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A seeded Lodi squash, about the size of my closed fist, bursts open with translucent fried squash leaves and sits upon a puddle of fermented red curry. Its seeds have been supplanted by sunflower seeds, crispy rice, and pepitas. It’s referred to on the menu simply as bí, Vietnamese for ‘squash,’ which belies both the dish's complexity and the emotions it induces.
“This is upsetting me that I didn’t think of this dish,” moans my chef husband and dining companion at chef Kevin Tien’s just-opened second iteration of Moon Rabbit in Washington, D.C. The squash is a remix of memories for Tien, who thought of his curry-making aunt as he tinkered with a vegan version of her speciality.
At 6pm on 13 January 2024, the night before Moon Rabbit opened to the public, we were the first people to dine at Tien’s re-opened and reimagined restaurant, an emblem of America’s third culture cuisine. The opening menu read like a romp through Vietnamese seafood traditions if they were transplanted into the American South and hung out with worldly friends from the Middle East and the Chesapeake.
Rey Lopez
Tien’s bò lá lốt, wagyu wrapped in perilla leaves instead of the traditional betel leaves, is served with labne, fermented honey, and pickled shallots. Cross your eyes and you’d mistake them for stuffed grape leaves. “I’m really inspired by all my friends,” Tien tells me. “That’s the Mid-East inspo from one of my chef friends, Chris Morgan formerly of Maydan and now Yasmine.”
There was an unforgettable soy caramel chicken with crispy chicken fat rice and a koji-marinated lamb. A BBQ-marinated cod wrapped in collard greens, served with coconut broth and mung beans, boasts Vietnamese Cajun flavors—a blend that both speaks to a fascinating pocket of American immigration and a culinary trend, as do tubes of squid stuffed with boudin, served with a charred eggplant puree that made me wish I had packed a spatula in my purse.
“We wanted to do a steamed fish wrapped in a vegetable and I wondered, how do we go from too fancy to our style?” says Tien. “We wrapped it in collard greens because of my Louisiana background.” Born in Galveston, Texas, Tien moved around in his early childhood years, from Texas to Hawaii, to Seattle, to California. He spent his middle school and high school years in Lafayette, Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country. “A 15 to 20 minute drive from the Tabasco factory,” he says, as he recommends the cracklings you can buy roadside along the way.
Rey Lopez
The cod dish I dug into at the opening now uses monkfish, the flesh of which enfolds a mousseline or “second texture,” according to Tien. He conceived of the dish as an homage to his passion for fish balls. “I love fish balls when I eat hotpot. When I go grocery shopping, I go to the fish meatball section, and I just go bananas. I come back with fish balls and tell everyone, ‘We’re having hot pot for staff meal tonight!’ [With this dish] I want people to get the same joy that I have in eating fish meatballs.”
The cocktails were just as smart and innovative as the food. My ‘Out of Dipping Sauce’ contained one of the menu’s only straightforward uses of fish sauce (if drinking fish sauce is ever straightforward) and blended with vodka, passionfruit liqueur, lemon, and nuoc cham syrup. Fish sauce is also in one of pastry chef Susan Bae’s desserts, as a fish sauce caramel accompanying a green curry sponge cake. The rest of the cocktail menu boasts cheeky Vietnam-ified reproductions of classic cocktail ingredients.
The orgeat is spiked with pho spices. The gin is infused with persimmon, the simple syrup is pandan flavored, and the vermouth mimics sâm bổ lượng, harnessing flavors of a classic Chinese cold dessert soup popular in Vietnam. Both cocktails and desserts cleverly twist savory, traditional ingredients in ways that make me wonder aloud, “Will I like that?” (And yes. Pho spices and fish sauce are far more versatile than I might expect.)
Domino effect
At 6:12pm, Tien was on a ladder with a huge grin spread across his face, screwing lightbulbs into chandeliers he had just hung in the new, freshly painted space on F Street Northwest, about a mile and a half away from Moon Rabbit’s former location at the InterContinental at the Wharf. The dining room filled up with diners who shrieked and greeted one another. It was unlike anything I’d seen before, except at family reunions.
Out of pure happenstance, I had dined at the old Moon Rabbit mere days before The Washington Post broke the explosive news of its sudden closure in May 2023 after it failed to unionize its staff. Eater DC referred to this as the “domino-effect demise of the restaurant a mere five hours later” and followed its “shell-shocked regulars [who] dropped everything and beelined to the Wharf for one more taste of chef Kevin Tien’s contemporary Vietnamese cooking.” The previous restaurant had been owned by the InterContinental, but Tien retained ownership of its name.
The new Moon Rabbit opened as suddenly as the old had closed. Tien had signed the new lease four days prior. There wasn’t yet a sign hanging outside. Tien had spent the afternoon hanging light fixtures. He asked his staff to bring in random things from home to decorate the empty built-in shelves. He borrowed dining room chairs from José Andrés.
The Moon Rabbit team, with Kevin Tien (top right) and Susan Bae (bottom right). Credit: Rachel Paroan
Tien told me this and clasped his hands, as in prayer, “Thank you José! This really was a community effort.” There were no new hires. In a matter of days, he managed to wrangle his old staff, about 20 people, back from working in other restaurants. And the following day, the official day of their reopening, coincided with the start of Restaurant Week in DC. “Outsiders might think we’re crazy,” Tien remarked with a laugh.
In the weeks following, both Tien and Bae were recognized as semifinalists in the James Beard Foundation Awards this year. Their custom moss green furniture arrived from Turkey. The shelves have been filled with artefacts like tins of Café du Monde chicory coffee and throwback family photos.
“Now that we have been open a few weeks, it really feels like we have settled into our new permanent home,” says Tien.
The menu they’re serving today is similar to the one I enjoyed at the pre-opening of Moon Rabbit 2.0. Some of the sauces on the dishes have been tweaked, and they’ve since added an attractive $69 chef’s choice option that will grow later into a chef’s tasting menu.
Tien is no longer cooking within the confines of a large luxury hotel, and I ask him what the differences are between the old and new Moon Rabbits. “I like to say we’re completely different. We’re exploring deeper into Vietnamese cuisine. At the hotel, we had to be more mindful of making things more approachable. But now we can push Vietnamese food, push its flavors, compositions and the ideas of the dishes to retain a Vietnamese identity but [presented] in a new way. If someone eats here, I want them to think it tastes like my grandma’s food but doesn’t look anything like my grandma’s food.”
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