Billy Ngo’s new Sacramento restaurant is a love letter to his mother. See its elevated plates
Long before he was one of Sacramento’s most celebrated chefs, Buu “Billy” Ngo was an immigrant kid in his parents’ Chinese restaurant near the corner of Folsom Boulevard and Power Inn Road.
Ngo was born in a Hong Kong refugee camp six months before his parents, ethnically Chinese natives of Vietnam, immigrated to the United States. They settled in south Sacramento and got to work feeding customers, then their family at day’s end.
“We grew up very poor without a lot, being in the United States as immigrants, refugees from the Vietnam War,” Ngo said. “But no matter what, we always had five-course meals, you know, and the family was sitting down, and that was really amazing.
“Old Asian parents, there’s no hugs, there’s no ‘I love yous,’ there’s no kisses. The way they show you love is food.”
Ngo’s new restaurant, Chu Mai, shows his love back. Opened Jan. 31 on the ground floor of the new Ary Place Apartments building at 1829 17th St., it inverts his late mother’s maiden name (Mai Chu) and elevates Chinese and Vietnamese flavors for higher-end presentation.
A 2024 James Beard Award finalist for Best Chef — California for his work at Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine (he’s also a partner in Kodaiko Ramen & Bar and Fish Face Poke Bar), Ngo is joined at Chu Mai by frequent collaborator Michael Ng and former Lemon Grass Restaurant partner Tyler Bond.
Bond will helm Chu Mai’s open kitchen, which is diminutive but efficiently designed for the restaurant’s needs. Three portraits of Ngo’s mother at different stages of life look down over the dining room; Bond lives in one of Ary Place’s 159 apartments upstairs.
“I gave everything to be here and partner with one of my dear friends, in business and also personal (life),” Bond said. “I’m 100% in here — 100% — in every way you can imagine.”
The opening menu includes a country pork pate toast ($18), house-cured pork shoulder spread across a Chinese doughnut with chicken liver mousse, pickled shallots, Maggi aioli and the Vietnamese coriander rau ram, accompanied by a sunny-side up egg to riff on the breakfast skillet bánh mì chao. A rotating pasta dish currently reimagines the Vietnamese soup bun rieu, creating a crab-pork-tomato ragu with blistered cherry tomatoes and fresh crab atop thin capellini noodles ($32).
While Chinese and Vietnamese dishes are the main areas of focus, Chu Mai occasionally ventures into other southeast Asian cuisines, as with a Burmese-style kabocha squash curry ($13). Shrimp chips, chives and fermented tofu creme fraiche accompany reserve caviar ($100 for one ounce) and trout roe ($55 for two) from Wilton-based Tsar Nicoulai Caviar, and the rotating fish crudo has currently landed on albacore in ginger-scallion oil, chilis and Zhenjiang vinegar ($21).
Some of Chu Mai’s greatest innovation comes during dessert, when pastry chef Bennyjann Peneyra crafts pandan mochi cornbread with salted coconut anglaise and caramelized bananas ($12) and Vietnamese coffee mousse with chocolate ganache, salted egg yolk custard and candied pecans ($12). Coconut flan ($12) and scoops of ginger or taro Gunther’s Ice Cream ($8) are comparatively familiar options from Peneyra, an alumnus of The Kitchen.
Beverage director Jose Carasco oversees a full bar with five signature cocktails, including a pineapple-macadamia nut Mai Tai ($15), a bourbon-forward drink backed by Chinese five-spice bitters ($15) and “Boy With the Dragon Tattoo,” ($16) a vodka-pitaya play on the headline of a particularly lengthy Ngo profile in 2018. West Sacramento’s Onibi Beer Co. made a Japanese-inspired rice lager specifically for Ngo’s restaurants, and nonalcoholic options include a sparkling rosé along with teas and sodas.
Kru was one of Sacramento’s first truly high-end sushi concepts, and local diners showed their support even after it moved from a small midtown space to the current, larger East Sacramento location in 2016. Yet many customers have traditionally been more reluctant to pay top dollar for Chinese and Vietnamese dishes.
Sacramento’s sizable Chinese and Vietnamese populations have culminated in a wealth of dim sum parlors and delicious dives along Stockton Boulevard, but few high-end representations of those cuisines exist in the city core. Roseville-based Innov8 Solution Group built Chu Mai’s calm, green-hued dining room as a place for dressed-up nights out, and Ngo and Bond built the rest around familiar tastes.
“I eat in south Sac at least three times a week. But ... would I bring a date there on a Friday night? I don’t think so,” Ngo said. “I’ll go there anytime, but sometimes you need to have that (experience) where you can get those flavors and also enjoy a nice date night.”
Chu Mai is open 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, until 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and is closed Monday and Tuesday. It can seat about 100 people inside and another 70 or so across two patios, with lunch service expected to begin soon.
