Chef Ken Wan grew up behind the counter of a Chinese restaurant in a Boston suburb.
He watched his parents serve General Tso’s chicken and beef and broccoli to the masses who came through the doors of New China Garden in West Roxbury, Mass. Wan understands the appeal of those dishes to American eaters. But it is not the food he ate at home when his mom, who is from Hong Kong, cooked for their family of six.
“When they’re cooking for us at home they’re not cooking that stuff,” Wan said. “They’re not cooking for the American pallet.”
MAKfam owners and couple Kenneth Wan and Doris Yuen plan to open their first brick-and-mortar restaurant on South Broadway this fall. (Courtesy of MAKfam)
So when hungry diners walk through the doors of Wan’s MAKfam restaurant, 39 W. First Ave in Denver’s Baker neighborhood, they shouldn’t expect to order a big plate of General Tso’s chicken or Kung Pao beef. Instead, the menu offers dishes that might seem familiar but which actually blend a taste of the real Hong Kong with American influences and the personality that Wan and Doris Yuen, his wife and MAKfam co-owner, bring to the table.
“One of the things we tell guests is we use tradition-inspired food,” Wan said. “I try to take something familiar and try to elevate it or showcase it in a way that they’re familiar with but they taste something different,” Wan said.
Take Wan’s wonton soup. He traded old-school chicken broth with a couple of frozen dumplings floating in it for a creamy broth with scallions and ginger. His house-made wontons have chicken and shrimp inside. “Wonton soup is ubiquitous to anyone who’s ever been to an American Chinese restaurant,” Wan said. “We elevated it and made it nicer. It doesn’t have to be that afterthought dish that everyone ordered.”
In Denver, a new generation of Asian Americans are following their parents’ footsteps into the food scene. While they embrace their parents’ work ethic and value traditional ingredients from China, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea and elsewhere, they’re rewriting their menus in ways that show off their own experiences. The result has been lines at their doors, rave reviews and national recognition.
In early September, MAKfam joined some of the best restaurants in Denver on the Michelin Guide’s Bib Gourmand list — a designation given to restaurants that the guide’s reviewers believe provide delicious food at a reasonable price. Penelope Wong, chef at Yuan Wonton in Denver, was honored in January as a James Beard Award finalist for best chef in the mountain region. Banh & Butter Bakery’s owner has competed on the Food Network and scooped up local accolades, while Pho King Rapidos has made a name for itself on the festival circuit.
The foundation of a menu
For Wong, a ginger soy sauce has become the hallmark of her cooking. And she learned it from her dad, who immigrated from Thailand, when she stood shoulder to shoulder with him in her parents’ Denver restaurant, Chinatown, when she started cooking as a teenager. Wong’s mother died in 1991, and her father ran the restaurant for three more years before closing it.
Peanut wontons at Yuan Wonton in Denver on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
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Wong first used the sauce in a dish she created as a young chef at Glenmoor Country Club in Cherry Hills Village. It was so well received that the noodle bowl on which the sauce was featured became one of the most popular meals at the club.
“It was just a sauce that I learned from my dad that was a foundation to almost every dish on his menu,” she said.
Wong combined her dad’s sauce with her family’s chili wonton recipe when she started a food truck business in 2019. Before long, people waited in lengthy lines to try them, and those crowds followed her when she opened a restaurant at 2878 Fairfax St. in Park Hill.
“Every family has their own little recipe for their wontons. We’re very, very generous with our aromatics. Tons of fresh pressed ginger juice in there, scallions, coriander for the brightness of it,” she said. “It’s the perfect balance of sweet, salt, spice.”
On Mondays, when Yuan Wonton is closed, the kitchen staff prepares as many as 7,000 hand-made dumplings for the week. They form an assembly line where one person rolls out dough, another fills it with meat and other ingredients, and another folds it.
“Our product is very, very labor intensive,” Wong said. “We’re making every single dumpling by scratch, by hand. There’s no dumpling machines here making our dumplings. We’re pleating every single one, cutting every piece of dough.”
“This is how I’m holding onto my family’s memories,” Wong said.
Modernized presentation
For the five Nguyen sisters, a now-closed family-owned Vietnamese restaurant on Federal Boulevard was the foundation for the three places they now own.
Thao Nguyen and An Nguyen co-own Dân Dã at 9945 E. Colfax Ave. Another sister, Thoa Nguyen, owns Bahn and Butter next door while Thu Nguyen owns New Saigon Bakery on Federal Boulevard. The youngest of the sisters, Kha Nguyen, floats between restaurants to help while she finishes college.
