The Nguyen sisters are headed back to the block where they grew up, with a new Vietnamese restaurant called Rễ Tre on Federal Boulevard. The spot pulls together the family’s long-running bakery and restaurant work, pairing a daytime pastry and coffee lineup with a seafood-focused dinner menu. It is being framed as a full-circle homecoming that leans hard on the recipes the sisters grew up eating while giving them space to modernize the dishes their parents once served.
According to The Denver Post, Rễ Tre will open on July 3 in the former New Saigon building and will run brunch through dinner every day except Monday, with general hours of 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and a later close at 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The outlet notes that sisters An Nguyen and Thao Nguyen are co-owners, with An serving as executive chef and Thao directing the morning bakery and coffee program inside the restaurant. The move ties together several family ventures and keeps the adjacent New Saigon bakery presence alive on the corridor.
A Return To Little Saigon
As Rocky Mountain PBS reported, the restaurant sits along Federal Boulevard’s Little Saigon corridor, a one-mile commercial stretch that has long anchored Denver’s Vietnamese community. The Nguyen parents, Ha Pham and Thai Nguyen, owned and operated New Saigon there for decades before it closed in 2024, leaving the building mostly vacant until the sisters decided to bring it back to life. Thao says the name Rễ Tre, which translates to “bamboo root,” is meant as a nod to family roots while giving the siblings room to introduce new preparations and seasonal dishes.
Morning Pastries, Seafood By Night
The plan is straightforward and smart: mornings will center on French-style pastries and strong coffee, while evenings will spotlight traditional Vietnamese seafood and fermented-fish flavors. “Starting a new restaurant is risky because the cost of food and labor has risen in Denver,” An Nguyen told The Denver Post. The dual format is designed to knit together Thao’s pastry training with An’s savory cooking, so the neighborhood gets both a café hangout and a dinner destination in one place.
The Sisters’ Growing Footprint
The Nguyen family has been steadily reshaping Denver’s Vietnamese dining scene. An opened Dân Dã in 2024, and Thao runs Bánh & Butter Café in Aurora, moves that have been documented in local coverage of their work. 5280 highlighted how the sisters riff on recipes from their parents’ kitchen, turning them into contemporary dishes that drew solid local praise. With Rễ Tre, they are aiming to bring that momentum back to the same stretch of Federal where their parents first built a loyal following.
What This Means For The Block
Observers say the opening is bigger than one family project. It signals that family-run Vietnamese businesses can still carve out space on Federal Boulevard even as the broader restaurant economy gets tougher. Westword described New Saigon as a long-time staple of the corridor and framed the Nguyen sisters’ return as part of a larger wave of local chefs expanding back into neighborhoods they helped define. For neighbors and regulars, Rễ Tre reads as both continuity and a small but notable cultural win for Little Saigon…