Peter Cuong Franklin has put Saigon on the gourmet map: his restaurant Anan became the first in the city to earn a Michelin star. But his ambitions are far from over...
The story
Peter Cuong Franklin's story is truly incredible. But when did fame come knocking? You can't truly understand Peter Cuong Franklin's cuisine and success without starting with his biography. Born in a small village nestled in the mountains of Vietnam, where his mother ran a noodle stall in front of their house, he was twelve years old when he was put on a plane to the United States in 1975, losing all contact with his parents at the end of the war. Adopted by a family in the Navy, he grew up in Connecticut, graduated from Yale, and began working in finance, from New York to London, and finally to Hong Kong.
In 1995, when a childhood friend managed to locate his mother, he set foot in Vietnam for the first time to meet her. However, there was something missing: that's why in 2008, he enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and then trained in prestigious restaurants like Alinea in Chicago and Nahm in Bangkok. He eventually opened his modern Vietnamese cuisine restaurant, Chôm Chôm, in Hong Kong in 2013. After four years, a separation from business partners, and a divorce from his wife, new desires took hold in his heart: "I felt that Vietnam was calling me back, for some reason I wasn't sure of at the time. I felt like a prodigal son." Another five years passed from his return to the opening of Anan (which means "eat eat") inside a characteristic five-story tube house overlooking a market in Saigon.
He describes it as "Moi cuisine" or "new Vietnamese," following the footsteps of "new Nordic" and similar trends, highlighting the elevation of local ingredients through contemporary techniques in a glocal context. This allowed him to reinvent specialties like bánh xèo, a turmeric crepe served in taco form, and turn nướng, a rice sheet, into a chorizo and mozzarella-topped pizza. "The hybridization of different cultures forces you to challenge and change," he comments. And it's an approach deeply rooted in the country's gastronomy, heavily influenced by French and Chinese cuisine due to colonial history. Nowadays, many Western products are successfully emulated, such as various vegetables and cured meats, adding color to the palette without the need for intercontinental travel.
But memories of his mother's noodle stall, where he happily helped clean and prepare, resurfaced. "There's a kind of rhythm and process that anyone working in a restaurant knows." So, when he took the stage at the presentation ceremony of the first Michelin Guide in Vietnam in 2023, he dedicated the star, the only one in Saigon and three others in the country, to her: "Mom, this is for you!"
Franklin didn't stop there: in 2019, he opened Nhau Nhau ("drink drink") in the same building, a venue dedicated to mixology, and in 2023, Pot au Pho, a sandwich and noodle service counter with French and Japanese influences, seating 16 guests. These are popular dishes he initially tried to ignore but couldn't overlook. His hope, however, is for Vietnam to be known far beyond its street food, in the realm of fine dining, and for this, he wants to mentor young chefs in the country.
Foto: Crediti Anan Saigon
