Something for everyone
Even the pickiest of eaters will be hard pressed not to find a dish to their liking at Vincent Le’s new city eatery — which will be four restaurants in one
WOONSOCKET — It’s four – count ‘em – four restaurants in one!
And Vincent Le’s vision in marble and Italian tile has been years in the making at 754 Front St.
A native of Vietnam whose parents emigrated there from China, Le, 56, quietly opened the first of the four restaurants at the impressively refurbished site a week ago – China Star – a strictly take-out restaurant featuring a smorgasbord of pan-Asian standards – from beef teriyaki to pad thai. But here’s something you won’t see on many Asian menus this side of Chinatown – whole duck and chicken – or half, if that’s all you want.
Le has big plans for the restaurant, which he bought out of bankruptcy proceedings around 2010. Previously the restaurant had done business under a couple of names before it folded – Chappie’s and, more recently, Golden Palace.
The three signs hanging across the new masonry facade point the way to the future. In addition to China Star, the central dining area of the facility would
become the Peking Tokyo restaurant, specializing in sushi and sit-down meals from the cuisines typical of north and south China, says Le.
On the far side of the restaurant from China Star, Le plans a morning menu venue called Rhode Island Breakfast Club. Later in the day, the same space will double as the Venice Italian-American, specializing in – you guessed it – Italo-American fare.
Italo-American? From a restaurateur who describes himself as Vietnamese Chinese?
Well, it turns out the ethnic mashup is nothing new for Le, who owns a multi-restaurant venue in Lake Placid, N.Y., that includes not only Chinese specialties, but Mexican-American food. His wife is running it while he gets the new venture off the ground.
Depending on how the new business fares on Front Street, says Le, he may relocate his whole tent to Woonsocket from Lake Placid, which is, technically, where he lives. The business there is successful, says Le, but Lake Placid is a seasonal destination where tourist-driven patronage is robust for perhaps half the year, during ski season, and summertime watersports.
While the Golden Palace was often decried as an eyesore, Le has transformed the site. With a fresh masonry exterior, the ramshackle look is a thing of the past, but visitors will be stunned by the new interior. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a square inch of floor, wall or bar space that is not covered in some type of marble, granite or Italian tile in a variety of shades.
Starting last August, Le did most of the work himself. He’s obviously sunk tens of thousands of dollars into the building, including new bathrooms, a new roof and a code-compliant, state-of-the-art fire alarm system.
Le has owned the building for about eight years, but he never intended to let it languish for long. In fact, it was never supposed to be his restaurant in the first place.
“It’s a long story,” says Le, when a visitor asks him to explain. “Sit down,” he suggests.
The story turns out to be shorter than necessary for a sit-down in the dining room, but it’s interesting. Le says he never came down from Lake Placid scouting for a new location on his own. It was his sister who first discovered the vacant building. She had aspirations of going into the restaurant business.
“I bought it for my sister,” he says.
Unfortunately, she was unable to muster the resources to follow through with getting the place up and running, which was supposed to be her responsibility. So Le ended up with a restaurant property on his hands several hundred miles from his home base. And he didn’t have the resources to get it up and running either – at least not at the time.
By last August, however, things had changed. He began working on the a top-to-bottom makeover of the restaurant, which is almost complete.
After a soft opening at the China Star, the Peking Tokyo is all but ready to go, except that it needs a liquor license. The City Council is expected to consider his application for one at its next meeting, on March 5.
There is still some interior finished work to be done at the Rhode Island Breakfast Club/ Venice Italian, but how soon that restaurant is open for business depends on the success of the other two, says Le.
Born in Vietnam, Le and his siblings left the country six years after Americans pulled out of the war in 1975 and the North Vietnamese claimed Saigon, which is where Le and his family were living. His fa- ther, a physician, and mother, a businesswoman, stayed behind for a few more years, but eventually rejoined the family in the U.S.
Le says it wasn’t until the very end of the war that Saigon felt like a risky place to be. He dismisses the the notion that his family was ever in any sort of danger with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. But his parents did urge him to leave the country and go to America due to the uncertainty of communist rule.
He first landed in Albany, N.Y., and found his way in the restaurant business. He’s run three, including one in Albany, another in New Hampshire, and the one in Lake Placid.
Le says he’s done his homework on the city’s restaurant scene and he’s confident he can make a go of it at the China Star and its connected culinary companions.
“Nice atmosphere, affordable prices,” says Le – those are the keys to winning over the customer.