When Ni Nguyen first told his mom, “Trust me, I have a vision. I know what I want to do,” the response was lukewarm.
This was back at the dawn of his culinary career when he worked at his mom’s fast-casual Nibi Pho Bistro in Commerce, California. She had moved to the States from Vietnam in 1975 and, despite her son’s clear aptitude, was still banking on the possibility that he might choose a safe, doctor or lawyer-like career path.
But the love Ni had found for cooking could not and would not be stopped. “I felt like it was who I was.”
In June of this year, Ni and his wife and fellow chef-owner Anna Nguyen opened Sap Sua. It’s an elegant and informal place where it’s easy to get caught off guard by the immaculate and decidedly unostentatious service. The menu is full of dishes like chicken liver toast, crispy veal sweetbreads with fish sauce caramel and a grilled pork shoulder with lemongrass, tamarind, cucumber and perilla piled high. There’s a cocktail with sotol, coconut, mango and horchata. Sap Sua serves the finer things.
Ni grew up in Orange County, Anna, in Longmont. The two met while both were attending the International Culinary Center in San Jose. “It was the moment we met it clicked. We knew we were going to be life partners,” said Ni. The two were married in City Park in 2015.
Even then, the duo knew where they wanted to take their culinary dreams. “We had a vision of what we wanted our restaurant to be, and we needed to work in restaurants that would help us hone that vision,” Ni continued. Both headed to Los Angeles, where Anna, who specializes in pastry, spent some formative years at Osteria Mozza. At the same time, Ni, who leans more savory, worked at the now-shuttered Animal Restaurant. He credits the place — known for dishes like the foie gras loco moco, crispy pig ears and a bacon chocolate crunch bar — with being one of Sap Sua’s biggest inspirations.
The fare leans a bit more delicate than Animal Restaurant’s “Boy Food.” But the Nguyens’ menu reads as an equally intense display of a singular culinary vision come to life. It’s highly personal. “The shit I got made fun of for in high school, I now got people booking weeks in advance to try to come eat,” said Ni. “We’ve had guests cry over dishes. People are finally seeing themselves.”
Sap Sua translates to ‘almost’ or ‘about to be.’
In 2020, after Ni and Anna had returned to Colorado, they started serving traditional Vietnamese takeout from a ghost kitchen in Longmont. “You’d have to go to this back alley and bang on this door,” laughed Ni. “We were trying to come up with a name, and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we called it Sap Sua? Because we are about to be a restaurant.'” While the name started as a joke, it has continued to inform the restaurant’s philosophy. “If we have this mindset that we’re about to be the best, but we’re not the best, then we’ll never get complacent,” continued Ni.
While plates like the tàu hũ ky cuộn tôm — a shrimp cake with butter, trout roe and mint — could doubtlessly drive fans to seek even the most clandestine handoffs, a large part of Sap Sua’s magic is found in the dining room. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for (General Manager) Heeji Kim,” said Ni. “We knew we had found someone who fully understood excellent hospitality.”
Kim was born in Seoul and moved to Denver in time to attend Cherry Creek High School. She proceeded to study Baking and Pastry and Food Service Management at Johnson and Wales before relocating to New York. There, she worked in food photography under Francesco Tonelli and spent several years doing pastry at Eleven Madison Park and Danny Meyer’s The Modern.
In Kim’s career, she’s worn many hats. After returning to Denver in 2017, she turned her attention toward the dining room, approaching it with the same cultivated precision that had defined her time on the East Coast. In 2018, she started at Tavernetta. Over a five-year span, she moved from food runner to manager, crediting General Manager Justin Williams with inspiring her process. “I felt like I was back in New York. How his vision worked and how the restaurant worked was exactly how I wanted,” said Kim.
So when the folks from Pho King Rapidos introduced Kim to the Nguyens, there was a mutual sense that they’d found the perfect match. “I’ve dined at many restaurants, from holes in the wall to Michelin-starred, so to taste something like nothing I’d had before blew my mind,” she continued.
Sap Sua tastes like the road less traveled. It’s an ode to what can happen when you ignore the safe route and bet it all on the not-so-sure thing. It’s a masterpiece.
Sap Sua is located at 550 East Colfax Ave, Denver. It is open Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 4:30 – 9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 4:30 – 10 p.m. It is closed on Tuesday.
All photography courtesy of Casey Wilson.