This article was also published in the Financial Times.
By the standards of the organised chaos that inevitably overwhelms every new restaurant, the floor of Cây Tre (pronounced Kay Tray), an extremely good value Vietnamese café that has recently replaced a Korean karaoke bar on Dean Street, Soho, looked relatively calm.
The waitresses in pink blouses and with flowers in their hair were making their way steadily through the long, narrow room carrying plates of grilled aubergine with minced pork; crisp pork spring rolls; salt and pepper eel; an excellent soft shell crab curry; and several plates of the fresh tangy salads that are the hallmark of Vietnamese cooking. Here they are prepared with mackerel, herbs and watercress; beef and green papaya; green mango, dried squid and roasted peanuts; and asparagus and green mushrooms.
London has too few Vietnamese restaurants outside those that have clustered in Shoreditch in the east of the city for several years. And there is certainly nothing yet to compare with The Slanted Door in San Francisco that provides a very particular excuse for visiting one of my favourite cities.
But I could tell from watching the French manager marshalling his team and the close attention that Hieu Trung Bui, chef and partner (above right), was paying to each dish of food, as well as the number of times he suddenly ran down the stairs to the kitchen, that Cây Tre, despite its modest prices, will not suffer from a lack of management attention to detail.
Only one thing bothered me – who was the third man walking the floor? In this case it was not Orson Welles but someone much younger, much thinner, taller and with far less hair, who was busy rearranging chairs whenever he could, then sitting down and looking across the room. He never really seemed relaxed or happy with the way the restaurant was working.
As I paid our bill I asked the manager who this mysterious man was. 'That's David Archer', he replied, 'our designer'. I should really have guessed his profession from the fact that Archer's pen was positioned precisely in the centre of his yellow V-neck sweater.
I had long heard good things about Archer (above left) and certainly, like many others, I have enjoyed the Asian food cooked in the numerous restaurants for which he has acted as architect, designer or both. He has worked on high-end Chinese at the original Hakkasan; mid-price Thai at Busaba Eathai, of which there are now seven branches including the most recent, and the one of which he is most proud, in Bicester shopping village, Oxfordshire; and the six branches of Dim T café, whose menus are pan-Asian, good value and fun.
Archer, 44, may be an architect but he talks just like a restaurateur. Before I could even ask him whether designing a Vietnamese café, as he and Hieu continually refer to Cây Tre, was the logical extension of all that he has worked on for Chinese and Thai food, Archer was busy scrolling through the paper menu on the table, ready to order. 'I'll just order a few things, if you don't mind. Mackerel summer rolls, vegetarian spring rolls, some rice and Hieu's signature dish, Lang Son pork belly, please', he said, smiling at the waitress.
As we finished our meal, he mused on what job satisfaction means for a restaurant designer. 'When you work on a restaurant, you're only happy with the space when it's full. That for me is the ultimate satisfaction, coming back every night, sticking your head in the front door and watching the place take off.'
Archer had little idea that this would be his nightly preoccupation when in 1994, while working for the French designer Philippe Stark, he set off to work on the design of the Felix restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. But this trip had two unforeseen consequences.
The first was what he describes as the extraordinary experience of having to design one room that had to incorporate several distinct venues: oyster, wine and caviar bars; the main dining room; private dining; as well as a dance floor.
The second was meeting British restaurateur Alan Yau, then researching Hong Kong for the ideas that would lead them both to working on Hakkasan and Archer's return to London. (Although today, Yau is back in Hong Kong having just opened Bettys, a French bistro).
It was Archer's Asian track record that induced Hieu, who had initially come to London from Vietnam to study finance but instead went on to become the capital's cheeriest chef with his original Cây Tre and Viet Grill in Shoreditch, to ask him to design Keu, his Vietnamese deli on Old Street. From a chic black interior, come banh mi sandwiches, baguettes stuffed with pork belly and chicken liver pate; barbecued mackerel with lemongrass; and meatballs in a spicy gravy. Keu is very good fun.
And while the fun element is common to both Keu and Soho's Cây Tre, the interiors could not be more different. Here everything is white, clean, modern and airy as Archer has striven to create a French-Vietnamese café that he hopes would not feel out of place in France or Vietnam.
'The key element', he explained, 'and the most costly in this £750,000 transformation, was opening up the front window. This involved moving all the electric lifts from one side of the room to the other, but it was vital to create an entrance that could incorporate so many aspects of a Vietnamese café. So there's the space at the front where you can come and have a drink. There is an area by the bar where the chefs can work preparing the rolls and the bowls of pho, their national noodle soup. And one day, funds permitting, there will be a row of fans down the centre of the room.'
Vietnam will then finally have arrived in Soho.
www.vietnamesekitchen.co.uk