The five Nguyen sisters, all of whom own new Asian restaurants in the metro area, pose for a portrait at Dan Da restaurant in Aurora on Aug. 20, 2024. They are from left to right: An, Thao, Thoa, center, Kha, and Thu, right, holding her daughter Taylee, 2. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
The sisters grew up playing and then working in New Saigon, a popular Vietnamese restaurant that their parents — Vietnamese immigrants who came to Denver in the early 1970s — owned for 30 years. They sold the the restaurant in 2017 and it closed in 2024, but their legacy thrives through their daughters’ businesses, in what they call an “elevated” way.
An Nguyen was handpicked by their mother, Ha Pham, to become the cook in the family, and Dân Dã’s menu offers plenty of dishes that were on her parents’ old menu.
For example, Bo Luc Lac is a traditional Vietnamese meal found frequently at local restaurants. The recipe was passed down from the Nguyen’s mother, and it was extremely popular at New Saigon. But every chef or cook who cooks it makes it a little bit differently.
An’s is a cubed beef tenderloin stir-fried with soy sauce, butter, garlic and black pepper and served with a salad covered in a fish-sauce vinaigrette dressing. At New Saigon, Pham served Bo Luc Lac with iceberg lettuce and sliced tomatoes. At Dân Dã, it comes with artisan lettuce and tastier cherry tomatoes. “So now the plating on that dish is completely different,” An said. “There’s certain ingredients in there that bring it up for the taste buds.”
“Because An was trained under my mom the flavors are all there. It’s just the presentation is different,” Thao Nguyen said. “Her presentation is more modernized.”
“You could just throw together a plate of stir fry and eat it and have the same flavors,” An added. “But people are eating with their eyes first.”
Owner Thoa Nguyen fills a customer’s order while working at Bánh & Butter Bakery Café, an Asian fusion bakery that she started in Aurora on Aug. 20, 2024. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
Thoa Nguyen, the fourth sister, owns and operates Banh & Butter Bakery Cafe next door to Dân Dã. She is a French-trained pastry chef so the bakery counter inside is filled with croissants, cakes, tarts and other sweets. Her menu also includes banh mi sandwiches on house-baked baguettes and Parisienne sandwiches with ham or turkey on a baguette.
Thoa said she first opened without the Vietnamese sandwiches on the menu but customers were confused because she had the word “banh” in the restaurant’s name. Banh is the Vietnamese word for pastry or bread and is used interchangeably. She had resisted banh mi because it is the specialty of New Saigon Bakery and Deli, which is owned by her sister, Thu Nguyen.
“People who want something traditional will hate my banh mi sandwiches,” Thoa Nguyen said. “Mine’s a little bit more Asian fusion and the bakery is Asian fusion.”
If someone wants a more traditional Vietnamese sandwich, Thoa suggests they visit New Saigon Bakery and Deli, where their mother still works in the kitchen.
“Pastries are my passion and croissants are my specialty,” Thoa said. “If you want some really good croissants, then that’s what you come here for.”
Pho King Rapidos’ Vietnamese menu has influences from Denver and New York City, like a pho banh mi. (Provided by Pho King Rapidos)
Vietnamese-ish
When Long Nguyen opened Pho King Rapidos, which operates from a stall at Avanti Food & Beverage, 3200 Pecos St., no one in his Vietnamese family approved of the name.
“Everyone was like, ‘It’s crass,’” Nguyen, whose parents are from Vietnam, said.
But he wanted a name and a mascot that stood out. So he kept the name and incorporated Denver’s Big Blue Bear into the logo; the bear is wearing a crown cocked on his head like the iconic image of rapper Biggie Smalls. The name is a combination of an R-rated pun on the Vietnamese word “pho” and Tacos Rapidos, a 24-hour taco shop in Denver that Nguyen and his friends enjoyed as a teenager.
“Kind of the reason we named our restaurant what we named it was so we could have the flexibility of making what we wanted and not be narrowed into one food item,” he said.
He describes his food as “Vietamese-ish.”
“We try to say it’s influenced by Latino food and New York City but it’s Vietnamese,” he said.
One of Pho King Rapidos “Vietnamese-ish” dishes is the chicken over rice, which is his take on the meal served by halal food carts in New York City.
Pho King Rapidos’ version has chicken that is marinated in fish sauce, garlic, lemongrass and other seasonings served over rice that is cooked with ginger, garlic and turmeric. Nguyen created his own version of the white sauce poured over the dish at the halal carts, and then sprinkles his house-made tingly rice crisps on top to make a hearty, comforting bowl of food.
“You put all of those components together and it’s a harmonious bite,” he said.
Nguyen believes he and other second-generation Asian chefs learned to appreciate the restaurant industry because of their hard-working immigrant parents. Food, he said, is a connection to their heritage and their families. But Denver’s food scene is growing, and tastes are evolving. So he and others want to use their family’s old recipes and add their own creativity to them.
“There’s a core memory that unites people, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I want to share that,” he said.