Chef Kevin Tien and Moon Rabbit are back. Prepare to celebrate the riches of inventive Vietnamese cuisine in the Penn Quarter.
It’s after 11 on a Saturday night in the Penn Quarter, and the crowd at Moon Rabbit is gone. The restaurant’s staff clears tables and wipes down the bar. And chef Kevin Tien, among the Anointed Ones in DC’s restaurant scene, isn’t done.
After a long day of installing light fixtures, hustling temporary banquettes into place and prepping hundreds of dishes for the evening, the quiet, affable chef wants to show off the shelving in his newly christened restaurant. He’s like a proud father pointing out the ephemera of family history.
The first menu boasts 11 items, and Tien says he has nearly 100 to choose from—look for new items to pop up regularly.
Massive white bookshelves frame one side of the restaurant. Instead of tapping a design firm to populate the shelves with artisanal pottery or pictures that evoke a whole lot of nothing, Tien uses the space to tell his story. It feels like home. There are his favorite cookbooks (Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook, Meera Sodha’s East, Mai Pham’s Pleasures of Vietnamese Table), his first awards as a young chef, a porcelain rabbit, a 150-year-old bottle of Tabasco sauce and even a snapshot of Tien as a boy.
On a top shelf sits a Michelin doll. “I keep it there as a reminder to me and my staff that our goal is a Michelin star,” explains Tien. “No Vietnamese restaurant in America has ever earned one. This is a daily reminder that our hard work will pay off, and we will be the first.”
The menu at Moon Rabbit explores Vietnam’s regional cuisine.
He and his team are well on their way.
For those who fell in love with Tien’s cooking at the first Moon Rabbit at the Intercontinental at The Wharf, the new incarnation feels like the chef is on a booster rocket. The inaugural winter menu has 11 items that reveal his ambitions. “The vibe is coastal Vietnam, and I’m recreating things I grew up eating,” says Tien. “But we’re also focusing on different regions of the country. We want guests to feel like they’re visiting Vietnam without leaving the country.”
Tien says he’s forever working on a list of menu ideas. “We have 100 dishes we could have put on the first menu,” he says, adding that the menu will evolve and surprise. No one will visit Moon Rabbit and be bored by the experience.
Mixologist Thi Nguyen creates magic in a glass with an exeptional cocktial program at Moon Rabbit.
Early menu standouts include duck fat brioche (tender, puffed miracles elevated with whipped condensed milk butter) and soda Chanh crudo (cured scallop, Meyer lemon kosho, shiso and sesame cracker). The kitchen team also impresses with cu cai: Asian pears add unexpected sweetness to winter turnips with sunchoke XO. Tien turns gnocchi on its head with bánh canh, sweet potato dumplings with crab fat, tomato and fermented sausage. The chef’s soy caramel chicken (gá kho tô) with crispy chicken fat rice and pickled chilis receives the loudest applause at my table as friends ditch formality and eat with their hands. Messy grins everywhere.
The restaurant’s cocktail program is in the capable hands of Thi Nguyen, whose exceptional sips include Last Autumn (persimmon-infused gin, aperitivo, sâm bô luong vermouth and bitters) and Out of Dipping Sauce (vodka, passionfruit liqueur, lemon and nuôc châm syrup). The latter contains fish sauce, which Tien also incorporates into savory desserts like green curry sponge cake with fish sauce caramel, avocado sorbet, lime and coconut.
In the coming weeks, look for a Vietnamese coffee shop to open in the same space; at night, it becomes a chic cocktail bar. We like where this young genius is headed as he builds his culinary kingdom. 927 F St. NW, @moonrabbitdc
Photography by: MICHAEL MCCARTHY; RACHEL PARAOAN; RACHEL PARAOAN; MICHAEL MCCARTHY
