You can get pho at Binge, a Vietnamese restaurant that opened last year in Stockton. Or you can come with friends and cover the table with small plates of beef carpaccio, bone marrow, oysters grilled with garlic butter, or banh mi fries topped with a heaping helping of jalapeños, pickled daikon and carrots. The dishes are sized for sharing, with bright, piquant flavors that keep you reaching for your neighbor’s plate.

In Vietnamese, this dining-together concept is called nhâu. It’s a “lively social gathering centered around eating and drinking,” says Binge owner Linh Tran. “We typically binge over a variety of small, flavorful dishes that are meant to be shared” and paired with alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. “Nhâu represents a core aspect of Vietnamese social life, emphasizing the importance of connection, hospitality and unwinding together,” she adds. Think of it as hanging out with people you care about for no specific reason other than to enjoy each other’s company over food and drinks while checking worry at the door.

Thanks to decades of entrepreneurship, Capital Region diners have long had access to some of the best and most varied Vietnamese cuisine in the country. The region has had a strong Vietnamese community since the 1970s, when refugees settled here in large numbers after the Vietnam War. Sacramento alone has over 42,000 residents of Vietnamese descent, the 10th largest population in the country, and has long been known for its vibrant Little Saigon on Stockton Boulevard, recognized as an official neighborhood by the Sacramento City Council in 2010.

But Tran and others say that the region is ready for more. Combining traditional flavors with influences from California and farther afield, this new generation of restaurateurs are serving a fresh, innovative take on Vietnamese cuisine.

Binge, eat and repeat

Customers at Binge usually order many dishes, ending with a hot pot. “When we drink and eat, before we leave,” Tran says, “we drink something soupy to help with the hangover the next day.” Pho also helps with the next-day pains, she says; it’s comforting, hydrating, and loaded with proteins and spices. She used to offer pho on the lunch menu, but due to demand, she now offers it throughout the day.

A small-plates-focused, party-ready Vietnamese restaurant may not be a new concept, Tran says, but it’s new to Stockton and already bringing a new vibe to the city.

More, please

Since 2020, owner Mymy Nguyen has been trailblazing the innovative Vietnamese food scene with her banh mi tacos served on corn tortillas, salmon carpaccio and wagyu pho in Sacramento. All that food can be found at her Saigon Alley Kitchen & Bar in Midtown.

Nguyen opened a Natomas spot shortly after, with a third one taking over the former Noodles & Company World Kitchen in Folsom’s Broadstone Marketplace in 2025. The serial restaurateur wanted to add more variety to Sacramento’s food scene while cherishing her mother’s recipes and sharing them through her bar-forward food and craft cocktails.

Nguyen’s Midtown location is nhâu-centric. Her tapas-style dishes can be ordered strategically to create endless combinations of rice plates, vermicelli and lettuce wraps. Even though the Natomas location bears the same name, the condensed menu offers fare you might expect at a pho house but with more modernity and a twist on the familiar, like vermicelli bowls topped with charred mackerel instead of the more common grilled lemongrass pork chops. There are also a variety of banh mi sandwiches and a noodle bar with a diversified pho portfolio like pho bo luc lac (noodle soup with shaken beef) and shrimp pho, but not the wagyu pho from the Midtown location.

If you’re seeking a bowl of piping hot comfort, Nguyen’s other concepts, SitLo Saigon Vietnamese Noodle Bar in Elk Grove and Davis and Saigon 88 in Laguna, are noodle-based, with chicken as the star of the show at the latter. At SitLo, it’s about giving diners a taste of what it feels like to dine at the open market alleyways in Vietnam, where vendors are experts at their craft.

At SitLo and Saigon 88, broths are simmered for over 72 hours to provide deep umami flavor. The thin pho noodles many are accustomed to are available, but opt for their soft, fresh noodles for an experience closer to that you might get in Vietnam.

