Quyen Trinh, Anise®’s Owner and Executive Chef, was from Saigon, Vietnam’s largest city. With a population of over 8 million, Saigon is not only Vietnam’s financial hub, but it is also Vietnam’s cultural center with arts, plays, music, and of course culinary excellence. When migrants from all over Vietnam moved to Saigon to find better economic opportunities, they also inadvertently brought their favorite food with them. Over time, Saigon turned into the mecca of Vietnamese cuisine. As a native of Saigon, Quyen got to sample the best in Vietnamese fares right outside her doors and has acquired a love for fine Vietnamese dining ever since.
Growing up, Quyen was immersed in a family that’s involved in the food service business for at least a couple generations. Quyen helped in her family business since as long as she remembered and naturally developed expertise with Vietnamese cuisine.
In America, Quyen decided to formalize her love for fine dining by enrolling in Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in Boulder, Colorado. Escoffier is a top 10 culinary school as per collegerank.net, top 5 culinary school per thebestschools.org, and top 10 as per USA Today. After graduating from Escoffier with high honors, Quyen worked at Cholon, Cherry Hills Country Club, and at Olive and Finch.
Armed with her newly acquired western culinary education along with experiences in some of the best restaurant establishments in Denver, Quyen takes the best of Vietnamese food and created Anise®, Modern Vietnamese Eatery.
Mission
Quyen is extremely passionate about Vietnamese cuisine and about Anise®. She believes that if she puts her heart in everything she does, then customers will see it in her food, and everything will work out in the end. Vietnam, the country, is longer than the state of California but about 20% smaller in total area, which means it is a lot narrower; yet 40% of Vietnam is mountainous, which makes it extremely difficult to traverse resulting in a highly diverse food culture. It is ironic that as popular as Vietnamese food is, most Americans only know of the same few Vietnamese dishes that are offered by the typical pho restaurants. Quyen wants to change that; it is her aim to introduce Anise®’s customers to more that Vietnamese cuisine has to offer by introducing eclectic but extremely tasty Vietnamese dishes that one cannot normally find in any archetypal Vietnamese restaurants.
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865 N Lincoln Street, Denver, Colorado 80203
Anise, Modern Vietnamese Eatery 