A new restaurant in Baldwin Village is refining Vietnamese cuisine and culture to the max. Awash in dark wood tones, red velvet curtains and decadent chandeliers, Petite Lune Saigon combines French sophistication with classic Vietnamese hospitality.
The new restaurant — and its name — pays homage to the French influence that shaped Vietnam’s iconic architecture and cuisine. The atmosphere is so authentically refined that the owner is known by her staff simply and respectfully as ‘Madame.’ After years of dedicating herself to her family, Madame is stepping into the spotlight to realize a lifelong dream, creating a space where world-class hospitality feels as intimate as a private home.
“She loves hospitality, she loves serving and she loves hosting — that’s in our cultural background,” says Tru Cao, the general manager of Petite Lune Saigon. “In our culture, from the moment that someone walks into our house, all our attention and all our intention goes into that guest experience.”
Cao explains that Madame traveled a lot and has been to a lot of Vietnamese restaurants, though has never found that same focus on culinary hospitality which is so crucial in Vietnamese culture.
“It’s nothing grandiose or anything like that,” he says. “Hospitality always goes back to hosting — how can we host people with the utmost, sincere pride? She really wanted to capture that into this business. How do we, as a hospitality business, reinvent what hospitality means? Not just make a place for you to come eat and drink but to see it as if someone special is coming to your house.”
As for the restaurant’s name — a combination of “little moon” in French and “refined” in Vietnamese — it symbolizes the growth and transformation that comes through the cycles of the moon.
“Let’s see how this little moon can become a full moon or a new moon,” Cao says.
A slim menu boasts the same luxe as the design of the room, offering elevated Vietnamese mains. Think rolls, grilled fish, wagyu fried rice and shaking beef. European wines, sake, and signature cocktails celebrating Vietnam’s ingredients, including lemongrass, jasmine, and mint leaves, round out the drink menu.
“It’s taking most of our culinary background, home-cooked food that people love to serve their guests and redesigning it in a way that people can enjoy in a different way when you’re coming to a restaurant,” Cao says. “We’re sticking to the authentic Vietnamese dishes that we were brought up eating and enjoying.”
To follow the theme of the restaurant, Petite Lune Saigon will be hosting monthly full moon events and prixe fixe menus. Once Petite Lune Saigon becomes more established after the Grand Opening, Cao says they will be looking to register the New Moon Foundation whereby some proceeds from these events will go right back to the community.
“When the New Moon Foundation is incorporated and it’s running, she (Madame) can step back and feel proud of that — not just the restaurant of great food and drinks, but really what she’s building here,” Cao says.
Cao explains that many of the employees are women because Madame wants to give power back those who are mothers and housewives and perhaps not living life as they envisioned it.
“Hopefully she will carry that forward as an empowering message to others that we don’t have to follow society’s standards of what a woman can or can’t do,” he says. “That’s part of her message through this Foundation.”
