, when it’s too rainy, you can dry off, and when it’s too loud, you can relax somewhere quiet. A total escape. After chatting and sharing a few drinks with Tyler on the second floor of an old colonial-style building set down a hushed alley, I felt welcomed, understood, and replenished. Saigon, a typhoon for a city, cycles at a relentless pace. And yet, right in the eye of the storm, a cocktail bar known as Lost & Found serves as a skeleton key to get away from it all at a moment’s notice.
On the way up the stairs to the bar, you’ll see a mural on the yellow wall: a woman squatting and scrubbing dishes while looking at a white-and-black dog sitting on the window sill above her, exchanging glances. It’s Saigonese and Shakespearean. The same image hangs inside a frame on the interior wall when you enter Lost & Found. The photographer's name is Cuong Tran, and the photograph’s title is Romeo & Juliet. More of Tran’s catalogue graces the surrounding walls: orange-robed monks cradled in hammocks, glued to their phone screens, a water buffalo, bloody, tamed, mounted by hunters, and an old-timer, seated in his boxers, reading the newspaper, delighting in his morning cigarette. Then there’s Tyler’s personal favorite: a nun holding up her left hand to block the sun’s rays, her perpetual vows gleaming in the light.
Tyler told me Tran used to have a cafe just around the corner where he taught photography. When Tran was closing up shop, he gifted Tyler some of the photos to adorn his neighbor’s deep green walls. Those pictures aren’t the only items at Lost & Found that originate from somewhere else. An old typewriter. An older calculator. Several books. A clock on the wall that didn’t tick for the couple hours I sat there, keeping me frozen in time. Each item, in fact, seems to be stuck in time and placed there with intention. Aside from the warm lighting from the nón lá (conical hats) with light bulbs screwed into the bottom hanging above the bar railing, Tyler told me he’s created a routine over the years of scavenging other places to fill his bar with trinkets that have been lost and found. It serves as a ritual to keep other bars around Saigon somewhat alive past their expiration date. Thus, Lost & Found is an amalgamation of relics and anecdotes, some deep and meaningful, others light and playful, much like conversations shared inside its walls.
Out of everything though, if there is one item people come to Lost & Found for that encapsulates all those attributes, it’s the cocktails. I knew the bar was popular for its classic cocktails, so I ordered an Old Fashioned. However, Tyler, knowing this was my first time at his bar, suggested something a bit different: one of their signature drinks, a Lost in Saigon, or an Old Fashioned with a twist. I took a sip of water as he circled around behind the bar to begin creating the concoction.
One part rye whiskey. One part something else. A bit of honey syrup. Swirl, swirl, swirl. One ice cube dropped in. An orange peel, skinned, twisted, squeezed, and placed on the edge. “What’s the one thing you poured in?” Elderflower, he explained, showing me the bottle—a small, delicate, cream-colored flower that grows on elderberry plants and is sometimes infused in alcohol. Renowned for its subtle hints of nectar, the fragrance radiates sip by sip. Tyler followed up my drink by offering a shot of mezcal to me and a couple seated in the corner of the bar, a salute to their weary travels across Southeast Asia. For those who don’t know, mezcal is a smoky-flavored spirit distilled from the fermented hearts of agave plants. And for those who know well, a short shot of mezcal serves as an ode to the journey filled with fear and loathing by the late, great gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who once drank it on his trip across the Nevada desert searching for the glory of the infamous American Dream. “Sip it, don’t shoot it,” Tyler added, placing the shot glass in front of me. I sipped, but he did as he pleased, not as he said. I reached again for my water. It was already refilled the moment I looked away.
When Tyler returned to accompany me at the bar after a clink of glasses with the first-time guests, he explained how crucial the water in front of me is. He reiterated how Lost & Found is supposed to feel like you’re in a friend's living room—a place where you are offered drinks and snacks upon entering. More importantly, a place where those drinks and snacks are continually refilled and replenished. On this note, he reflected on his old mentor from back in the day when he first dove into the bartending industry: his friend Nick. He was the one who helped get Tyler his first bartending job at Liberty Bar on 15th Street in Seattle, Washington. Beyond the friendly hazing that tests the thickness of a new hire’s skin, Tyler said Nick bestowed upon him a core idea that he passes onto all of the employees he hires, either at Lost & Found or Alibi, another bar he owns on Võ Văn Tần. The idea is this: the people that enter your place—whether that’s a bar, restaurant, or cafe—are not customers. Don’t call them that, or as Nick put it, never say the “C-word.” Rather, they are guests and should be treated like such. A simple act like refilling someone's water is deeply restorative for people. As he summed it up, you are replenishing the very thing people are made of: water. It’s this type of anticipatory focus that makes Lost & Found feel welcoming from your very first experience there and onward. After all, it’s the feeling, not the drink itself, that keeps people coming back not just once, but for many years to come.
