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\"New Saigon,\" which father Thai Nguyen and mother Ha Pham opened on Federal Boulevard in 1987, was Denver's second-oldest Vietnamese restaurant. The roughly 1.6-kilometer stretch from Alameda Avenue to Mississippi Avenue was officially designated the \"Little Saigon Business District\" in 2014, and it was this restaurant that played a core role in that commercial zone. Pho, banh mi, fried spring rolls. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Vietnamese supermarkets, it kept supporting the refugee community's table.<\/p>\n
The restaurant was sold in 2017. It continued operating under a different owner afterward, but closed in 2024. Only the building remained.<\/p>\n
The Nguyen sisters have all built their own careers in the world of food.<\/p>\n
The eldest, An, started as a server at New Saigon and eventually rose to wok chef. She independently opened \"Savory Vietnam\" in 2019 but closed it in 2023. The following year, 2024, she opened \"Dan Da\" jointly with her younger sister Thao, and in 2025 was named \"Chef of the Year\" by the Colorado Restaurant Association.<\/p>\n
The second sister, Thoa (36), studied pastry in France and opened \"Banh & Butter Cafe\" in Aurora in 2022. It's rated as one of Colorado's leading bakeries.<\/p>\n
These two's achievements, and the remaining sisters' experience, converge and are poured into the vessel that is Re Tre.<\/p>\n
| Year<\/th>\n | Event<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1975<\/td>\n | After the fall of Saigon, Vietnamese refugees including the Nguyen family move to Denver<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||
| 1987<\/td>\n | Father Thai Nguyen and mother Ha Pham open \"New Saigon\" on Federal Boulevard<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||
| 2014<\/td>\n | The Federal Boulevard area is officially designated the \"Little Saigon Business District\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||
| 2017<\/td>\n | New Saigon is sold<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||
| 2019<\/td>\n | An opens \"Savory Vietnam\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||
| 2022<\/td>\n | Thoa opens \"Banh & Butter Cafe\" in Aurora<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||
| 2024<\/td>\n | The old New Saigon closes. An and Thao open \"Dan Da\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||
| 2025<\/td>\n | An wins Colorado's \"Chef of the Year\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||
| Summer 2026<\/td>\n | Five sisters plan to open \"Re Tre\" in the same building<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nVoices of the sisters and the local community<\/h2>\nThoa explains the motivation behind Re Tre: \"We're going back to our roots. We're carrying on what our parents built, but in our own way.\" The image is of daughters returning to the very kitchen where their parents stood 40 years ago.<\/p>\n Anne's culinary philosophy is simple: \"We finish it in a modern way, but one bite takes you back to childhood.\" Her signature dish, bo luc lac (Vietnamese shaking beef), embodies this, keeping the traditional seasoning while reinventing the presentation.<\/p>\n Reflecting on her Chef of the Year award, Anne says, \"I was able to prove to my parents that I really can do this.\" That single sentence distills the long history of a Vietnamese immigrant's child caught between a parent's expectations and her own dreams.<\/p>\n What this means for Vietnamese food fans in Japan<\/h2>\nVietnamese restaurants keep multiplying in Japan too, but most stay \"pho and banh mi shops.\" Re Tre's two-part structure, a morning-cafe format of \"brunch x Vietnamese coffee x pastry\" and a dinner format of \"family style x seasonal specials,\" offers a fresh idea for Vietnamese restaurants in Japan as well. The diaspora kitchen, caught between \"protecting tradition\" and \"adapting to the present,\" is a theme that resonates with Vietnamese communities living in Japan too.<\/p>\n The future of Little Saigon: a new map drawn by the second generation of the diaspora<\/h2>\nThe Little Saigon on Federal Boulevard has one of the longer histories among the Vietnamese neighborhoods across America. But with an aging population and rising land prices, the original storefronts thin out year by year. Movements like the Nguyen sisters', where the second generation returns to their parents' place and reinterprets it, will shape the community's sustainability. The flavors the parents' generation made \"to survive,\" the children's generation remakes \"to express.\" The name Re Tre, \"bamboo root,\" hints at a network of roots that keeps spreading underground.<\/p>\n Re Tre: the basics<\/h2>\n
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