Huibrecht Berends and Hoa Truong, the duo behind Bun Vietnamese Street Food, the popular food bar in Antwerp have announced new plans to expand their business and bring more authentic Vietnamese food to the Flemish city of Antwerp.
Their current Bun Vietnamese Street Food restaurant which is on Sint Jorispoort will be turned into a Vietnamese noodle shop from 12 June 2018. Hoa Truong and Huibrecht Berends have announced that they will also be opening a new bar and restaurant in summer on Volkstraat in Antwerp.
Hoa and Huibrecht told Food and Wine Gazette that the Bun Bar and Restaurant in Volkstraat will open in August and will have 35 covers in the restaurant and 20 at the bar.
“The restaurant will have an open kitchen, we will be serving the same style cuisine but they will no longer serve big bowls of noodles at the restaurant. Our idea is to have more smaller dishes and main courses to share. Our new restaurant will enable reservations and have all the comfort of a restaurant,” they said.
The current spot will become a noodle bar where people walk in without a reservation. The broths and dishes for the new noodle bar will be prepared at the new restaurant.
The team behind Bun have been extremely successful with their concept to bring authentic Vietnamese street food to the city operating from a small space. They also introduced a ‘Bun Bus’ which took Vietnamese street food on the road.
The story is an east meets west story. Hoa Troung arrived in Belgium with her parents who fled the war-torn Vietnam by boat for a new life in Belgium and worked for years in Little Asia, the restaurant of her sister in Brussels before she took the step to venture independently and introduce Vietnamese street food cuisine with the colours, textures and freshness it is known for.
The chef is Huibrecht Berends, a genuine Zeeuws-Vlaming from the Netherlands who was raised by the sea. He spent many years working at Pure C restaurant before he opened Bun to realise his dream of opening a restaurant. That dream is set to get even bigger this summer.
The restaurant is a favourite not just among locals but also among chefs who frequently mention Bun as one of their favourite places to eat.
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