Grand Tasting Menu
Rotating seasonally and highlighting the culinary significance within regions and time periods significant to he and his family, Chef Thai takes a deeper exploration into the history of Vietnamese Cuisine with his Grand Tasting Menus.
$68 Per Person • 3 Elegant Courses - 8 dishes • Served Family Style • Optional Beverage Pairing - $40 Per Person
Grand Tasting Menu Archive
View our past Grand Tasting Menus below.
Chef's Grand Tasting Tour | Northern Vietnam
Chef Thai explores the depth of flavors from the North that will warm your soul and excite your palate. In Northern Vietnam, temperatures are cooler and locals enjoy heartier dishes that are braised, curried, stewed and preserved. This season Chef celebrates flavors that his mother brought to the warm South after she fled from the North on foot to escape war.
Chef's Grand Tasting Tour | Celebrating Southern Vietnam
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Thailand - I love to study the food and culture that embraces Vietnam and surrounding countries to understand relationships or similarities and how “authentic cuisine” within their respective regions came to be. With this menu, I recognize flavors from my childhood that reflect flavor and ingredients also native to Thailand.
While Thai food is generally full of spice and heat from chilis, Vietnamese food tends to be more subtle with spice and heat which allows the guest to add the spice levels to their preference. Take the Thai-style papaya salad with mortar and pestled Thai chili, lime wedges, and dried shrimp, while Vietnamese Papaya Salad uses a balance of rice wine vinegar, sweetness from sugar and sesame oil to compliment the umami flavor in the dressing.
Thai-style marinated meats, peanut sauces, noodles and curries, we each have similar but different approaches to these South East Asian classic dishes. This menu is meant to be fun. Enjoy these three courses that celebrate Thai-Vietnamese cuisine.
— Chef Thai
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Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, is the largest city in Vietnam and always a destination on our travels to Vietnam. Saigon is known for vibrant street life, French-Colonial Architecture, night markets and exceptional street food. I have so many memories of street side grilled quail, variations of rice paper dishes and grilled seafood.
Danielle & I sourced so many of our furnishings, glassware, bamboo and decor throughout the markets and through our family in Saigon. The seats you are sitting in are all made by my family and shipped across seas to Chicago in a shipping container.
On this seasons tasting menu, I preserve the essence of classic Saigon street food and elevate it HaiSous-style. Please enjoy my Modern Saigonese Tasting Menu.
— Chef Thai
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The Essence of HANOI VIETNAM - A Note From Chef Thai
The birthplace of my parents is just north of Hanoi, Vietnam. After the French left the country, the communist party grew into power, and over one million people fled from the Northern tip to the South to flee oppression, mostly on foot. My mother walked from just North of Hanoi and settled south one hour Northeast of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. She settled and raised us in a small town created by French missionaries called Đồng Nai. This is where my siblings and I were born.
Here, I explore a range of textures and flavors reminiscent of Hanoi Vietnam, made with refined French techniques. I have modernized the essence of classic Hanoi dishes I grew up on, like Chả Cá, a century-old recipe using local fish marinated in turmeric and spices with dill, a rarely used herb in our cuisine. Or Bánh Cuốn, another traditional street food using ground pork and wood ear mushroom rolled in a silky sheet of steamed rice paper.
Enjoy some of my favorite taste memories with this fun Summer Tasting Menu.
— Chef Thai
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A Brief History:
This tasting menu celebrates Japanese-Vietnamese Cuisine. During two significant periods in Vietnamese history, 1905-1910 and 1940-45, Japan played a considerable part in shaping political and social developments within Vietnam. Aspiring for independence, many Vietnamese looked to Japan for practical help and guidance in pursuing national recovery from French occupancy.
Food:
There are cultural similarities within the cuisine. The Japanese introduced Vietnamese to eating raw fish, yet prefer fermented soy sauce to Vietnamese native fermented fish sauce. Tofu was introduced to become a staple. The variety of noodles that can now be found in Hoi An, a place of concentrated Japanese settlement in Vietnam, incorporates udon, soba & egg noodles for ramen style soups or stir fry. These range significantly from the traditional rice noodle historically found throughout the county.
Enjoy items from our Lo Dat, Vietnamese clay pot grills. These are charcoal grills reflective of the Japanese style grill, the Robata, bring a unique flavor to the grilled asparagus and Robata Pork Stuffed Shiitake Mushrooms.
— Chef Thai
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This tasting menu celebrates Chinese-Vietnamese Cuisine and explores the adapted depths of flavors that roots from the ruling Chinese Dynasties that lasted over 1000 years. The Chinese brought culinary techniques like stir-frying and deep-frying, an array of noodles, dumplings, and even chopsticks.
This menu explores Chinese-derived cosmological principles of yin and yang, or balance in cuisine as well as the five elements, Ngũ Hành. These 5 elements Metal, Wood, Water, Fire & Earth, are believed to control the change and movement of the universe. In the culinary realm of Chinese influence in Vietnamese cuisine, ultimate balance is created by highlighting these fundamental principles with a combination of hot/cold, salty/sweet, sour/bitter, crispy vs soft and silky dishes.
— Chef Thai
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This tasting menu celebrates French-Vietnamese Cuisine. The French colonization of Vietnam began in the 1880s and lasted six decades. This time had a profound impact on the lives of Vietnamese people. Culinarily, the French brought staple dishes and items such as pates, sauces, butter, yogurt, flan, coffee & baguette. Due to the historic and unwavering resilience of the Vietnamese people, they rose above and regained control of their land and refined their new culinary flavors and techniques to reflect many dishes we all know and love today such as phô & banh mi.
—Chef Thai
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Chef Thai’s special summer tasting menu celebrates Vung Tàu, a port city on a southern peninsula in Vietnam. Think sunshine, white sandy beaches and an ocean setting experience, Vung Tàu is known for its vast seafood restaurants, serving fresh caught seafood that comes directly from the Eastern Sea.
Vung Tàu is known for fantastic seafood restaurants and fisheries where you pick and choose your favorite seafood to be grilled or steamed right on the beach. Beach-goers enjoy ocean side snacks from the local vendors that walk along the beach while fresh seafood is being prepared to your liking.
— Chef Thai
