The opening marked a decade-long journey for the restauranteur, whose passion for cooking began at an early age from the influence of his mother, Van Tran, and grandmother, Sau Tran, he said.
“My mom, being the oldest, was like a second mom to the family,” Viet said. “Everyone goes to her house to eat. And so I started to think, ‘It would be a shame if nobody was able to pass it down.’ So I wanted to make sure I knew how to cook.”
Viet looked to create a cookbook to pass along those family recipes, but in 2009 quickly shifted the idea over to using the internet as a platform via the relatively new online video sharing and social media platform YouTube, which was founded in 2005. YouTube served as the site for Viet to create his online Vietnamese cooking show called TranCanCook.
“I saw a couple of people do well on YouTube and blow up in popularity, and so I thought, ‘You know what, I need a certain niche,’ and that tied up nicely with the idea for the cookbook,” Viet said.
In 2010, Viet’s YouTube subscribers recommended the chef pitch a video to television network NBC for “America’s Next Great Restaurant,” its new cooking reality show.
The young chef complied and was selected as one of 20 contestants on the show. Though Viet was eliminated from contention in the first show alongside nine other contestants, that experience solidified the desire to open his own restaurant, Viet said.
“From that point on, even though I didn’t make it, that experience cemented to me that I was going to go forward with opening a restaurant,” he said. “I felt there was a unique niche in the market that needed to be filled.”
By 2015, Viet had opened a small restaurant in a Valero gas station on West Airport Boulevard, serving lunch on Fridays and Saturdays. In 2019, he opened Vietwich on Dulles Avenue in the Sugar Land/Stafford area.
Vietwich offers a modern take on Vietnamese banh mi, made distinctive through no-frills sandwiches featuring housemade mayo, pate, pickled carrots and lemongrass-marinated meats on a toasted French baguette, Viet said.
“It’s refreshing to be not so authentic, because while [customers] want some new things, they also want the same elements,” Viet said.
