One of Toronto’s hottest new hubs for Vietnamese cuisine just so happens to be a shipping container located in a back alley.
Hidden though it may be, Com Nuoc has been steadily growing in popularity among those in the know ever since opening at the beginning of July, proving that, if the food is good enough, there’s nowhere people won’t go for it.
Founded, owned and operated by Thanh Thai, a local chef with over 20 years of experience in the restaurant industry, which started with her working at his family’s restaurant at the age of 12, the idea for Com Nuoc was originally born on Thanh’s annual trip to Vietnam with his fiancée.
“We love it there. From the culture, the people, the street-side dining and just the overall vibes,” Thanh us. “We wanted to share the culture with the streets of Toronto, and what better way to experience culture than with food, thus the planning for Com Nuoc started.”
This isn’t Thanh’s first stab at starting his own restaurant business in the city; in fact, far from it.
He’s opened and operated a pizza shop and hotpot restaurant previously, and is still a chef partner at a renowned ramen restaurant in Toronto, so while the Vietnamese food angle was new, building something from the ground up was somewhat old hat.
The dream wasn’t necessarily to operate Com Nuoc out of a shipping container, though, but when searching for the right brick-and-mortar space, nothing really grabbed Thanh’s attention.
“We wanted something unique and not just a strip mall plaza kinda restaurant,” Thanh says. “Randomly, this container popped up on a Food and Beverage Facebook Page, I reached out and did a viewing and just fell in love with the space.”
Operating a skeleton staff (only three workers fit in the container at a time) in such a cramped space has certainly not been without its challenges, Thanh tells us. “But I love a good challenge.”
Also available through delivery apps like DoorDash, Ritual and Uber Eats, Com Nuoc serves up a surprisingly extensive menu of Vietnamese street food favourites, like rice bowls topped with grilled pork, grilled chicken or Vietnamese-style meatballs, and noodle dishes with vermicelli noodles, proteins like grilled chicken and lemongrass tofu, mixed greens and pickles.
On top of that, Com Nuoc serves an array of sides, like shrimp or vegetarian fresh rolls, chicken meatballs and chicken salad, all at an appealing price point of $12 or less.
If you do opt to head to the restaurant in person, you can eat in on their small-but-mighty rooftop patio (yes, you read that right), or at a cozy setup on ground level out front.
Com Nuoc, Thanh says, directly translates to “rice water” but is used to mean “having a meal” in Vietnamese, which, he says, pretty much sums up what he is trying to achieve through the eatery.
“That is exactly what I envisioned the restaurant to be,” Thanh says. “A place where you can come and just have a nice meal, nothing fancy, nothing expensive. Just a quality meal.”
Having spent much of his culinary career in downtown Toronto kitchens, the choice to set up shop in Riverside felt to Thanh, at the time, like a risky one, but he says he couldn’t be happier with his choice of location.
“I’ve been overjoyed this past week by the warm welcome of Queen East and Riverside,” Thanh says. “Everyone is super friendly and supportive. I live and worked in the west side of downtown for the past 10 years and was a bit worried going to Queen East but I think I made the right choice with this location.”
So, while he does hope to open Com Nuoc as a true brick-and-mortar eventually, the shipping container will certainly cut it for now, even despite its challenges, and it seems like Toronto agrees.
Cum Nuoc can be found in the laneway behind 639 Queen St. E.
