“How much Hawaiian food can you cook?” Thoa Nguyen asks on the
phone. The question is purely rhetorical: She’s already said aloha (the
good-bye version) to her restaurant the Islander and changed it into
her namesake Thoa’s, which features the cuisine of her birthplace,
Vietnam.
Don’t get Thoa wrong: She loves Hawaii. But she’s a canny
entrepreneur (and matter-of-fact about it). Starting in 1996, she
built Seattle’s Chinoise franchise, part of the popularization of
pan-Asian food cornerstoned by Wild Ginger in its heyday. (She
eventually sold two Chinoises, which closed; she continues to run the
Queen Anne and Madison Valley branches.) She opened the Islander at the
foot of Union Street in 2003, but, she says, “I didn’t see it being
booming.”
Then Thoa returned, for the first time since she was 11, to Vietnam.
She traveled all around, which the war prevented when she was a child;
she ate and took cooking classes with other chefs, cookbook writers,
and various people affiliated with PeaceTrees Vietnam, a
landmine-clearing nonprofit operating in the former DMZ. Thoa is on
the board of PeaceTrees. She’s a clever businessperson, but she also
appears to be approximately the nicest person in the world. (If the
photograph on the Thoa’s website is any indication, she’s also a
stone fox.)
Thoa thought: “Why wouldn’t I do Vietnamese?” She knew: “This is the
right thing to do.” It sounds like pure instinct, but she did another
year and a half of research. One of her friends finally, convincingly,
said, “Vietnamese is the new Thai.” (This is totally true:
Beloved Monsoon paved the way locally for the popularity of Tamarind
Tree and the awesome Green Leaf. Recent additions: Monsoon East in
Bellevue and Tamarind Tree’s new iteration, Long, in the former QUBE
space downtown. In the rumor stage: a new Vietnamese restaurant to
replace Lower Queen Anne’s Moxie.)
Thoa’s dining room, with its rounded booths and birds of paradise
and elegant fluffy-thatched palapas, looks ready for a musical
number involving women in elaborate silk outfits with impressive
headdresses. Thoa’s lounge, with its rattan furniture and hanging
parasols and tropical-blossom art, looks ready for calmly decadent
relaxing. One corner has the same view as ART at the posh new Four
Seasons across the way: ferries sliding across Elliott Bay,
wheeling gulls, red cranes.
The dinner menu isn’t as pricey as the surroundings
suggest—wok entrées average $15. But if your wallet is
looking thin, Thoa’s happy hour (Mon–Fri 4–7 pm, all day
Sun) deserves its name: bargain-priced beer, wine, sake, and (big)
martinis along with treats such as fresh Willapa Bay oyster shooters
with wasabi cocktail sauce for $1 each, jicama summer rolls for $5,
spicy sesame-chili jewel-red ahi salad for $6. FYI, it’s pronounced
twahz. 
When I first read this, I was like, “Christ, not another fucking pho place.” Let’s face it, that’s what the mainland masses think. And if you’re from Hawaii, where there’s REAL Vietnamese food, entrenched for decades, not a new-found trend, another fucking pho place is the last thing any of us need in the recessioned Pacific Northwest. It’s like another chicken teriyaki joint. God help us all.
But the last paragraph, honing in on the cheap stuff (happy hour), sounds like at least this hot Vietnamese chick’s trying to do something different with the cuisine, what with (for example) summer rolls done in jicama. If she can elevate the foul fowl stink of a stir-fry, and elevate that into an art form, I may visit this place myself.
I’ve eaten there several times since the switchover. I like the steak frites. If you think she’s a stone fox from her picture you should see her in person!
Oh man, she is a total fox. And the menu looks fantastic. I’m ready to chow down.
Highly recommended. I’ve traveled to Vietnam and the food was actually better at Thoa’s then during my two months spent in the country. I think the menu’s just a slightly bit pricey for everyday lunch but the portions are good and the taste is fantastic.