This family-owned restaurant is located among the strip shopping-centers of Southeast 82nd Avenue in outer Southeast Portland. The owners sought to refresh the restaurant's storefront and interiors in concert with a planned update of the food menu. The new menu, which emphasized the street foods of Vietnam, became a point of departure for the design concept, which emulates the feeling of the light, breezy, relaxed, residential courtyards one finds in the old quarters of ancient Vietnamese towns such as Hanoi, Hue, and Hoi-An. Though imbued with a modern sensibility, the space also expresses some of the folksy, rustic qualities associated with Vietnamese street food, while bringing a sense of outdoor eating to the indoors, even during long Pacific Northwest winters.

Architecturally, this rustic-modern spirit is reinforced by daylighting and by the use of wooden grillwork and color. The spatial layout is essentially a courtyard scheme with the "garden" area of open tables lit by large skylights. Intimate banquette seating surrounds the courtyard; wood-grille partitions provide simultaneous privacy and openness. The design endeavors to capture the mood of a previous yet timeless era, combining both Western and Eastern influences in a way that's appropriate for the modern Pacific Northwest.