Try These New Modern Takes on Vietnamese Cuisine in the DC Area

Moon Rabbit

Open Monday through Saturday for dinner.

Neighborhood: Penn Quarter.

Dress: Whatever you wear to work is fine. Whatever you wear to the beach or gym is not.

Best dishes: Shrimp Thermidor; crab rangoon; Wagyu-stuffed perilla leaf; taro pave; purple-yam risotto; foie-gras-stuffed pastry; durian mousse.

Price range: Share plates $14 to $34, large plate $89.

Bottom line: Kevin Tien’s reinvented Vietnamese restaurant should be at the top of every food lover’s to-do list.

In 2016, when Kevin Tien was 29, he cofounded a tiny Petworth restaurant called Himitsu—and vaulted from a former Pineapple & Pearls line cook to one of DC’s hottest chefs. Since he left that restaurant three years later (it subsequently closed), his road hasn’t been the smoothest. Tien had hoped to plant lasting roots at his Capitol Hill dining room, Emilie’s, which opened just before the pandemic, but he left eight months later after a split with his business partners. His next act was the modern-Vietnamese restaurant Moon Rabbit, in the Wharf’s massive InterContinental hotel. Despite a good deal of acclaim, Tien was fired and it closed suddenly, amid a union fight, after three years.

Earlier this year, Tien and Moon Rabbit made a comeback. It’s a very different restaurant, and also better than ever. The space, a honey-lit dining room in Penn Quarter, is decorated with personal photos, cookbooks, and art from Tien’s toddler, and it suits the concept far better than its original, generic hotel dining room. Tien’s Vietnamese cooking, which has always had whiffs of his Louisiana up­bringing, has matured into an artful and elegant vision.

Gone are the plates of family-style double-fried chicken and crawfish pasta. In their place are lovely innovations such as a purple-yam risotto, a foie-gras-and-mushroom-filled pastry, and a delicately layered stack of taro, sweet potato, and yuca with coconut mousse and celtuce salad. Fancy crab rangoon is everywhere these days, but I haven’t had a version that comes close to Tien’s. Instead of crunchy wontons and imitation crab, the snack is reimagined as a gooey dip of robiola cheese, ricotta, and lump meat, topped with a jelly made from fermented chilies. Meanwhile, Tien’s take on Thermidor swaps out lobster for tiger prawns, draping the broiled crustaceans in silky shellfish sabayon, punched up with Meyer lemon and herbs.

There’s lots of playfulness on the cocktail menu, which features Taylor Swift references and offbeat concoctions like a (very delicious) passionfruit-and-vodka drink spiked with fish sauce, or a mix of guava and mezcal with shrimp salt.

Pastry chef Susan Bae also weaves savory accents into her creative desserts. They include a pandan panna cotta with seaweed and a cake laced with green curry and served with fish-sauce caramel. The one not to miss, though, involves durian, the famously stinky Southeast Asian fruit. But there’s nothing remotely challenging about Bae’s satiny durian mousse, which contrasts brilliantly with icy shards of passionfruit granita.

Muoi Tieu

Open Sunday for lunch, Monday and Thursday through Saturday for lunch and dinner.

Neighborhood: Downtown Takoma Park.

Dress: As casual as you want.

Best dishes: Cabbage salad; egg rolls and summer rolls; steamed rice cakes; rice noodles with pork; lemongrass chicken; steak with chimi­churri; flan.

Price range: Starters $9 to $12, entrées $14 to $24.

Bottom line: The snug market/dining room serves well-executed Vietnamese classics, with lots of vegan options.

Ten years ago, you might have thought of Takoma Park as a dining desert. Sure, it had its food co-op, and Jeff Black was running the popular American restaurant Republic. But there weren’t many reasons, culinarily speaking, for non-locals to visit the quaint, charmingly shaggy residential neighborhood.

Times have changed. Now the area boasts a very good butcher/sandwich shop (Soko); a hit vegan-friendly Mexican restaurant (Cielo Rojo) with a sibling burrito joint (San Pancho); the quirky-cool Motorkat, in Republic’s old space; and, as of January, the snug Vietnamese market and dining room Muoi Tieu.

Muoi Tieu—the name translates to “salt and pepper”—takes over the storefront that for more than three decades was occupied by the Korean American Mark’s Kitchen. It’s the first brick-and-mortar restaurant for Thuy-Tu Tran, a career changer who spent years working at Legal Aid, then fell into a sous-chef job at the 14th Street restaurant Doi Moi. During the pandemic, she ran a popular bánh mì truck, and on Muoi Tieu’s lunch menu you’ll still find the tasty sandwiches with traditional fixings (tangy pickled daikon and carrot; cilantro; jalapeño), plus Vietnamese ham, chicken, or marinated eggplant.

The restaurant serves plenty of meat, including smoky, sweetly marinated pork atop rice noodles, lemongrass-scented grilled chicken, and steak with a cilantro-heavy chimichurri, but the kitchen’s vegan offerings, including pho, egg rolls, and steamed rice cakes with tofu, are as much of a draw. A punchy, herb-packed cabbage salad can be served with addictive sesame-rice crackers instead of shrimp chips. The traditional, turmeric-yellow rice crepe called bánh xèo can be had stuffed with mushrooms in place of pork and shrimp; tear off a piece, bundle it with herbs into a leaf of lettuce, and dip it into the ramekin of tangy fish sauce.

Up front, shelves are stacked with imported snacks and sodas, bottles of sweet, milky housemade cold-brew, and condiments such as the kitchen’s own pickled mustard greens. The sunny dining room has only a few tables and a handful of bar seats, but much of the menu carries out well.

This article appears in the August 2024 issue of Washingtonian.

Ann Limpert

Executive Food Editor/Critic

Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.