When Darren Phan opened
Cilantro in Clifton six years ago, it was one of only two Vietnamese restaurants in Cincinnati (the other was
Song Long in Roselawn). Tucked away in a cozy 10x25 foot retail space that housed the former Jerusalem Café and situated on the western edge of UC's campus, Cilantro offers just a handful of two-top tables and a countertop that runs the length of the room peering into Phan's tiny, open kitchen. Then 27 year old Phan began sharing family's recipes, soups called 'pho' and 'sate' that shimmer with onions, noodles, and the restaurant's namesake herb floating in seemingly bottomless bowls of aromatic broth. The young chef cooked directly for his customers, got to know them on a first-name basis, made recommendations based on their tastes and educated them on the new flavors they were experiencing. Early on Phan attracted the attention of Cincinnati Magazine Dining Editor, Donna Covrett, who was impressed with the young entrepreneur.
"Opening a tiny pho shop in the midst of a neighborhood largely fueled by pizza, subs, and Indian stews was both risky and intuitive… Flavorful, healthy, inexpensive, fast food to go - it seems like such an obvious concept, right? That it was implemented by someone barely older than the students he served - plus Phan's constant engaging presence - was significant in how fully the community embraced it," she said.
What's ironic is that Phan never wanted to be in the "family" business, having grown up outside of Dayton, Ohio working in his family's restaurant, Little Saigon, which he now owns. There he watched his family toil during 15 hour days, including his own stints in the kitchen washing dishes and floors. But the community of food was important to Phan, in fact, it's all he had when came to the United States at the age of three.
Phan says his family was well off in Vietnam - both of his parents were college educated and successful. But in 1980, with communism as a suffocating backdrop, his mother and father wanted a better life for their young family, so they left Saigon for a new life in the United States. Tragically, Phan lost his father on the trip from Saigon after he was pushed from the boat. He arrived in the United States with his mother, already pregnant with his younger sister, and no ability to speak English.
They traveled to Dayton where Phan's aunt lived - she had been sponsored by a family right after the Vietnam war and was working in the restaurant business. Phan's mother later remarried and her husband, a hardworking roofer, welcomed Darren and his sister into his family. Phan recalls his early years as "poor", living in cramped quarters and on government subsistence, but he says he didn't know the difference.
"No matter how poor I was growing up, I was always so happy. I always ate well and shared a lot of laughter with my family," he says.
After graduating high school, Phan came to the University of Cincinnati to study business. "I wanted to be that stockbroker and accountant, dressing sharp, pursuing the American dream," he says.
But school wasn't a fit. Phan claims he didn't do well, partied too much and succeeded mostly as a bartender in high profile nightclubs like Jump and Club Clau before he started thinking about starting his own business.
"I never wanted to be in the restaurant business. But one thing that was always important to me was dinner time. Dinner was about family," he says.
So he combined his savings with a personal loan from his parents and a cache of his family's recipes and opened Cilantro. He worked every day from 7am to 10pm, and kept his lucrative bartending gig to pay his rent. He kept costs down by buying simple, fresh ingredients, making his menu straightforward, pushing American tastes just slightly (spices, meats, herbs and not tripe) as they explored Vietnamese food for the first time. The goal was comfort food, not haute cuisine.
"You don't have to have the most expensive ingredients to have great food," he says. "Think about southern cooking. There's a lot of love and passion and pride in what you're doing."
Six years in, Phan claims Cilantro is still a work in progress. It wasn't until its fourth year that Phan says the business started making money, allowing him to hire a handful of UC students to man his counters and kitchen. But for the hardworking Phan, its success just made him dream about other opportunities, including owning his own nightclub.
Riverside Korean owner and fellow entrepreneur, Mark Jang, was a customer of Phan's who came in to Cilantro often. The two talked about doing an Asian restaurant with nightlife and Jang happened to own the building that housed Red, an upscale steakhouse in Hyde Park Square that closed this spring. Phan agreed the area was ripe for an affordable small plates restaurant and felt that so many places in the upscale neighborhood weren't serving all the young professionals and creatives who were also living there.
"There's so much youth and energy that lives here, but it doesn't seem like there are other restaurants here that have the same view that aren't a burger place," he says.
While a menu focusing solely on Asian food would be a natural fit for the two successful entrepreneurs, Jang and Phan recognized there was a surplus of Asian restaurants in and around Hyde Park, and decided to infuse Latin American food with an Asian flair. Phan and Jang entrusted their concept to Blake Maier, a chef who previously worked at One, The Vineyard, Chalk, and at Red. Maier was on board and preparations began for their new venture,
Poco a Poco.
Three weeks before they were set to open, Food Network and celebrity Chef David Adjey came in and changed everything. Earlier in the spring, Jang had answered Adjey's national call out via
Twitter for new ventures opening up that could be the focus of his reality culinary show,
The Opener, which runs on Food Network in Canada. Recognizing a great opportunity to gain exposure for the new venture, general manager Phan found himself filming weeks before he had even fully trained his staff. The Chef was tough, and Phan says Adjey told the owners to 'make up their minds, find yourselves, who you really are', and if necessary, get rid of the Asian influences.
"I was devastated. We had to stop the presses," Phan recalls. "We really thought we had a nice restaurant and we were ready to do this three weeks ago," he remembers.
But Phan credits Adjey with 'focusing' the new restaurant on what the community wanted, even though that ultimately did include eliminating the Asian culinary influences, and instead focusing on Latin-American fare solely. Phan says that what could have been a major setback actually energized the staff and was another lesson for him.
"I don't know why everyone is so afraid to fail. Everyone makes mistakes," he says. "But being scared to dream is worse. If you don't have the desire to be better, the vision to be better, then you haven't seen [your] parents give up everything for your future," he says.
Phan says Adjey's challenge helped them define what it is they can do best. "I love the food now. And what we are is that communal aspect, that group party, sharing different flavors and plates - the street food atmosphere that we're trying to bring in here."
To foster that feeling, Poco a Poco uses shared dining tables - harkening back to Phan's long countertop at Cilantro - where he hopes hosts of diners and young professionals will gather and learn a little bit about their city, their food and each other.
"Imagine 18 young professionals having a good time discussing all kinds of different topics, just talking about life. This is how you educate yourself. That's how you better your life," he says.
Phan is sure there will be more growing pains. The new restaurant has 35 employees, a far cry from the eight students Phan has assisting him at Cilantro. And while he's managing more personalities now, he says the lessons remain the same.
"It's all about how you educate your staff about how to sell and eat your food," he says.
Phan is currently looking at opening a downtown location for Cilantro, some place within 'blocks' of Fountain Square, and he anticipates he'll be able to do more than he's been able to in his cramped Clifton quarters.
"The TV show taught me a lot. I'm my own control freak, my harshest critic, and I always have a sense that if you really want it done, you can always achieve it. My parents gave up everything to come over here to give us a future. Now they didn't think I would do this, they gave me a future so I would get an education," he laughs. "I think every Asian family wants their kid to be a doctor."
Phan often thinks about what would have happened had his family stayed in Vietnam. He knows he never would have ended up as a chef and owning his own restaurants. The freedom to choose is another gift his parents gave him.
"They had ideals. I think the romantic idealism of helping others, living life the Buddhist way that they didn't want to be like robots, so structured," he says. "I just love food. What makes it enjoyable for me is good food and good company."
Photography by Scott BeselerCilantro facadeDarren PhanShrimp dish at Poco a PocoMojito a PocoOutdoor seatingDinner service at Poco