Saigon's Food Scene Is Being Transformed by the Returning Vietnamese Diaspora
At the age of six, Loc Truong joined the nearly two million of his countrymen who fled Vietnam following the fall of Saigon. After resettling in San Diego, California, he grew up as an average refugee teenager, never thinking he’d return to the country his family had once left behind—until a stop in Vietnam during a collegiate semester at sea planted a seed in his mind.
Years later, while working at Wachovia Bank in 2008, Truong packed his bags and booked a one-way ticket to Saigon, using his bilingualism and American background to land himself a job at a reputable Vietnamese real estate company. Still, he had other aspirations. In 2011, Truong helped open the immensely popular Chill Skybar, the first of many rooftop watering holes that would soon pop up across the skyline of Ho Chi Minh City (also called Saigon).