Kau-Ba Saigon Restaurant & Bar

Kau-Ba Saigon Kitchen opened to much fanfare as celebrity chef Nikki Tran brings her take on “Viejun”, a fusion of Vietnamese and Cajun, to Houston. Tran, known for her Netflix shows, Ugly Delicious and Somebody Feed Phil, is one of the most recent celebrity chefs to open a brick and mortar location in Houston. Tran previously opened two successful restaurants in Vietnam, making Kau-Ba her first stateside restaurant. The menu is based on sourcing the freshest ingredients, minimal white sugar, and absolutely no MSG.

The menu includes classic Vietnamese dishes like báhn mì with beef, chicken or curried shrimp, phỞ with red wine beef, flaming steak, oxtail, filet mignon or chicken. Taking Vietnamese tastes one step further, there are delicious noodle dishes like spicy beef noodles, turmeric rice noodles with scallop shrimp, broken rice with grilled pork chopped, and a few fried rice options. The chef’s special is the seafood viejun comprised of shrimp, clams, snow crab in Tran’s special garlic butter sauce with Cajun spices. Vegetarians will also love Kau-Ba’s meatless options like golden fried tofu topped with sautéed green onions and soy sauce or the happy salad with pineapple, Thai eggplant, calamondin, mint and lemongrass with button mushrooms in a passion fruit dressing.