Introduction to Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen
Carol Nguyen’s life quite literally changed overnight last November. She found herself sitting in a Houston music hall watching fellow restaurant owners make their way to a stage to receive awards at Michelin’s inaugural Texas Guide ceremony. Weeks earlier, she saw an email in her inbox inviting her to the Michelin awards ceremony and she thought it was spam. She ignored it, along with five other similar emails that followed. It wasn’t until a Michelin representative called her restaurant, Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen, she realized she was, in fact, on the invite list.
The Michelin Award Ceremony
As the awards ceremony went on and the seats around her emptied, Nguyen assumed she would go back to Dallas empty-handed. But then Ngon, the restaurant she opened in 2020 to honor her grandmother’s recipes, was called. “It was unreal,” Nguyen said. “I didn’t even know what it meant. I said, ‘What’s Bib Gourmand?’” Her Lower Greenville restaurant was just one of seven in North Texas last year to receive Michelin’s Bib Gourmand designation, which is given to restaurants that deliver great value for money.
Carol Nguyen opened Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen in Dallas’ Lower Greenville neighborhood in 2020.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
Impact of the Michelin Award
Nguyen said the award, which her restaurant received again this year, had a sweeping impact on her business. “Our sales have been up 40 to 60% since last year,” she said. “In the first two months after last year’s ceremony, we were up 75%.” Those early months with a Michelin award under their belts were nearly unsurvivable, Nguyen said. The dramatic, immediate and sustained increase in business was crushing. Nguyen and her small team worked for weeks on end without days off to keep up with the surge.
Ngon’s menu is made up of recipes from owner Carol Nguyen’s grandmother, like this pho tai gau bo vien.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
Challenges and Opportunities
“I said, ‘If we keep busy like this, we’re going to die,’” she said. “It was overwhelming. After our shifts, we could not feel our legs.” During those months, Nguyen clocked an average of 25,000 steps a day. She stopped going to the gym. There was no need to. Eventually, traffic to the restaurant leveled out and became more manageable, Nguyen said. She also hired three more people in the kitchen and three more in the dining room.
Ngon’s owner Carol Nguyen (left) prepares a delivery order in the restaurant’s kitchen.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
