Two Kitchens, One Fire: John Nguyen Brings The Black Sheep Spirit Home To Da Nang

There is a particular kind of dinner that Vietnam's dining scene has been waiting for. Not the imported guest chef flying in with a suitcase of foie gras and a fixed idea of what luxury tastes like, but an exchange between two cooks who have spent their careers translating Vietnam for the world, and who now want to translate the world back for Vietnam. That is the promise of the two-week residency bringing Chef John Nguyen to Westwood Wood Fired Kitchen in Da Nang this August.

The residency, running from August 18 to 23 and again from August 25 to September 1, is billed as a homecoming. Nguyen was born in Saigon and raised in the Vietnamese community of Orange County, California, a first-generation kid who learned flavor at home before he learned technique in European kitchens. His breakout came in New York, where his East Village restaurant Hanoi House earned him Eater's Chef of the Year in 2017 and a Best New Restaurant nod from New York Magazine.

From there, the path led to Hong Kong and into the fold of Black Sheep Restaurants, the hospitality group that has arguably done more than anyone to put refined Vietnamese cooking on the global fine-dining map. Nguyen ran the kitchen at Chôm Chôm, the group's ode to Hanoi's bia hơi culture, before taking over as head chef of Le Garçon Saigon, its Saigonese grillhouse in Wan Chai, in 2022.

That Black Sheep chapter is what makes this residency more than a booking. Waiting for him at the pass in Da Nang is Curtis Demyon, Westwood's co-founder and executive chef, whose own road to Vietnam ran through the same ecosystem. A Canadian who cut his teeth in Vancouver kitchens, Demyon arrived in Vietnam at the height of the pandemic, on a flight carrying just five passengers, and worked his way through Saigon's dining scene, including a stint leading the kitchen at Elgin, a grill-driven restaurant staffed by alumni of the Black Sheep group.

The two chefs belong to the same extended family: cooks shaped by the Black Sheep era's conviction that Vietnamese food deserves the same rigor, sourcing, and theater as any European tasting menu. In April 2025, Demyon and partner Vivian Tran opened Westwood in Da Nang as a contemporary wood-fired kitchen under West Concepts Co., built around live fire, local soul, and a global perspective.

The menu the two kitchens have written together reads like a conversation between their résumés. Seven courses, priced at 1,895,000 VND++, open with a Chef's Toast of wagyu tartare, foie gras pâté, grilled anchovy, and pickled green papaya, a dish that nods directly to the wagyu tartare Nguyen debuted at Le Garçon Saigon. A local ceviche follows, pulling tuna, octopus, sweet shrimp, and sea snail from central Vietnam's waters and dressing them in seaweed and citrus with bone marrow butter.

Atlantic king scallop arrives under a truffled-cheese sauce with salted egg yolk and rambutan salsa, before the menu's emotional center: Cha Ca Hanoi, reimagined with black cod, Caspian caviar, and turmeric-dill butter, the dish that made Hanoi House famous, now served a few hundred kilometers from where it was born. Wood-fired quail with un-hatched egg, a marble-score-9+ wagyu flap with betel leaf and chimichurri, and a chè of avocado and coconut close the arc.

What distinguishes this from the usual four-hands spectacle is duration. Rather than a single evening, Nguyen will be fully immersed in the Westwood kitchen for two weeks, cooking with the local team, meeting Da Nang's farmers and suppliers, and adjusting dishes organically as the residency unfolds. It is the difference between a performance and an exchange. Demyon's team absorbs the discipline of a chef who has cooked Vietnamese food for New York and Hong Kong's toughest audiences; Nguyen reconnects with the ingredients and traditions that his international career has always referenced from a distance.

The timing matters, too. Da Nang is having a moment, with a wave of ambitious independent restaurants recasting the city as more than a beach stopover. A residency like this one signals that central Vietnam can host the kind of culinary dialogue once reserved for Saigon, Hanoi, or Hong Kong, and that the diaspora chefs who carried Vietnamese cuisine abroad now see home as the frontier.

Reservations are open through Westwood Da Nang, with further menu details to be announced. For two weeks in August, the fire on the pass will be telling a story a decade in the making: two cooks from the same flock, finally cooking on the same soil.