The week before Sam Aisbett opened Akuna in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in July 2023, he panicked. “I said, ‘What the hell am I doing? What an idiot,’” recalled the Australian chef in a recent video interview. There was no way his restaurant, with a menu price of 3.9 million dong ($160)—at least 20 times what stalls across the street were charging—could survive, he thought, even though he had a Michelin star under his belt.
But the risk paid off. Akuna flourished, and about a year later, the place bagged a star for Aisbett’s ingenious dishes created from Vietnamese ingredients. Shaved squid is served with local samphire, hearts of palm and squid dumplings, while uni is accompanied by fan shell clams and pickled durian.
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