If you’ve been looking to expand your food palate, Tommy Nguyen hopes you’ll stop into Han’s Deli located in One Bellevue Place and give his menu a try.
You may even see him creating the items on the menu in real time. The head chef and co-owner says the restaurant specializes in authentic Vietnamese flavors and has an open kitchen where customers can watch their meal come to life. Nguyen specializes in fusion cooking and says many of his dishes have a unique twist on a traditional Vietnamese dish.
He says there’s truly nothing better than watching someone enjoy his cooking.
“When I see the food get to the customer’s table and I can see that they like it, it makes me feel so good,” he says.
While creating culinary art through Vietnamese food is his life’s passion now, it wasn’t always that way. Nguyen says that, because of his childhood, he had a difficult relationship with the cuisine until he was a teenager.
His family came to the United States as refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s and settled in Louisiana where Nguyen was born.
Growing up, Nguyen said his family would often eat meals made up of rice, fried eggs and fish sauce that had a strong smell that he didn’t like as a kid. He was also bullied at school for what his family ate, which started a deep resentment for any Asian food.
“Kids would see my food and stretch their eyes out at me and make fun of me,” Nguyen said. “I really hated Vietnamese food for a long time.”
At 16 years old, Nguyen’s father kicked him out of the house, forcing Nguyen to stay with his siblings and friends and even living out of his car for several months.
“There was a local Vietnamese restaurant where I could buy a sandwich for $2.50 that I would get every day,” he says.
He worked at multiple Asian restaurants as a dishwasher and eventually became a cook. Over the years, he lived in multiple cities, including Atalanta and Houston, discovering new ways of creating Asian cuisine. He even opened his own restaurant that didn’t make it through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was a very dark time, I was depressed and almost suicidal,” he said.
His luck would turn around in 2023 when met Han’s Deli founder and owner Anh Le. At the time, Nguyen had been working as head chef at his sister’s new restaurant in Atlanta after her chef never showed up for the business’s opening.
“Everything happens for a reason because I ended up pretty much running her restaurant and that’s how I met my current business partner,” he said. “He had a business proposition for me to come to Nashville and work at Han's Deli in Bellevue, and I was desperate to turn my life around and needed to rebuild my life from the ground up.”
Nguyen’s relationship with Asian and Vietnamese food has now come full circle.
“I went from not liking Asian food at all to wanting to share it with everybody,” Nguyen says. “I have lost a lot of family and friends to health issues, and I see a lot of people with high cholesterol and diabetes, and I want people to know the food is very healthy.”
Nguyen said he’s always working to educate new customers about the ingredients in his dishes and that he doesn’t cook with a lot of grease and sugar like other cuisines.
In the few months he has spent working as head chef at Han’s Deli, Nguyen feels a new sense of purpose and hope for the future.
“I come from a very troubled childhood so to be where I’m at now is a blessing,” Nguyen said.
For those who may be interested in his menu but don’t know where to begin, Nguyen recommends trying the grilled pork or the shaken beef with rice and eggs.
When it comes to his favorite Vietnamese dish of all time, Nguyen says it’s easily the pho soup, which is a beef broth or bone broth soup with noodles, veggies and meat. He jokes the dish also works as a great cure after a night of drinking.
“I would love for people to come check us out and give us a chance; my goal is to become one of the first people in Nashville to really teach others what the food is about,” Nguyen says. “I’m very proud of the Vietnamese culture, and I want others to know about our food.”
"I went from not liking Asian food...to wanting to share it with everybody."
"My goal is to...teach others what the food is about"