The restaurant Bobby Chinn offers Hanoi a unique style of California-Asian fusion cuisine served in a hip contemporary atmosphere. Located beside Hoan Kiem Lake, Bobby Chinn's restaurant is decorated with hanging rose buds, silk drapes, soft lights and candles, and modern original Vietnamese art works. The wine cellar is one of the most well-stocked in Hanoi and the bar carries a 102 cocktail menu. The main menu includes dishes such as almond crusted goat cheese salad, blackened barramundi on braised banana blossoms, pan roasted squab breasts in port sauce, as well as a selection of tapas such as sticky rice dumplings filled with mung bean purée and chicken satay with peanut sauce.

Bobby Chinn, whose international reputation for cooking in Vietnam created high expectations for the restaurant, is credited for the interesting mixture of tastes and styles. Being part-Chinese, part-Egyptian and a Californian native, his flair and personality influence every aspect of his restaurant. Chinn explains, "I wanted a restaurant that would do what no one had ever done, and become a benchmark for a new standard. Not just in Hanoi, Vietnam, but in Asia and the world. I wanted to make a place people found special."

AsiaSource spoke with Bobby Chinn about how the restaurant got started, inspirations in his cooking, and his favorite ingredients.

How did you become interested in food and cooking?

When I left Wall Street I searched to find something that had meaning, that made sense to me. I always played the class clown and I wanted to do stand up comedy and give my commentary on life through silly observations. I went to the Groundlings in LA, and started performing in LA. I needed to support myself, and ended up as a waiter. The problem is that I knew nothing about food. I landed a very good job at the Miyako Hotel working for a famous chef by the name of Elka Gilmore. Elka was one of the pioneers of this new "fusion food" and was doing Franco-Japanese food. It was so cutting edge that you really needed to have a food lovers companion guide to explain the menu. I needed to learn and I volunteered my time in the kitchen to observe so I could understand food, the preparation and the operation. I learned how to make a chicken stock, and then a lemon-grass chicken consomme. I was thrilled with myself. I was working with my senses and I started really getting into food. The chefs were like doctors to me and I liked the look of the white jacket.

I liked the way it worked, it reminded me of Wall Street, but instead of pushing pieces of paper around, it was food. The food needed to be made to perfection in a limited amount of time, and needed to be plated at the same time as all these other dishes coming from the different stations. Execution needed to be flawless as each plate would be doubled checked by the chef and wiped down with a wet and dry towel to remove the grease of the cooks. It was organized chaos, and I wanted to be part of it. To the outside world, chefs were becoming rock star-ish.

What made you decide to open a more hip and contemporary restaurant in Hanoi?

Revenge. I came to Vietnam 8 years ago to learn Vietnamese food . I considered it to be the new food, and San Francisco was about to really discover it. I told Elka that it would be the new food trend. Twenty-five years ago Americans would not eat raw fish. That was considered bait! There were no Thai restaurants 15 years ago. No one knew Vietnamese food, and there were not really any books on the subject. Maybe a couple of books like Binh who learned all of his grandmother's recipes, but there were no chefs really doing it. I figured I would work in Vietnam and learn for a year, then return and open my own place. Unfortunately it was not that easy. I started in Ho Chi Minh city and got booted out after 3 months. I opened my own place with my girlfriend and we lost that place after about three months. We moved to Hanoi and opened another place and we got booted out of that one after 5 months. I was then hired to open Hanoi Towers restaurant in a serviced apartment. They could not find anyone to lease the space since it was right in the middle of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, so they decided to pay me peanuts since they were expecting to lose money.

As I turned the place into a dining destination I got raises etc., but not what I felt I was worth. I started to get more international coverage with The Wall Street journal, The Financial Times,CNN, for what I was doing. They promised me the restaurant, but at the last minute they decided to shop my bid and give it to my competitor. Three and half years of promises wasted. The outgoing American ambassador Pete Peterson actually called my General Manager in to his office to show support and brought all of his senior advisors to "bat for me" as a testament to their feelings toward me. My manager fired me the next day! I was ready to leave Vietnam, but when I saw the location of my new place I considered trying one more time. I decided to bring my chef who had been with me for 3 years. I sat him down in the place and said, "If you want, I will do a restaurant with you here, but I will only do it if you are my partner. If I do a restaurant, I want to do it right, everything from A-Z. It will be expensive."

It was revenge. Anger was my motivator, and passion for what I do would be my guide. I wanted to show all those who kept me down, or whoever doubted my talents and capabilities, what I could do if given the freedom to do so. I wanted a restaurant that would do what no one had ever done, and become a benchmark for a new standard. Not just in Hanoi, Vietnam, but in Asia and the world. I wanted to make a place people found special.

