Since Ngon’s Bib Gourmand in 2024 — which was awarded again in 2025 — running a restaurant with such shine was “nearly unsurvivable,” Nguyen told The Dallas Morning News last year.
“I said, ‘If we keep busy like this, we’re going to die,'” she said in 2025. “It was overwhelming. After our shifts, we could not feel our legs.”
The team recovered from the dramatic uptick in business, and Michelin’s accolade gave Nguyen the confidence to expand.
Just as the Dallas restaurant was created in honor of the female elders in Nguyen’s family, the New York restaurant is for Nguyen’s daughter, Elys Truong. She lives in New York and misses Mom’s cooking.
The two-story Vietnamese restaurant in New York City is slated to open at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 5th Street in the East Village in mid-2026. The restaurant is two stories and will host events on the second floor.
The menu will be similar to that of the Dallas original. A statement from the restaurant calls Nguyen’s food “familiar, unfussy, and quietly complex.”
Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen is at 1907 Greenville Ave., Dallas. The new restaurant is expected to open in June 2026 at 85 2nd Ave., New York.