My brother and sis-in-law are coming into town today for a friend’s wedding so I thought I’d take this grand opportunity to share about their bomb dot com restaurant in downtown Los Angeles called Starry Kitchen!

{Didn’t have a photo of them at SK but here they are at Newport Seafood}

They have a neat story about how their restaurant came about that I shall summarize in the following bullets

  • My sis-in-law, Thi, loses her job in 2009
  • Thi doesn’t know what to do after losing job and didn’t like her old job so she begins to cook
  • My brother, Nguyen, takes pictures of all her delicious creations like curry crab legs or korean wings w/a sweet ginger glaze
  • People see photos and say they’ll pay to eat all of Thi’s delicious creations
  • Nguyen and Thi have an “Aha!” moment and begin an underground restaurant out of their own apartment
  • Starry Kitchen (SK) is semi-born!
  • Jon and I fly out there to help out and eat the yummy food and are convinced they’ll be successful!
  • SK begins to build a Yelp following, a really good Yelp following
  • SK gets closed down by FDA
  • SK goes fully underground
  • SK gets approached by people who are willing to invest in them and give them a brick and mortar location in downtown LA
  • Nguyen and Thi and both their families do a happy dance!!!
  • March 2010 SK is fully born and opens its doors to a foodie city that embraces them warmly!

There it is friends. The better version can be heard straight from the horse’s mouth, Nguyen and Thi, but that’s my abridged version for ya. Pretty stellar huh? And like their 267 reviews on Yelp predominately tell you, their food is just as great as their story (4 stars y’all!)!

{clearly we give SK two thumbs up (minus my dorky brother with his thumbs down) }

Anyhow, I’m really excited to have them in town for a few days and take them to some good Dallas eateries while they’re here. Thanks for letting me share about their restaurant and a little bit of our California trip just seven months later! If you’re in the Los Angeles/SoCal area, you should definitely stop by Starry Kitchen and tell Nguyen and Thi you found them via my blog (okay, I admit that I just think that’d be really cool if you discovered SK through my blog and told them…now I feel guilty for asking)!

{all photos by The Eclectic Author & Jon}