ON THIS WEEK’S episode of Dinner SOS, test kitchen director and host Chris Morocco is joined by senior test kitchen editor Shilpa Uskokovic to chat with Anna and Ni Nguyen, the chef-owners of Denver’s Sap Sua, one of Bon Appétit’s 20 Best New Restaurants of 2024. They talk about their story, their restaurant, and the three dishes that have made the jump from Sap Sua’s menu to the pages of Bon Appétit.
Co-owners (and married couple) Anna and Ni opened Sap Sua, their Vietnamese American restaurant, in Denver’s East Colfax neighborhood in June 2023. The menu is a product of collaboration with the whole kitchen team and features many of the dishes that Ni ate growing up—like brown butter and fish sauce scrambled eggs, fried tofu with ginger scallion sauce, and hamachi collar with coconut caramel. These dishes might not sound like recipes you would attempt to make at home, but Shilpa worked with Anna and Ni on adaptations that are ideal for home cooks.
Instead of using hamachi collars, we use the same savory caramel sauce on seared salmon fillets, dusted with crispy rice cereal instead of cốm dep (delicate flakes of young sticky rice). For the brown butter scrambled eggs, we skip straining the eggs through a fine-mesh strainer, as well as the trout roe garnish. You can check out the updated recipes for Fish With Coconut Caramel, Brown Butter Scrambled Eggs, and Fried Tofu With Scallion-Oil Sauce on bonappetit.com and in the Epicurious app.
Listen now to hear more about Anna and Ni’s journey to becoming one of our Best New Restaurants and the pages of Bon Appetit, and read about the full list here.
