“When customers come, they will feel like they are sitting in Vietnam. The music here, the atmosphere, it looks and feels exactly like in Vietnam.”
Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today the StarPhoenix talks to Que Vu who recently opened a second location for Restaurant 224 with her husband Vu Nguyen in the University Heights area of Saskatoon.
Joining the interview was restaurant manager Bradley Dao, who helped with translating portions of the interview.
Que and her husband Vu originally opened the first Restaurant 224 in downtown Saskatoon in 2018. Both grew up in Vietnam and they primarily serve a large variety of Vietnamese food, as well as dishes from other cultures.
They had many requests to open additional locations and decided on University Heights as the spot for their second operation. They love to help people, and for the fourth year in a row this year provided free noodle bowls to people in need on Thanksgiving.
Q: Why did you open Restaurant 224 originally?
A: When we first came to Canada from Vietnam in 2012, we were immigrants who had no experience and no English. We worked our way up and got experience. We learned the language and adapted to the culture here. When the chance came, we took it and opened our first restaurant, six years ago.
I am happy to introduce Vietnamese cuisine and Thai and Chinese cuisine to the people here in Saskatoon at very affordable prices.
Q: What are your backgrounds?
A: In university years, Vu opened a bar himself in Vietnam when he was just 19. That was his first experience in the food industry. When we came to Canada in 2012, we worked for a different Vietnamese restaurant, and we did everything in the kitchen. We made noodle bowls, spring rolls, stir fries, everything. For two years we had that experience and Vu also worked in construction. About six years ago, we bought Café 224 downtown and renamed it Restaurant 224.
Q: Why open a second Restaurant 224?
A: We had a lot of customers in University Heights who wanted to go to our restaurant downtown, but said it was too far. They were looking for us to open a new location nearby, so we opened in this area.
Q: How does Restaurant 224 stand out?
A: We have a big menu with over 150 items. We also have in-house delivery drivers. We try to create jobs and support our drivers by running our own delivery crew. Our food is very affordable. It’s not expensive at all.
And we really care about our employees. Over the summer we take two weeks off and on special holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas we give our employees days off so they can spend time with their families and give them bonuses as well.
Every year we have a Thanksgiving noodle bowl giveaway in our downtown location where we give away 200 to 300 noodle bowls to less fortunate people in the area. They just can come and grab a free noodle bowl. This year (was) the fourth year of this event on Thanksgiving Day.
Q: What types of food do you serve?
A: It’s mostly Vietnamese and then a little bit of Chinese and Thai and some Canadian too. We even have burgers and fries that are handmade here. Everything we do the same at our two different locations. The menu, the price and the way we serve it, it’s the same at both locations.
Q: What are some popular menu items?
A: We would highly recommend the Vietnamese rice or Vermicelli noodle bowl. It combines all kinds of meats and shrimps and two spring rolls. It’s loaded and everyone loves it.
Another popular dish is the chef’s special rice noodle soup. We boil the beef bones for 10 hours. We get the water from that, which is very flavorful. We have over 10 different seasonings in that soup. It’s very flavorful and very fresh. It takes 10 hours to get one big bowl of the broth for the soup.
Another dish people love is our Pad Thai with chicken or beef. We hand-make that, so it’s different than other places. For the Pad Thai sauce, we mix many seasonings for a very unique sauce.
Q: Do you cater to different diets?
A: We have vegetarian options including a crispy noodle with tofu and a lot of veggies and noodles that look like a bird’s nest. We also have gluten free options. All our stir fries are gluten free. We can accommodate gluten free and all other allergies upon request.
Q: Do you serve desserts?
A: We recently added desserts because lots of customers were asking for them. We make tiramisu, cream puffs, passion fruit cheesecake, a double chocolate cake and a honeydew cake. All of those are made fresh in house.
The passion fruit cheesecake is our most popular along with the cream puffs. We have a few different flavors for the cream puffs. We have mango, strawberry, Earl Grey tea, chocolate and vanilla. And the price for one cream puff is just $2.50.
Q: What is the atmosphere at Restaurant 224?
A: When customers come, they will feel like they are sitting in Vietnam. The music here, the atmosphere, it looks and feels exactly like in Vietnam. There are some pictures from Vietnam as well. What you experience here is what you experience in Vietnam. We want to bring that here.
Q: What’s behind the name Restaurant 224?
A: When the previous owner opened the first Cafe 224, he used the address as the name. But for us as Asians, two plus two plus four is eight, and eight is a good number, a lucky number. So that’s why we wanted to keep this lucky number.
Q: What do you love most about owning Restaurant 224?
A: The opportunity to open a second Restaurant 224 is unique. I am very happy to have a chance to serve customers every day and make them happy. For us here we take customer service very seriously. We do everything to try to make it right for customers.
All I want to do is make my customers happy and make good meals for everyone with affordable prices, and to support our employees and the local community.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Restaurant 224
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