Sept. 17, 2006: A profile of the restaurateur

Thom Pham has great posture and nice hair and audacious jackets and a grin like a Cheshire cat.

He glides around his restaurant Azia, which has helped transform a once-tattered section of Nicollet Avenue, and shakes a hand here or folds a napkin there. His movement suggests someone schooled in dance or the martial arts, and, in fact, he's a competitive ballroom dancer and once taught judo (before realizing, "Who would I beat up?")

It's here, moving among the mixed tables of swells and neighborhood locals, that Pham's artistry reveals. The restaurant business is his fandango, and it has been since he started working in his grandmother's kitchen at 4 a.m. every day in Qui Nhon, Vietnam, at age 6.

That was long before the Minneapolis Johnsons adopted 15-year-old Pham, who, as a mixed-race boy of a single mother and an American G.I., didn't have much future in Vietnam.

In the 17 short years since, Pham, 32, has built a mini-empire of three restaurants and a bar, with another restaurant and another bar set to invigorate a worn section of E. Lake Street by late fall.

You might consider those either remarkable accomplishments or staggering risks. But Pham will tell you that hiding from Communists in a basement in Vietnam is a risk. Coming to America at age 15 is a risk.

A martini bar? Not so much.

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Leaving Vietnam

On a typical Friday night, Azia and Pham's adjacent Anemoni and Caterpillar lounge teem with people, many of them handsome, many of them interesting and many of them venturing into the inner city because Pham has created a haven of soft lights and tickling water and birdbath cocktails.

People lip at drinks that have become part of Twin Cities nightlife nomenclature. The Nicollet Sling. The ginger martini. Thom's Tamarind.

Since the doors opened in 2003, Pham has been at the door, maybe in one of his famous jackets, like the pale pink one, or something paisley and velvet. Always a smile. A nod, a table touch.

His grandmother weaned him on the work ethic. The rest, he's not sure.

"My mom is a great lady, but a lousy cook," said Pham with a smile.

Life for a child of an American G.I., even one he's never met, was difficult, even dangerous, in Communist Vietnam. Pham was schooled at home and rarely went outside. He and his family decided he would do better in the United States. (Pham goes back for a visit every couple of years.)

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"Oriental night"

Rick and Mary Johnson adopted Pham through Lutheran Social Services. He didn't speak a word of English, but two days after arriving in Minneapolis, he got a job in the kitchen at Kinh Do, in Uptown.

Rick Johnson recalls that though school was "very tough," Pham did well by studying long hours and painstakingly learning English.

The Johnsons have a big family: five biological children and two adopted besides Pham, one from Ethiopia, another from China. Pham remembers dinners of hot dishes and canned chow mein on the weekly "Oriental night" in a house scrambling with children.

Their treat was a trip to Taco Bell.

But after he established himself at Kinh Do, Pham brought the family there every Sunday for dinner. He worked while they ate.

Pham graduated from Southwest High School and took business classes at Normandale Community College.

But his real education was in the kitchen. At age 24, he bought Thanh Do, a chow mein joint in St. Louis Park, and dumped the menu for a more adventurous blend of Vietnamese and other Asian fusion foods.

Rick Johnson remembers that the day it opened, there were lines out the door. Pham's family worked for free while it got off the ground, and his siblings still work there. Only now they get paid.

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$13 cocktails

The corner of 26th St. and Nicollet Av. had long been anchored by the erstwhile Black Forest, a Butler Drug, a vacant lot and a mediocre, struggling Asian place, Phoenix Seafood, one of several whose fortune cookies relayed bad news at that location. Rainbow Chinese Restaurant, farther down the block, raised diner expectations along the corridor of low-budget dining.

When the owners of Phoenix Seafood put it up for sale, Pham and Mike Stebnitz, who had become Pham's significant other, saw their opportunity to get into the inner city. They sold their houses and cars and turned the grubby storefront into a soothing, elegant space. (Pham and Stebnitz have since broken up, both romantically and as business partners).

"I love Minneapolis," said Pham. "Every corner is special. When I first came here, I thought I was in paradise."

But when he opened Azia, "people said, `You are out of your mind,'-" said Pham. "I remembered what my mom, who was in the real estate business in Vietnam, said: `When a neighborhood is bad, there's only one way it can go, and that's up,'-" said Pham.

Thus begat the first $13 cocktail on lower Nicollet Avenue.

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His corner

Pham experimented with flavors and arrived at a cuisine you might call Vietsotan. The cream cheese wontons contain cranberries. The walleye swims in a radical neon green basil sauce, but Pham tweaked it a tad North Country by adding cream.

At first, "People were like, `Oh my god, green fish! Take it away,'-" recalls Pham. "I said, `taste it.' Now we sell 100 pounds a week."

Before the year was out, Pham had pushed out an adjacent space to create a decidedly New Yorkish cocktail bar, the Caterpillar Lounge, a late-night magnet. Restless again in 2005, he pushed out another wall and launched Anemoni Sushi bar.

Sharon Lund, an advertising executive and neighborhood booster, said Pham's grasp of the corner as a Whittier neighborhood focal point, and his hands-on approach, quickly won customers.

"I can stand at the door and smell that something is not right in the kitchen," Pham said. "I can hear when the bell is dinging and the food is up. I can hear a fork or spoon drop in the lounge, and I go back and get a new one. It's kind of crazy."

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Expanding empire

It's about to get crazier. Opening two more businesses, Mix Restaurant and Lounge and Manhattan Martini Bar, will likely mean Pham will have to rely on his employees more at Azia, like he does at Tanh Do.

His close sidekick and original Azia employee, Liz Grzechowiak, said Pham has remained cool under the pressure. "You can't slow him down," Grzechowiak said, adding that Pham, though not much older, is like a father figure to her, even paying for her wedding.

"You'd never guess his personality by just walking in here because he's so gracious," she said. She looks at Pham: "If they only knew what a dork you are."

Pham smiles. "My grandfather always said life is a risk. You are brought to this world, you have already taken a big risk. Why not take a bigger and bigger risk? Compared to growing up in Vietnam, these risks are nothing."

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Jon Tevlin - 612-673-1702