Discovering Vintage Washington, DC by Brienza Laura;Williams Jai;

Author:Brienza, Laura;Williams, Jai;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493013418
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Published: 2015-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

NAM VIET

1127 NORTH HUDSON STREET • ARLINGTON, VA (703) 522-7110 • NAMVIET1.COM

Vietnam in VA

Few restaurant owners can claim they were prisoners of war. But Nguyen Van Thoi is one who can. The founder of Clarendon restaurant Nam Viet, this man’s life could be a Hollywood movie, and I call dibs.

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the Communist government sent Thoi to a reeducation camp. He escaped from the camp after two years by paying a ransom. He and his family arranged to escape from Vietnam with about forty others by boat. The escapees arrived at the dock ready to sail to Thailand, but the captain never showed. Five-foot-tall Thoi wasn’t taking no for an answer. He captained the ship himself.

Thoi and his family lived in Thailand for two years before immigrating to the United States through Catholic Charities. “Their vision of the American Dream did not initially start as a restaurant,” says Thoi’s son Richard, Nam Viet’s current general manager. “[It] started as a vision to get my older brothers out of Vietnam and into the United States to get away from the Vietnam War.” But opening Nam Viet in 1987 enabled the family to truly live the American Dream.

Nam Viet’s location in Clarendon was perfect for an area then known as “Little Saigon.” Many people left the area to escape a loud, long Metro construction. This drove rents down and enabled Vietnamese immigrants with little means to move in. Clarendon became a mini version of Plymouth Rock.

In total, 587 Americans were held as POWs in Asia during the Vietnam War. A good chunk of those faces are on the walls at Nam Viet. Every year, Nam Viet hosts a dinner for American POWs around the Vietnamese New Year, called Tet. “It’s an event that we look forward to every year,” says Richard. Ironically, “Tet” recalls the Tet Offensive, a military strike during the Vietnam War that devastated the West.

The dinners began when Orson Swindle, a POW whose F-8 plane was shot down over Vietnam in 1966, made a reservation for fifteen POWs at the restaurant, not knowing Thoi’s backstory. Thoi told him he was also a POW, and the men bonded. From then on, dinners were held at Nam Viet every year.

Tet held a special meaning for these American POWs: it was the one holiday their prison guards let them celebrate. While the food they ate on Tet was far from gourmet, it outshone the “sewer greens” they usually stomached. “It’s a great time in which we get to see great heroes get together and reminisce about their time as servicemen and how as a family restaurant we continue to pay that great homage to longtime friends of my family,” says Richard.

Dozens of military portraits hang near the entrance, including that of John McCain, arguably our nation’s best-known POW. He signed his portrait “To Thoi—With appreciation for a delightful evening and all your sacrifices for the freedom of the Vietnamese people.” Other signed pictures refer to Thoi as a hero, warrior, and friend.

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