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In a little cafe on the bottom floor of a Rosslyn office building, Vi Nguyen, then 8, and his younger brother made coffee and eggs and spaghetti and whatever else was needed to help his mom’s, Xuan Nguyen, business.
In 2004, she opened her sixth restaurant and what Nguyen says was the first Vietnamese restaurant in Leesburg, Xuan Saigon. It wasn’t until decades later that Nguyen, then in the mortgage industry, wanted to get back into the kitchen. “After reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, [I thought] ‘Man this is amazing … I want to be in the grind.'”
There are probably thousands of stories just like this, of Bourdain, who died last month, serving as the culinary crusader, the inspiration to run a kitchen and eat the world.
For Nguyen, he enrolled in the now-shuttered L’Academie de Cuisine, though his mom said, as moms do, “You don’t need that. I can teach you everything.” But Nguyen wanted to learn technique and French fundamentals and took his training to fine dining restaurants, like Fabio Trabocchi’s former Tysons Corner restaurant Maestro. After stints all over Northern Virginia, he was recruited to serve as a Chipotle general manager, then Roti and TaKorean.
He soon started thinking up his own fast-casual empire. “You can serve really great food at really affordable prices,” says Nguyen, on why he’s entering the field. “I love feeding people. The target audience is everybody. It’s not just the people that can pay $500 for dinner.”
Kovi Asian Street Food Kitchen sells Asian and Pacific Island dishes, inflected with an American spirit of trend chasing and cultural mash-ups. There are tacos filled with Korean meats (bulgogi, barbecue), bahn mi, rice bowls, a slate of slaws (kimchi, cabbage-cilantro and kale-broccoli, which is dressed in a peanut sauce Nguyen hopes to retail) plus, of course, poke with plenty of topping and sauce options. There’s hand-cut fries too, with Mexican-style crumbled cheese and grilled kimchi as garnishes.
He’s still playing around in the kitchen, flirting with braised and charred octopus tacos, double-fried, barbecue-sauced wings and kimchi quesadillas.
Opened as a brick-and-mortar store three weeks ago in Arlington near Four Mile Run, Kovi started life as a truck in the fall of 2017. After a brief hiatus to concentrate on launching the store, the truck will be back to roaming in Arlington in the coming days. These aren’t the only places to find Kovi, which is a blend of the words Korean (ko) and Vietnamese (vi). Nguyen already signed a lease for a location in Leesburg, and is looking for spaces in Tysons Corner, Mosaic District, Maryland and D.C.
His mom, who has since sold her Leesburg restaurant, helps with Kovi. With her 120-year-old knife (“it looks like a old-school carrot peeler that’s six times the size,” says Ngyuen), she is cutting daikon by hand; it’s later pickled and added to poke bowls. “She really inspired me,” says Nguyen. “She came to this country with nothing. She’s been able to open restaurants without a high school diploma.”
This is where Nguyen apologizes for getting emotional. “We’ve worked hard because she’s instilled this work ethic.” Nguyen is one of five; he calls himself the black sheep. “I’m the only one who followed in her footsteps.” // Kovi: 2921 S. Glebe Road, Arlington
