When I sat down at The Temple Club a decade ago to interview Geoffrey Deetz, he and his wife, Quỳnh Như Nguyen, were a few years away from taking over Le Colonial in 2021. Pilloried in 2019 for its outdated culinary tropes and troubling interior décor, the restaurant closed for good in 2024. The brick-walled interior of The Temple Club looked just like Spettro, a neighborhood restaurant Deetz had opened in the 1990s. Between his tenure at Spettro and The Temple Club opening, Deetz moved to Vietnam. There he ran a bakery and cafe with Nguyen that developed into a restaurant group.
During our 2017 conversation, Deetz clearly wanted to share what he’d learned about Vietnamese cuisine while he and his family lived abroad. The top of the menu announced his intentions with a declaration: “The bold cuisine of Viet Nam.” He made regional dishes for Vietnamese expats who couldn’t find them in the Bay Area, as well as for Oakland locals, to encourage us to try something other than those delicious and welcoming bowls of pho.
The first dish Deetz brought out from the kitchen was a frog-leg stew covered in a thick and rather mossy layer of green herbs. Second was chem chep nuong mo hanh, barbecued mussels also topped with herbs and fish sauce. With a half-dozen Vietnamese restaurants already established nearby on International Boulevard, the endeavor was forward-thinking and risky. I returned to Banh Mi Ba Le several times for a sandwich but did not return to The Temple Club for another simmering bowl of well-prepared frog legs. With the best of intentions, the restaurant closed in 2019.
Last month, Deetz and Nguyen opened a new concept called Broken Dreams. To explain the name, Deetz writes on their website, “Broken Dreams didn’t begin in Oakland. It began with a one-way ticket to Vietnam, five dollars in a pocket, and a dream that changed everything. What followed were decades of restaurants, friendships, failures, reinventions, and, eventually, a journey back home.” It’s easy to root for a restaurant that acknowledges past failures while also looking forward to this reinvention.
During a recent lunch hour Deetz and Nguyen both stayed on their feet, moving between the front counter and the kitchen. Deetz is, like me, older now. He doesn’t move as fast as he once did. But when one customer almost walked out the door without ordering, the chef took the time to engage with her. He asked her how he could adjust an item on the menu so it would suit her. She listed out the ingredients while he nodded his head and then executed her order.
Broken Dreams is located next door to De Lauer’s Super News Stand and a block away from The Caffè by Mr. Espresso. Inside, the setting is as informal as a cafeteria. Nguyen’s baked goods are on display in the form of patê sô, or hot hand pies made with a flaky pastry. The menu doesn’t include pho, but frog legs didn’t make the cut either. The main dishes are cơm tấm, or broken-rice dishes, vermicelli bowls, spring rolls and salads.
This culinary approach might sound like a capitulation, like a compromise to please less-adventurous palates. But after a single bite of the chicken salad with kumquats ($7 small, $16 large), Deetz’ expertise registers in every dish. Served inside a ring of round “shrimp chips,” the flavors are glorious. The quality of the vegetables is notable. As is the homemade nước chấm, or fish sauce, which comes on the side in its own cute little bottle. It contains a satisfying ratio of heat to sweetness. If the owners have capacity to set up a mini-market, they could sell bigger bottles of the sauce for customers to take home.
The vermicelli bowl ($19–$22) is covered in an avalanche of crushed peanuts, but any of the menu items can be ordered without them. Beneath that nutty layer lay cilantro, julienned cucumber and carrot rounds. Those fresh ingredients, along with the fish sauce, made it an exceptional noodle dish.
There’s an entire tab on the restaurant’s website dedicated to cơm tấm. In addition to a short history of the dish and Nguyen’s particular fondness for it, broken rice is described as “the signature comfort food of Saigon.” Our order came with cucumber slices, a pickled slaw made with carrots and fennel, and barbecue pork. This is comfort food that’s a total delight.
Broken Dreams, 1312 Broadway, Oakland. Open weekdays 11am to 7pm. brokendreamsoakland.com
