Whether it is an art studio or a kitchen, Thoa Nguyen has found outlets for her creativity.
The oldest of five children who fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon, Nguyen cooked for her entire family in a refugee camp in Pennsylvania and later in Denver while her parents worked multiple jobs to support them.
She started working in Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants at age 15 and continued through college, even though she was pursuing a dream to open a gallery of her own artwork with a six-year foray into graphic design.
“I knew I had to make money, [and] graphic design…didn’t pay the bills,” Nguyen explained. But “I still love restaurant work: It’s fast-paced, the connection with the people and the food.”
Besides, “cooking is another expression of being creative — it’s [just] more practical,” she said.
Opening her first restaurant, Chinoise Café on Queen Anne, in 1996 “seemed very natural,” Nguyen said. “I never had to worry about failure: I knew I wasn’t going to fail. I always knew I’d open my own restaurant. I even played pretend [when I was a child] and opened a restaurant.
“It was meant to be, I think,” she added. “[Chinoise] was busy from the get-go.”
Nguyen opened three more Chinoise restaurants: She closed two of them and sold the third one to her business partner and longtime chef, Jae Ahrens.
All of the pan-Asian eateries were doing fine at the time, she said, but she found her “creativity lacking” in having a chain of restaurants.
But she found more success with Thoa’s Restaurant & Lounge in Downtown Seattle, which she opened as The Islander & Tiki Lounge in 2003, serving Hawaiian and Polynesian food. She returned from a 2007 trip to her homeland with a renewed appreciation for Vietnam and changed the restaurant’s name and menu to “reflect my motherland’s cuisine,” she said.
Nguyen opened Wabi-Sabi Sushi Bar & Restaurant in Columbia City, where she lived for nine years, in October 2009 — this time, focusing on Japanese cuisine with Korean accents.
“Being in Vietnam, you know only one cuisine. In the United States, you can eat all kinds of food — I was intrigued, amazed,” she said. “Even with Asian foods, there are so many differences: It varies with ingredients and methods. They are similar, but there’s something different [in each culture]. It’s motivating [to cook with].”
With such a multitude of ingredients to work with, Nguyen finds it difficult to pick a favorite. “It’s like asking an artist what is their favorite color to paint with,” she said.
But she admits she enjoys cooking with beef, fish and other seafood, cilantro and basil. Her favorite dish to make is the Hawaiian ahi poke because of its protein and spices.
While she considers opening another Chinoise Café farther away from the city, Nguyen is still determined to open her art gallery when she retires. “I do artwork constantly. The first thing I fell into was art. [But] I’ll put it away to do later,” she said.