The bouquet
From bouquet to table
Before it was a restaurant, Rau Ơi delivered fresh vegetable bouquets to customers’ doors. The bouquet logo on the menu cover still tells that story.
The owners, Alfred and his wife, began by delivering fresh vegetables to customers’ doors. The bouquet logo on the menu cover still keeps that image: a tied bunch of greens, fresh and simple.
During lockdown they cooked free vegetarian meals for doctors and nurses — at one point 200 fresh meals a day, cooked by just three people. From those meals came deliveries, then the restaurant.
Today Rau Ơi is an “oasis in the middle of the city”: an open room, a glass wall onto the garden, gentle music — and a plant-based menu with Vietnamese inspiration, from Quack Quack rolls to the Lẩu Mam pot in the middle of the table.