Take two

Sacramento chef Billy Ngo is best known in Sacramento for the buzzy Japanese restaurants he’s opened in the city, including Kru, Kodaiko Ramen and Fish Face Poke Bar, but his latest concept comes from closer to home. Slated to open in January 2025, Chu Mai is a contemporary Asian restaurant that focuses on the Chinese and Vietnamese flavors Ngo grew up with. It’s named after his mother, who passed away in 2020, and also honors his late friend Ari Reza Youseffi, who designed the Midtown location.

Some of it’s been done before by Ngo himself. Ngo says the new dining spot is a reincarnation of an idea he introduced in 2010 called the Red Lotus. The Red Lotus, opened a few years after Kru, was an elevated Chinese food and craft cocktail eatery that lasted 18 months and served enhanced dim sum favorites like eel and black truffle vegetarian dumplings. Ngo says it didn’t work out because people wanted a certain thing and they were doing something else.

“Sacramento wasn’t ready,” Ngo says. “It was just too new-concept.” But the food scene has changed in the last 10 years, he says, thanks in part to the influx of new residents moving to Sacramento from bigger cities who might have already been exposed to an eclectic mix of cuisines.

At Chu Mai, Ngo is excited about introducing bò kho bolognese. Bò kho is a Vietnamese beef stew usually eaten with a baguette or egg noodles; this version will be cooked down into a sauce and served with pappardelle. Other items Ngo is currently conceptualizing include pho spice-rubbed steaks and congee pot pie. Instead of a pie crust, expect a Chinese donut shielding the savory rice porridge.

“I just feel like people are more open-minded and want to try new things,” Ngo says, “and that opens the doors for restaurateurs and chefs to try new, cool concepts and stuff, instead of playing it safe.”

Signs of the times

At Vanessa’s Bistro and Vanessa’s Bistro 2, located in Berkeley and Walnut Creek, respectively, owner Vi Nguyen and her mother, Vanessa Dang, the executive chef, have been experimenting with a similar concept since 2006 when Vanessa’s Bistro opened. They started out offering traditional Vietnamese French dishes but had to fine-tune their menu to accommodate the region’s taste buds.

“A lot of people were sending the food back.” Nguyen says. “We use a lot of fish sauce, a lot of oyster sauce, and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s too salty.’” After much trial and error, they’ve perfected their menu, which has been a fixture for 18 years, and offer nightly specials. Their five-spice, honey-marinated Cornish hen did so well it has been on the specials for a month.

“Mom always has a lot of ideas going on in her head,” Nguyen says, “so she tries to spoil the customers a little bit” with the specials. Occasionally, they’ll do a chef tasting dinner with a wine pairing. “That’s when my mom really gets to just get all of her flavors down on paper,” Nguyen says. “This is almost like my own private, personal supper club.”

Vanessa’s Bistro 2 opened in 2009 is owned by her brother, Michael Nguyen. Although their mother crafted the menu with slight variations, the vibe at Vanessa’s Bistro 2 is entirely different.

Nguyen says her brother’s menu caters to the clientele out there, and his rent is four times what hers is at Berkeley, so expect higher prices. The most expensive item is the fresh Dungeness and snow crab with garlic butter noodles at $40, and tapas selections like fresh prawn spring rolls, thinly sliced filet mignon carpaccio and pulled pork tacos starting at $13, $14 and $15 per item. The crowd is also “more young, more hip, a little bit more loud, like a lounge kind of vibe,” she says. And he sells banh mi sandwiches, which she doesn’t.

Nguyen says food is like fashion: “It goes with the time.” When they first opened, tapas were in, but people had a hard time understanding Asian cuisine, apart from the usual noodle soups and sandwiches. Nguyen points out that food shows, like Anthony Bourdain’s, and Pinterest help people be more adventurous with their palates.

“If you drive up and down our street, there’s a lot of businesses closing now,” Nguyen says. “And I feel like it’s just like our time. People want to go out and eat, but because there are so many choices, a lot of places can’t sustain anymore. And so that’s why it’s like you almost kind of have to reinvent yourself with the times, just like music.”

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