On October 7, Ethan Pham and his cousin, Terry Phung, opened what may be a first in Ann Arbor–VKitchen, an all-Vietnamese, sit-down, open-for-dinner restaurant. Pham says “At first, I wanted a smaller one, like a deli, but it just happened.”

Pham, thirty-four, was working at Foxy Nails in Briarwood and saving all his money to open some kind of eatery, though he hadn’t yet started to look for a space. “One of the regular clients is a Realtor, and she came in one day and said ‘Anyone want to buy a restaurant?'” That restaurant was Paradise Asian Cuisine, at the Colonnade–it served mostly Chinese food, but a lot of the regular customers, including Pham and his cousin, knew that owners Victoria and Allan Tran were Vietnamese. The Trans were ready to retire, and Pham and his cousin decided to make their move.

Vietnam-born Pham says he grew up in Arizona and eventually moved to the Los Angeles area. “I wanted to open a restaurant there, but there’s so much competition. You have to be really, really good or really, really cheap.” He and Phung decided it would be much easier in Ann Arbor. Phung had already found his way here from Dallas and discovered that in Michigan Vietnamese food is a relatively unexploited niche. The nail business is actually still pretty good too, Pham says–much better here than in California. Like a lot of Vietnamese immigrants, he knows the nail trade. He had managed to get out of it and was working in Macy’s in Orange County but took it up again when he came to Michigan. “Mimi [Tran] is a great boss,” he says of the owner of Foxy Nails, who helped him with a lot of the paperwork for the restaurant. (She’s no relation to Vicky and Allan Tran–“it’s a common Vietnamese name.”)

Pham mentions, with some regret, that old Paradise customers are still coming in hoping to have a beer or glass of wine with their food. He and Phung didn’t have enough money to buy Paradise’s liquor license, though they hope to have one someday. But there’s no mistaking that VKitchen is otherwise a very new restaurant. They painted–“I like black and white,” Pham says–replaced light fixtures, and generally buffed it up a notch so that, despite the lack of a liquor license, it could visually pass for a real date-night dinner restaurant, though prices are in the lunch range. The most expensive thing on it, for $15, is “bo ne,” six ounces of marinated beef steak with “choice of sausage, egg, or chicken pate” and topped with fresh vegetables and herbs and served with choice of rice or French baguette. Most of the more familiar pho, banh mi, and vermicelli dishes are in the $8 to $12 range.

But don’t neglect the drinks, Pham says. The fresh iced limeade, “sea salt plum with strawberry” and “basil seed, malva nut, and grass jelly” are not from a can. “It’s the real thing. We put basil seed in water. We try not to use preservatives. A lot of people used to Chinese food ask what’s the difference, and I say ‘fresh.’ We use fresh vegetables and herbs. I get fresh vermicelli from the Vietnamese market in Detroit–I drive there twice a month.”

Vietnamese is a complex language with five tones and you can spend an entire meal learning how to say “pho” correctly–Pham is very forgiving, and knows what you mean if you pronounce it “foe,” but it’s more like “fur” without the “r” and with a rising tone. Try saying “Are you wearing fur?” and take out everything except the “fu” and you’ve kind of got it.

VKitchen, 883 W. Eisenhower, 930- 1988. Daily 11 a.m.-10 p.m. No website yet.