KoJa Kitchen co-founder opens modern Vietnamese eatery Saigon Blvd 

There’s a pretty good reason Saigon Blvd, a new Vietnamese restaurant in Cupertino, hasn’t had an official grand opening event. Co-owners Hiep Lien and Linh Do have been quite busy with another major addition – their new baby, born just a couple of months ago. However, they did make sure to soft launch the eatery in mid February, despite the big family expansion. 

“We wanted to get it up and running and then kind of get a practice run and get customer feedback, a basic menu,” Lien said. “We didn’t want to wait for that.”

For now, the menu is rooted in the classics, while also branching out into more unusual offerings and modern twists. 

“The soft-opening phase is more the traditional food,” he said. “We want to make sure that we make that consistently and good. The pho is the staple. The rice plates, the noodle bowls, staples of Vietnamese cuisine.” 

In addition to those stalwarts, Saigon Blvd also offers bento-style box combinations, skewer bowls and plates (including a vegetarian option made with soy), and appetizers including tamarind prawns and Vietnamese sticky wings, among other items. 

Instead of focusing on one big grand opening day, Lien said, they now aim to continue to add specialties to their menu in phases. 

One item they recently rolled out is their smoked brisket pho, which Lien described as tasting like a fusion between traditional beef pho and American barbecue. 

Another new offering is Saigon mini crepes (banh khot) – crispy coconut crepes filled with shrimp and scallions. Other items include lettuce wrap platters for sharing, sugarcane shrimp skewers and pork sausage skewer appetizers.

They also plan to add a Vietnamese take on the traditional Korean dish bibimbap, featuring burnt rice, barbecued meat, carrots and daikon, spinach, shiitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, green onions, fried shallots, sesame seeds, basil, a fried egg and gochujang sauce.

“My wife is the one that’s experimenting with the new items,” Lien said. With the new baby settling in, “she has more time to experiment.” 

Current drinks include Vietnamese iced coffee with hazelnut cream, cucumber mint limeade, a fresh-squeezed sugar cane and kumquat beverage, and a variety of soju-based cocktails, including one flavored with soursop. 

Lien is a co-founder of KoJa Kitchen, which started as a food truck in 2011 before opening multiple locations around the Bay Area, serving Korean and Japanese (hence the name) fast-casual fusion cuisine. He’s been in the food and beverage industry for around 15 years and first met Do when she had a Vietnamese food truck in San Francisco called Lady Saigon, he said. 

Lien determined that KoJa’s Cupertino location, at 19700 Vallco Parkway, would be more successful as a sit-down restaurant and decided to convert it into Saigon Blvd while still offering pick-up for KoJa orders there as well, from a door on the side. 

“It’s kind of like a dual concept,” he said. 

For Saigon Blvd, he and Do envisioned a bold look with “more of a fun vibe” than a traditional feel, he said, describing the decor and ambiance as full of intriguing digital art, sparkling lights, vivid color and eye-catching projections.

“It’s maybe too overwhelming for some people at some point,” he said with a laugh. 

Do and Lien are both from Vietnam originally, and the restaurant, which is currently open every day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., boasts nods to the region it’s inspired by. Each table is named after a major thoroughfare in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), and the restaurant’s logo features a scooter.  

“The idea is to have Saigon Blvd represent all the Saigon street-food culture and Vietnamese food,” he said.

Saigon Blvd, 19700 Vallco Parkway, Ste 130, Cupertino; 408-564-6958. Instagram: @sgblvd. Open daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.