The Villager Newspaper - Focus on business - Coming in for Saigon ...
The chicken curry stew features sweet potatoes, butternut squash, broccoli, carrots, potatoes and onions in a yellow curry with a touch of coconut milk and chili.
Lightening strikes, but tasty food survives
By Peter Jones
Michelle and Victor Chan have survived the trenches of the Vietnam restaurant wars, despite a lightening strike fire last year that closed Greenwood Village?s Saigon Landing for six months. Photos by Peter Jones
The owners of Saigon Landing hope lightning won?t strike twice for the Vietnamese restaurant.
Except perhaps as a metaphor for new opportunity.
In August of last year, the Greenwood Village eatery was hit, quite literally, by a bolt of electrostatic discharge ? a spark of bad luck that closed the restaurant for more than six months.
Although the business reopened earlier this year, co-owner Michelle Chan says momentum is crucial in the restaurant industry, and it has been difficult to put Saigon Landing?s lightening back into the bottle.
?It?s been hard with the economy,? she said. ?Lunch has been good, but dinner has been slow. People don?t know we?re here so we want to get the word out. They think we closed forever.?
For the record, Greenwood Village?s Saigon Landing is once again serving its range of authentic Vietnamese cuisine.
The menu includes southeastern Asian favorites, from noodle bowls, clay pots and chicken curry stew to Vietnamese marinated steak and a selection of succulent seafood and vegetarian choices.
?I grew up with my mom cooking a lot, so I learned from her,? said Chan, who is also the restaurant?s lead chef. ?Everything is fresh. I make the same things for my own family.?
Chan plays up the French influence that has literally spiced up Vietnamese cuisine since the 19th century when the European nation led military conquests into ?French Indochina.?
But the chef is not above tinkering with an ethnic fare that has seen centuries of extra-continental adjustments.
?I like to play with it and make it better,? she said. ?Other people put a lot of chili in the curry. I don?t do it like that. I experiment all the time. I like to add more color.?
Saigon Landing?s home-style favorites are prepared with an artful eye to please the eyes as well as the taste buds. Her pineapple duck has all the artful imagery that the name might conjure. Even the grilled lamb chops are served with colorful flair.
Michelle Chan and her husband Victor bring decades and a continent of experience to the restaurant business. Michelle?s Chinese family emigrated from South Vietnam to the United States when she was 12 years old. Her parents had fled Communist China to pursue business opportunities years earlier.
Victor came from Hong Kong to America, where he eventually partnered in a series of successful Chinese restaurants, including The Empress in southwest Denver.
When the couple married in 1988, Michelle was working as an underwriter for a mortgage company, but was looking for a way to explore her lifelong amateur passion in the kitchen.
?I didn?t have the chef experience, but I loved to cook at home,? she said.?
The couple soon began opening restaurants together ? including downtown Denver?s China Terrace and the first Saigon Landing in Evergreen in 2005.
Although the Chans intended to emphasize the cuisine from Michelle?s side of the family at the aptly named Saigon Landing, the couple soon found themselves ever so slightly expanding into other culinary regions of the Asian continent.
?People kept asking, ?Do you have phad thai?? So I started serving phad thai,? the chef said. ?Then they said, ?Do you have sesame chicken?? So we?ve added a few things here and there.?
Customers from south Denver were also asking for a closer location than Evergreen. By popular request, in 2009 Saigon came in for a landing off Arapahoe Road in Greenwood Village.
The couple still owns the original Saigon Landing in Evergreen and The Empress, an authentic favorite among southwest Denver?s Chinese American community.
After enduring a lightening strike and other challenges, the Chans say responding to customers is the key to survival.
?The customer is always right,? Michelle Chan said. ?If someone says it?s too spicy, it?s too spicy. I?ll take it back an redo it again until they say they love it.?
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