Nguyen Tran

Accidental restaurateurs, Nguyen Tran and wife Chef Thi Tran started an illegal underground phenomenon out of their apartment in North Hollywood that eventually became the #1 Asian Fusion restaurant listing in ALL of Los Angeles on Yelp in 2009 (and we have the screen captures to prove it! ;D). They have since gone legit (at times), continued to stumble and fail upwards with their delicious Pan-Asian comfort tomfoolery, banana suit megaphone shenanigans, highly publicized marijuana dinner antics and double entendres galore w/ their most famous signature dish taking the lead: the Crispy Tofu Balls (that people enjoy in their mouths). (the other being their Singaporean Chili Crabs that people very often share with each other ;D) They miraculously built a loyal fan base that eventually followed them to downtown LA at California Plaza in 2010, the Fashion District, Chinatown and their most recent opening in Echo Park- Asian Restaurant Barcade, Button Mash. Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold has featured Starry Kitchen on his "101 Best Restaurants" list two years in a row, and Button Mash was recently announced as one of LA Weekly's Essential 99 restaurants in ALL of LA and their story has been told in LA Times, The New Yorker, New York Times, NPR and Food & Wine magazine among other publications.