Dà Lat Rose Presents the Meal of a Lifetime
WORDS AND PHOTOS BY TAMARA PALMER
It’s taken me months to process just how much I enjoyed dining at the House of An’s newest restaurant, Dà Lat Rose, which presents an intimate 12-course tasting menu described as a “gastrobiography” of the family matriarch Helene An in a space above the Beverly Hills location of their enduring hit, Crustacean. I have come to the same conclusion that I had when I left the restaurant nearly in tears back in November, shortly after it opened — I have never had a meal more infused with love, thoughtfulness, whimsy and meaning.
Helene An’s life has been nothing short of remarkable and the Dà Lat Rose tasting menu (executed by executive chef Tony Nguyen) narrates many of its milestones, including growing up as the youngest of 17 children in an aristocratic family who had three private chefs (one Chinese, one French and one Vietnamese), escaping the country during the fall of Saigon, living in a refugee camp in Guam, eventually settling in San Francisco, where she transformed an old Italian deli that her mother-in-law bought on a whim during a vacation into the crab and garlic noodle institution, Thanh Long, and later conquering Southern California with Crustacean, AnQi and The District by Hannah An (one of Helene’s five daughters).
“I believe that food must not only taste good, but also be good for you,” Helene wrote in An: To Eat (Recipes and Stories from a Vietnamese Family Kitchen. “How food feels on the palate is also very important to me. Food shouldn’t be heavy, sticky, overpowering, fatty or oily. Complex flavors and textures must always be balanced with freshness and lightness.”
Thanks to the generosity of the An family, it is my pleasure to guide you through what an evening at Dà Lat Rose looks like, with hopes that you’ll be able to experience the tasting menu and cocktail pairings for yourself one day.
I’ll tell more of this story in the upcoming one-year anniversary issue of California Eating, the print magazine!
Dà Lat Rose, 466 N. Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills