For nearly four decades, New Saigon, a now-closed family-owned restaurant on South Federal Boulevard, was the place where Coloradans first tried Vietnamese food. For many, the experience began with clumsily dipping a sheet of rice paper in water, piling on beef or shrimp paste, mint or cilantro, and then rolling it all up to create the perfect bite.
Making Vietnamese spring rolls at the table this way can be an icebreaker, whether on a date or with in-laws from other cities. It’s fun for kids and adults alike, and everyone at the table can customize each roll to their taste by choosing different ingredients from the platter.
“Someone might make a really nice bun and someone else might make an ugly one, and that’s funny and you can talk about it at the table,” explained An Nguyen, whose parents, Ha Pham and Thai Nguyen, ran New Saigon from 1987 until they sold it in 2017.
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Ultimately, it all comes down to the “perfect bite,” she said. “You’re always looking for a bite that encompasses all the flavors and all the textures.”
In April, An and one of her four sisters, Thao, along with their husbands, opened Dân Dã at 9945 E. Colfax Ave. in Aurora, serving rustic Vietnamese dishes with some modern touches. It’s actually An’s second restaurant (her first, Savory Vietnam, closed in December 2023), and it was impossible for the signature make-your-own spring rolls not to be on the menu.
Especially since the three generations of Coloradans who grew up eating spring rolls and dozens of other dishes at the New Saigon, 630 S. Federal Blvd. — where An learned every detail of cooking from her mother — wondered where else they could find them.
“This is comfort food today. Maybe not 30 years ago, but today,” she said.
In fact, most Vietnamese restaurants – even those that once specialized in other dishes like pho – now offer make-your-own spring rolls, An said. But it wasn’t always this way. When An’s parents moved here as war refugees, almost no one knew anything about Vietnamese food, and they had trouble finding the ingredients to make the dishes from their homeland.
But her mother wasn’t a fan of fusion or substituting local ingredients, An said: “She made sure we knew what real Vietnamese food was. What they had there, they brought here.”
At Viet’s Restaurant, owner Hiep Thai, who has been serving spring rolls for many years, has done the same. Thai came to the U.S. in 1990 from South Vietnam, where his family was also in the restaurant business, and said the concept of spring rolls is an essential part of Vietnamese cuisine.
“It’s very traditional,” he said, adding that one advantage of ordering spring rolls at a restaurant rather than making them in your own kitchen is that you get more variety on a single plate. “The combination is really hard to make at home” – and more expensive, Thai pointed out.
“If a new customer doesn’t know how to roll, we show them. Then the next time they’re excited,” Thai said, and that’s true for people of all backgrounds. “At first (the rolls) look really weird,” so you have to be patient to make a good roll. “If you have patience, it won’t be a mess.”
Other metro-area restaurants serving these dishes include Saigon Bowl (along with Viet’s in the Far East Center, 333 S. Federal), Golden Saigon (648 S. Parker Road in Aurora), Saigon Bistro (12303 E. Mississippi Ave. in Aurora), and Pho 95, which has two locations in the metro area.
Gỏi cuốn, which translates to spring rolls or “lettuce wraps,” get their name from the fresh vegetables that give them their flavor. Unlike fried egg rolls or other types of spring rolls, they are served fresh, not deep-fried—and are almost transparent.
“In Vietnam, it’s all about the rice fields,” An said. “So this is just a different way of eating rice. And since there are so many herbs there, you can eat them this way instead of in a salad.”
At Dân Dã, the ingredients for homemade spring rolls are served on a three-tiered tower, and the rice paper is presented dry and stacked sideways in a plastic container. To make a spring roll, carefully remove a sheet of rice paper, dip it lightly in a bowl of warm water, place it on your plate, then layer the fillings of your choice from the tower on top.
In addition to the ingredients listed above, these can include vermicelli, chicken, basil, pork sausage, perilla leaves, daikon radish, bean sprouts, lemongrass, tofu, salmon or soft-shell crab.
Once that part is ready, roll it up and fold over the sticky ends, then dip it in any sauce you like, including peanut, hoisin, fish, chili, anchovy or bean curd sauce.
“That’s the beauty of Vietnamese food,” said An. “The variety. Everyone can prepare it exactly the way they want.”
No one knows this better than the Nguyen sisters, who grew up making and eating spring rolls at home, often with thin strips of beef and butter on a griddle and various dips. “It was our family’s favorite dish and everyone loved it,” An recalls.
These days, their flavors range from beef or fried shrimp paste to Sriracha sauce, lemongrass or fermented fish sauce. Both An and Thao prefer to forgo the vermicelli.
To achieve the “perfect bite,” An advises not to overfill the rice paper or roll it up too loosely. “It has to be tight. It has to be crunchy, like a hot dog.” The proportions and a mix of textures are also important, “so that everything is in there when you bite into it.”
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