"An Choi arrived on Orchard Street in 2009, at a time when some of the city’s best bowls of pho came not from Vietnamese chefs, but from Hoa, ethnic Chinese immigrants who were born and raised in Vietnam. A decade ago, many food critics still cited Hoa-run businesses in Chinatown as their top Vietnamese restaurants. Not for any lack of love, but because that’s “all New York had,” according to Tuan Bui, who opened An Choi with his brother Huy. “There was Chinatown, there was a sizable Korean community, but there really wasn’t any Vietnamese community.” And then came An Choi. Bui never meant for the restaurant to make a splash — he merely wanted to bring some representation to Vietnamese food — but An Choi was an immediate hit. Seated in the restaurant’s alley-like dining room, customers ordered crusty banh mi sandwiches and bowls of slow-simmered pho, many for the first time. A reader balked at the $8 price tag of its banh mi at the time, completely missing that something spectacular was afoot: After years of underrepresentation, An Choi had helped pave the way for a decade of high-profile Vietnamese restaurant openings in New York City, including Madame Vo and Hanoi House in the East Village and Bui’s second restaurant, Di An Di, in Greenpoint. “They weren’t all in the same neighborhood,” he says. But it was official: Vietnamese restaurant owners had dug their roots. An Choi closed on July 26, 2020." - Eater Staff
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