How do you feel your restaurant is breaking new ground?

I feel that restaurants are a reflection of the owners, and this restaurant is a reflection of me as a person. I wanted a logo that would reflect what I did. My friend in San Francisco worked on it, and when I saw it, I just loved it. She gave me 3 or 4 options, and I opted for the one we use today. The split pea, is fresh, clean, and open. Whatever it was it just made me laugh as I did not know what to expect.

The restaurant was almost called Arachine, as I am half-Egyptian and half-Chinese. I liked the idea, but I was scared that no one would get it. Instead I would show my background by little details. I wanted every ingredient that would make the place great. Not just the ingredients in the kitchen, I wanted to take whole dining experience to a completely different level. I designed the restaurant from the perspective of a diner as well as a person that worked in mostly fine dining restaurants. What things could I do that would make the dining experience different that has not really been done before? That was the starter.

Acoustics in the restaurant
The entire place is soundproof. The walls are covered with yellow canvas, behind it lies 20-40 millimeters of foam mating wrapped in a light fabric that is glued to plywood panels and hung onto the wall. When busy, the restaurant becomes more intimate. The walls absorb all the noise. You cannot hear the conversation at the table next to you. You are not shouting to your dining partner. "It has a very good feel" is one of the first things people say time and time again when they enter the place for the first time. There is a vibe. It is noise reduction in a place where you do not expect it, which is peaceful.

The music is run through an MP3 player, where we have different files of music. Based on the mood or theme of the evening we can change the music needs. The music is rarely the same so regulars are not forced to listen to the same old music all the time. We use a surround sound system, so the music is unobtrusive. You can hear it clearly, but it is not loud where you are competing against it in conversation. It never skips, it never runs out.

Music
There is a stage where I get bands and DJs to play on the weekends. I have had some very good comedians from the Comedy Club perform as well as some of Vietnam's top singing divas. Due to the acoustics and space, we transform into a supper club. They love to play in an intimate quiet place where you really do feel it is different.

Art
Low voltage lights are directed to mostly the walls, which have a selection of all the top Vietnamese artists. I use Suzanne Lecht from Art Vietnam as a consultant, and together we selected the works that both of us like. We limit the artists to a maximum of 2 pieces so that the selection is diverse. I like the contrasts of work which makes the place a little more exciting. I have always felt that art augments the dining experience and adds drama to the dining experience. We act as a gallery and have sold a couple of paintings.

Restrooms
Toilets are usually not maintained in most developing countries. Not here, I wanted it to be like an Amman Resort. The paper is folded in triangles, and fresh red rose petals are placed in the toilets to make sure that the staff are keeping an eye on the place. The female toilet is huge. It used to take the place of three separate rooms, but I decided to make it handicapped accessible. It is the only one in a restaurant, and I think it is just the US embassy that has a handicapped access building.

Flowers are cheap here, but no one ever seems to spend money on them. At the restaurant we hang 380 white roses from the ceilings every week, they hang under spotlights in transparent strings of 8, a lucky number in Asia. This does not include the flowers in the bathrooms.

Wine appreciation
We store 120 wines at the proper temperature, which is hard to come by. A progressive wine list was never done before here, and since most people know nothing about wine I wanted to make it easier. The wines are broken by varietal, and not by country or region. Each wine has a description so even a novice could figure out what to get. Each heading needed to have a quote, which are all quite amusing, to take the seriousness out of something that is supposed to be fun.

The trend in fine dining is making your own tasting menus, which are broken by the a la carte menu. The headings are a little amusing: Sea (cold blooded creatures), Air (birds that used to fly but they spent to much time on land), Land (slow dumb runners and vegetables). But I also needed to attract people who did not want a dining experience, but a place to hang out, so we also have the tapas menu broken down into Vegetarian, Seafood, and Poultry.

A lot of people complain that you can't get a good gin, you can't get a great single malt etc. A lot of my booze is hand carried by our customers who support what we do. Our vodkas are stored in the freezers and we have over 15 different ones to choose from.

The rooms are partitioned by warm silk drapes. I think we have over 1,000 meters of silk in the place. A lounge area in the back of the restaurant with beanbags and sofas makes it the only lounge bar in Hanoi. I offer shisha's from Egypt. The water pipes are a first in Vietnam and there are 5 flavors to choose from.

How do you get your inspiration for your "California-Vietnamese fusion cooking"?

