Linh Café: phở and tartare in the Beach District

For Tai Nguyen, chef and owner of Linh Café, cooking started with a grocery list. Growing up in a small town in northern Vietnam, he was fifteen when the daily market run and the family dinner became his responsibility. “That was where my love of food began, with everyday meals and taking care of people,” he recalls. After settling in Vancouver in 2001, he found a second calling in French cuisine and spent more than a decade learning it in the city’s French kitchens. Those years gave him a deep respect for ingredients, technique and careful preparation.

In 2014, he took over a small room of about 40 seats on West 4th Avenue and named it after his wife, Linh. The idea was to bring his Vietnamese roots, his French training and his family together under one roof. Within a few years, guests were lining up at the door every night, and the restaurant needed more tables. In 2021, Linh Café moved to the Beach District, at the foot of Vancouver House, into a much larger space.

A marble bar with a Parisian air

For the new room, Tai and Linh Nguyen drew on what they had seen on their travels. In Paris, it was the Art Nouveau lines of the cafés and bistros; on trips back home to Vietnam, it was restaurants that weave European influence into their design. With an interior designer, they brought both together to Linh Café: bistro chairs, curved banquettes, a marble bar and ceilings that rise high above the tables.

Tartare first, phở to share

The house sums itself up as “A Vietnamese Kitchen With a French Cooking Style,” and Linh Café’s menu reads in both languages. On one side are the French classics: steak tartare prepared to order with house-made potato chips, escargots baked in garlic butter with tomato confit, Salt Spring Island mussels in a cream and white wine broth, steak frites with peppercorn sauce, and a beef Wellington for two. On the other are gỏi cuốn, crispy nem rán filled with pork, wood-ear mushroom and glass noodles, and above all the phở bò, the most-ordered dish in the house. The chef has watched the same scene play out for years: a table orders tartare, escargots or mussels, then finishes with a bowl of phở to share. The fried frog legs are where both traditions meet, cooked in a generous garlic butter and finished with chili flakes and herbs. The menu has been tightened over time so the team can execute every dish well. Pastry also has a place at Linh Café, with lemon and chocolate tarts, palmiers, sablés bretons and cream puffs, while the wine list sticks to France and British Columbia.

The ease of a Paris café

Most guests are regulars, and servers often greet them by name as they walk in. The chef wants the dining room to stay casual and relaxed, a place where everyone feels at ease and leaves wanting to come back, with a kitchen that never cuts corners. “Take every ingredient and every process seriously, and do the small things well,” he says of his philosophy. The team from Linh Café recently opened Linh Noodle Bar on West Cordova Street, a compact menu devoted to Vietnamese noodle soups, for those who want to explore that side of the story further.

Written by Marie-Françoise Malo
Photography by Minh Quan

Updated on November 09, 2026

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