James Beard Award–Winning Chef Vince Nguyen Reopens Berlu Bakery

The bánh bò nướng at Berlu, the Vietnamese tasting menu restaurant–turned–bakery–turned–soup shop–turned–wine bar–turned bakery again, is its own sort of icon. In her 2022 restaurant review, Karen Brooks called the tapioca flour cake an “exquisitely chewy, honeycomb-textured bakery treat.” At the bakery, it glowed Brat-green with pandan, a lingering floral note hidden in its springy depths; loyalists would buy socks with Berlu’s BBN stamped all over them. At the tasting menu restaurant, tattooed with grill marks, the cake sponged up coconut cream and caviar in a late-meal course. But for months now, it hasn’t existed in any form: The restaurant closed at the end of 2023, and the bakery followed in late 2024, leaving behind its sleek, minimalist spot off Belmont. 

But Berlu’s bánh bò nướng will return to Portland later this month, when James Beard Award–winning chef Vince Nguyen reopens the bakery in a new space just around the corner from the original. There, Nguyen will go all in on bánh bò nướng: vegan versions (mini and cupcake–size), coffee and pandan flavored versions, an avocado toast–ified version, brushed with coconut oil and ornamented with avocado, sprouts, and a flurry of herbs and fried shallots. Even the bathroom will be bánh bò nướng’d, its walls plastered with close-up shots of Berlu’s chewy calling card.  

Nguyen never expected a pastry to become his most famous dish. When he first started doing pop-ups under the name Jolie Laide, he was a fresh-faced, ambitious chef, fresh off stints and stages at places like the late, legendary Portland fine-dining restaurant Castagna and world-famous New Nordic destination Noma. He pushed the boundaries of what delicious could look like, not shying away from the lugubrious or unusual; he found the beauty in those things, and drew out the oddity from universally beloved ingredients like in-season strawberries. Soups and sauces came in test tubes; seafood might be chilled and suspended in terrine-like molds or cooked in charcoal stock. When he first opened Berlu as a restaurant, it was still squarely in this modernist, almost alien world. That was in 2019.  

You can guess what happened next. Without the ability to serve diners on-site, Nguyen shifted his approach (some might say pivoted), and began tackling dishes of his heritage in casual noodle bowl, soup, and—most popularly—weekend bakery pop-ups. When his dining room reopened, the ingredients and palette of flavors remained, as did the bakery pop-up. As he embraced these Vietnamese culinary influences, people began to take notice; in 2023, he won a James Beard Award in the Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific Category. Then, at the end of that same year, he closed the tasting menu restaurant. He focused on the bakery, and after around a year, decided he needed to invest more deeply in that project, leaving behind the original restaurant space and opening a dedicated pastry shop and café.  

“I’ve always seen the bakery as something of great potential,” Nguyen says. “The fulfillment I got from Berlu, or what I thought was Berlu, was being able to express my creativity, my care, my love. I’m a very expressive person, and the bakery is going to be able to let me do that.” 

Those who frequented the original Berlu Bakery pop-ups will see plenty of familiar faces, even beyond the BBN: When it opens in late June, the pastry case will show off fresh fruit tarts, strawberry roll cakes, roasted coconut–pandan layer cakes, and coconut egg custard tarts. The opening menu will also include things like caramelized rhubarb bánh khoai mì nướng, a vegan cassava/mung bean cake, as well as a pandan and tamarind jelly cake called bánh da lợn. But a big shift at the new Berlu will involve savory fare, which will arrive in early July. Take, for example, a version of xôi khúc, a glutinous rice dumpling typically filled with mung bean, but here given the BEC treatment with a runny yolk, braised bacon, and cheese. Nguyen will finish it in a panini press, to add textural contrast. The bánh tiêu, a Vietnamese doughnut, will get rolled in everything bagel spice. In the winter, Nguyen will bring back his soups—a pork and shrimp meatball, plus vegan and pescetarian versions.  

Nguyen is also particularly excited about the bakery’s coffee program, which will include espresso as well as cà phê sữa đá and Vietnamese egg coffee. “I had it six times in Vietnam, and every place required you to have it dine-in,” Nguyen says. “It’s almost like a dessert, like a sabayon. We want to give it the respect it deserves.” For the first time in Berlu’s history, the café will use dairy for coffee drinks and some of the menu; however, the menu will remain entirely gluten-free.  

Sloughing the fine-dining seriousness of the original restaurant’s aesthetics, the new Berlu has juxtaposed white walls and blonde wood simplicity with bright orange benches and window seats, plus Vietnamese pastry–themed art on the walls by longtime customers and friends. “Being open over the years, we came to be friends with a lot of really creative people in the art world,” Nguyen says. “It’s nice to have a sense of their creativity in the pastry space.” 

Berlu Bakery will open June 29 at 661 SE Belmont St.