I get tired of what we are doing, and I look around the market, a cookbook, a friend or customer makes a request to do a dish and then naturally I change it. Sometimes the dish changes to make it easier for the cooks to execute the dish during service time, or to make it easier to prepare. Sometimes it's a new kitchen toy. I remember being broke and walking into William Sonoma and falling in love with an ice cream machine(non-commercial one). My brain was telling me, "It won't last, the electricity is never the same, it will not be able to do volume," but I justified it as my spendthrift side said, "You will not do volume, and it is only for a a limited production for one dish. Mangosteen sorbet. No one makes a mongosteen sorbet because it is too expensive." That made me make a tropical fruit soup with mango sorbet.

My favorite dish is so original I feel that it is unparalleled due to its simplicity and all the ways that it developed. It took me 6 years to get the recipe and it took me another year to get it right. It has all the ying yang, hot cold, sweet sour etc. working for it. I saw the movie Jackson Pollock and I loved the arrogance of the man as he described his painting and technique. "The paint brush never touches the canvas, and the paint did not get there by luck, it is meant to be there," he said. I decided to take his technique and apply it to food, in a vinaigrette. I take balsamic vinegar and reduce until it reached syrup stage and place it in a squeeze bottle. I make turmeric oil and place that in a squeeze bottle. What you have is a very unconventional vinaigrette, sweet and sour and visually stunning dish. Banana blossoms are traditionally used in salads, but I heard that you could cook them. It is eaten in Hue, and it is really cool. We add peanuts and Thai Basil, and a little lemon juice and sugar for seasoning. It is served chilled and it is very different. That is the dish, but we add the vinaigrette and a piece of fish that has been coated with an Egyptian spice mixture.

Sometimes great dishes come from my inability to cook the original dish. Rice pudding at my restaurant is really a Thai Coconut sticky rice dish that is supposed to be served with mangos. It is one of my favorite desserts, and it is really easy, but I never get it right! So I created a different dish and I use the sticky rice, finish it with sweetened coconut cream, and then add chopped pistachio nuts, hazelnuts and sultans that have been constituted in frangelico. It sits in a puddle of sesame coconut sauce.

I also get inspiration from cookbooks, and find that I never have the ingredients available, so I end up changing the dish around although I am copying. Once you learn the rules of ingredients and cooking techniques, you can do anything, but the best dishes always come by mistake or by virtue of the fact that you have to create. I do not force myself to make a certain number of new dishes all the time. I only make a new dish when I feel I need to make one. A lot of dishes I do not feel should be changed. It is like great music. Mozart should not be rearranged. It sounds great just the way it is!

I eat my food on a regular basis to check quality control, and I do not like fat or fried foods. I think it is part of the reason why I can keep trim. I use cream instead of butter, I never finish my sauces with butter. That is the Californian in me. I use French techniques and local ingredients that are available. It really is not as difficult as it appears.

Do you see new emerging audiences in Vietnam who appreciate different styles of cooking, including more western foods?

It is developing and has already developed in Ho Chi Minh City. My place is still not that user friendly to the Vietnamese. My menus are not translated into Vietnamese. But I have turned them on to a lot of new dishes. Mashed potatoes are a hit here, but they generally like flavors that they are familiar with. The food we do is touching on those comfort levels, but still it will take some marketing to get them in on a more regular basis. Pizzas are a success as they are all over the world, and as the market develops more I am sure that we will see more affluent Vietnamese diners eating stranger foods.

What are some of the ingredients you like to use in your dishes?

I like ingredients that punctuate the main ingredient in a dish (ie. lime leaves, lemon grass). Herbs to me add accents that highlight the dish and make it taste fresh and light. That is what I like about Vietnamese foods. There is that element of surprise, and I try to keep it light-handed and try to ensure that.

If you are unfamiliar with Vietnamese food, what would be your recommendations for good traditional dishes to try?

The Bun Bo is really a great dish. Stir fried beef that is marinated in lemon grass and is stir-fried with garlic and bean sprouts. It is thrown on top of chilled noodles with salads and herbs. A very light beef broth that has a sweet and sour taste is added and then it is garnished with chopped peanuts, fried shallots and lightly pickled green papaya. The noodles and salad are chilled but the broth cooks it a little. A great texture dish with a lot of contrasts.

Cha Ca, which is the turmeric marinated fish that is fried, is like the bun bo because it has the same ingredients but dill is added and it is just a refreshing hot dish. The dipping sauces are an acquired taste, and it is a favorite dish up in the North.

Do you have plans to expand your restaurant business into other cities in Vietnam?

I am trying to find a space that is large enough and centrally located down in Ho Chi Minh City. It takes time and you have to find the right landlord etc. Nothing comes to me easy here!

Interview conducted by Cindy Yoon of AsiaSource.