Phuong Tran plays by his own rules. He opened his restaurant in an alley, almost hidden away, in a city that often prefers flash to subtlety. They didn’t do press, and for many years the restaurant rarely posted to its Instagram account.  Much of the seating in his restaurant is communal but in a way that doesn’t try to play into a dining experiment or fad of the current generational sort. He is an incessant observer; a note-taker, a people watcher. “What I’ve noticed about the different cities I’ve lived in isn’t about the architecture or the art but about the people. I think that’s what’s the most valuable part, watching people’s behavior,” he told us. His curiosity in people and culture is taking him on creative journeys beyond the culinary; he’s soon to launch an apparel project and a book of his compiled illustrative notes that serve as the foundation for his recipe concepting. We sat down with Phuong on a Monday morning in the original Melrose Place location of his restaurant, Croft Alley. 

On making decisions.

I’ve mainly honed my decision making process from learning what I don’t like, or what I don’t want to do. That played a role in how I did my business, but also how I operate in my life. When opening a restaurant, the questions you get are: who is your designer? Where are you located? Who is doing your PR? The food I was doing was almost irrelevant. I thought that was the wrong thing. The wrong way of looking at it. 

At the same time social media is telling us what to wear, what to eat, where to go. I thought there was a certain sense of individualism missing. So I’ve really approached this experience, and other projects I’m working on, from that lens. Maybe as a reaction to what I see around me, recognizing what the wrong thing is. And creating solutions to remedy that. 

On neighborhood and community.

I always wanted to build my own ecosystem. I believed there was a percentage of us that weren’t just looking for four walls and a door, where you have to download an app and make a reservation to come. Or food with a big ego. I wanted people to just come in. The culinary arts, unlike other art forms, is very ephemeral. We only have that moment with the client or the diner for five minutes or ten minutes, however long it takes for them to finish that dish. Then your art is gone. Musicians, their songs can live on. A Nirvana, a Bob Dylan song, those transcend time. So when I started this, I asked myself, am I doing pop, which is only that moment? Or am I trying to create a bigger impression? How do I make a deeper impression long after you’ve left?

On inspiration.

I’m constantly listening to music. The Radiooooo app is great for discovering music from around the world across different times and for understanding culture. 

Also through a lot of travel. I worked on a permaculture farm in Columbia a few years ago. The government was converting a lot of the land recovered from cocaine dealers so they allowed some people to come and work on it. My business partner and I landed and were there for two weeks. We stayed on the farm, lived with the farmer. He has a typical farm, which has all of the typical animals that you normally see on farms, but also has wolves that live just outside the property. At first he had an issue with them eating his chickens. But what did he do? He fed the wolf. I asked him why he’d do that. His response was, “We all have to live here. And they have to eat”. I thought that that simple solution was everything. I draw a lot of inspiration from people like him.