Photo by Michael Donahue // Buy this photo
Minh "Pho" Nguyen is executive chef and majority owner of Rain Premier Sushi Bar & Bistro.
Title: Executive chef/majority owner of Rain Premier Sushi Bar & Bistro.
Age: 38.
Hometown: Saigon, Vietnam.
Who or what was your first cooking influence? I used to watch my mom and my aunts cook all the time. I would be in the kitchen helping them roll spring rolls and egg rolls and stuff. I just had a passion for it.
Photo by Michael Donahue
Minh "Pho" Nguyen is executive chef and majority owner of Rain Premier Sushi Bar & Bistro.
What was the first thing you ever cooked or baked? In the Vietnamese cuisine, we have a caramelized pork chop that we do, and it was my favorite thing to eat. And I begged my mom when I think I was maybe 8 years old, 7 years old, to show me how to do it.
What was your first food-related job? Working at Chuck E Cheese rolling out pizza dough. Making pizza for kids.
What made you decide to become a chef, and when was that? I worked as a sushi chef for four years, five years. I kind of got burned out on the sushi, and it wasn't really my passion. So I decided to go to Le Cordon Bleu.
What was something important that a fellow chef taught you? I saw (Chef Erling Jensen) stick his hand in a deep fryer and grab something out. ... He's a very accomplished man, and I actually give him credit for me becoming a chef. He had no fear.
What is the Pho Nguyen style? New-age French-Vietnamese fusion.
Describe a dish you created. My pan-seared sea bass. It comes with coconut-lemongrass-scented Jasmine rice with edamame, Asian green beans glazed with mirin, white wine, and finished off with a little bit of truffle butter and a citrus beurre blanc.
What do you cook or bake at home, if anything? I bake garlic bread at home all the time.
What's your least favorite ingredient? Foie gras for me. There's a very fine line between undercooking it and overcooking it. For some reason I always burn foie gras.
Rain Premier Sushi Bar & Bistro is at 1250 N. Germantown Parkway, Suite 101; 746-9455
— Michael Donahue: 529-2797
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