The best example I witnessed of this was as Tyler was talking to me, explaining how this philosophy of one of his earliest mentors still shapes his ethos all these years later, his owner’s ears remained perked. Unbeknownst to me, he caught a barely perceivable utterance from one of the guests in the corner mentioning in a brief moment that they wanted to try one of the bar’s main staples: an Old Fashioned. Springing from his seat, he went behind the bar with the plan of making the drink even before the customer requested it. Tyler intentionally designed the bar’s layout for both efficiency and hospitality; the speed and calmness at which he can execute a complex cocktail is exactly what allows him to interact with guests effortlessly. When a bartender handles everything with that level of grace, the chaos outside fades into the distance. You feel looked after, entirely insulated from the rest of the world.
As he built the Old Fashioned, he used the moment to mentor his fellow bartender on balancing its ingredients, before sharing the completed glass over to the unsuspecting couple. Seeing their surprised smiles, Tyler once again returned to sit down next to me. He taught me something too—a new word: omotenashi, a Japanese term that stems from traditional tea ceremony etiquette and equates to selfless hospitality. In other words, it means anticipating a guest’s needs before they even arise, acting with absolute sincerity, and serving without exception—as he had just demonstrated.
This philosophy is now being passed on to his team. The other bartender named Minh noticed I was scanning for where the menu was out of the corner of my eye. By the time I mentioned I wanted to try something new from their menu, he had anticipated this and offered his own recommendation, which is also his personal favorite: A Di Da Phat, which is made of a chamomile-infused vodka, more elderflower liqueur, more honey syrup, a bit of orange bitters, and a dash of fresh lemon juice. One sip later, and I now know what drink I’ll be ordering the next time I stop by.
Beyond the ingredients, this drink has a deeper meaning as well. A Di Da Phat means to pay homage to the Buddha, or to take refuge in the infinite and immeasurable. Tyler explained that when he first moved to Vietnam, he stayed with a local family. Every morning as he got ready to go teach, he would hear the mother chanting that phrase. Later, when the family invited him to a Buddhist temple, he heard the monks chanting it as well while someone handed him a warm chamomile floral tea. Paired with the heavy, fragrant smell of burning incense, it was a sensory memory that stuck with him permanently. Years later, Tyler wasn't even trying to recreate that moment when developing the cocktail. Yet, the moment he tasted the blend of chamomile-infused vodka, elderflower, and honey, it instantly transported him straight back to that temple visit. Which is why he named the cocktail A Di Da Phat. Seeing that Tyler has since adopted Buddhist practices into his life, it seems the people close to him have always anticipated his needs in a way that made him feel right at home. In this way, much of my experience at Lost & Found started to click together.
Tyler’s balance of memory and mindfulness has helped carry Lost & Found through its entire history. From the early days of COVID restrictions forcing them to pivot and become one of the first cocktail bars in Saigon to deliver cocktails directly to guests’ homes, to officially opening in 2020, to now being honored with numerous awards—Lost & Found has grown a lot. And yet, at its core, its philosophy has remained unchanged. It is not built around ego. It is built around service. It is designed to feel like a living room, not a business. And most importantly, guests are not customers. They are people choosing to spend a short time of their life at your place and must be treated with sincerity.
Ultimately, every storied relic, every refilled glass of water, and every thoughtfully crafted cocktail flows right back to the original vision Tyler uncovered after his years of wandering Saigon. It has fulfilled its original promise as a total escape: somewhere to cool down when it's too hot, dry off when it's too rainy, and find quiet when the outside world gets too loud. Through the art of omotenashi, Tyler has created a place where you feel welcomed, understood, and replenished. It is only when you finally step back out of that hushed alley—shocked by the immediate wall of humid air, the buzz of passing motorbikes, and the bright neon glare—that you realize just how far away you actually were. For those eager to find a place to truly get away from it all, Lost & Found is a hidden escape right in the heart of Saigon.
