Elyse Restaurant

For literary giant Marcel Proust, the taste of a madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea brought back childhood memories of French village life. “My madeleine de Proust, or youthful memory, is not the aroma of a tea-soaked cake,” Chef Ngoc-Bao-Ky Vo admits. “It is the eggroll my grandmother made for me every Wednesday after class.”

The journey from his grandmother’s kitchen to Elyse Restaurant in San Jose began after he left Vietnam for Belgium as a toddler in 1983. By age 16, he worked as a cook in a Vietnamese restaurant. As a 19-year-old, he attended culinary school in Braine-l’Alleud, a town 20 kilometers south of Brussels. “I learned traditional French cuisine,” he says. “Every school day, I would bake bread, prepare a three-course dinner, and select French wine to accompany the meal.” By age 22, he worked as a commis de cuisine for Michelin-star chef Christophe Hardiquest at Bon-Bon Restaurant in Brussels. “He taught me to make simple, but elegant dishes,” he says. “We’d use one, two, or three ingredients. And we always put quality first.”

On September 30, 2017, he opened Elyse Restaurant where he has combined a French reverence for the finest ingredients with a Vietnamese sensibility for subtle seasoning to create la cuisine bourgeoise, a variation of the less expensive, flavorful food that French families savor every day.

“I thought about becoming an architect, because presenting your ideas is so important. I became a chef because it's a never-ending chance to learn something new.”

Written by Thomas Ulrich