Kathy Tran Restaurant Beatrice will celebrate Tết with a special tasting menu that marries Vietnamese, Cajun, and French foods Last August, Restaurant Beatrice held its first Viet-Cajun dinner. It was more successful than chef Michelle Carpenter and co-owner Hanh Ho anticipated, selling out and generating more engagement on social media than the average post for the restaurant, Ho tells Eater Dallas. Now, they’re bringing it back as a celebration of Lunar New Year, or Tết, on Sunday, January 29. “There were a number of guests who weren’t able to come the first time. We have a platform and Vietnamese-Americans deserve to experience their food in an elevated setting that celebrates their culture with respect, attention, and care,” Carpenter says in an email, adding that putting the menu together included a conscious effort to respect the origins of the ingredients. For example, Carpenter looked at the ways thịt kho, which appears on her menu for the evening as braised pork with soft-boiled eggs, manifests in different Asian cultures. “As a Japanese chef, I grew up eating buta kakuni,” she says. “Filipinos eat pork adobo. Taiwanese eat lu rou fan. Every Asian culture has a version of this Chinese dish.” Creating her version at Beatrice meant considering how, in certain cuisines, pork belly is perceived as a “decadent, indulgent treat,” while in Vietnamese kitchens it is both a comfort food and a dish that can show up on holiday menus. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Restaurant Beatrice (@restaurantbeatrice) The idea for the first Viet-Cajun dinner came, in part, from the restaurant’s desire to work with Song Cai gin, which has the first gin distillery in Vietnam and can be found on the drinks menus at numerous Michelin-recognized restaurants worldwide. The brand only broke into the Dallas market last year. “As our distillery continues to work in partnerships with farmers and foragers in Vietnam, we strive to honor in equal parts the terroir, diversity, and peoples of Vietnam,” Brennan Davis, accounts manager for Song Cai, tells Eater Dallas. “In this regard, Beatrice is exactly the type of establishment, team, and vision we hold closely to the driving force behind our brand as well.” Song Cai is a critically acclaimed distillery, built with the idea of sustainability and diversity at its foundation. It runs parallel to how Restaurant Beatrice works, as demonstrated by the restaurant’s designation as the first B-Corporation-certified restaurant in Texas. Viet-Cajun menus are more popular in Houston and Louisiana than Dallas, but Beatrice intends to make its mark in town by putting its own spin on the cuisine. “At Beatrice, we adopt a French-style serving format for the dinner, service à la russe, so courses are served in order for this dinner, whereas traditional Vietnamese food is served family style,” Carpenter says. “Many of these are dishes, like bò lá lốt and bánh xèo, that are found in Vietnamese mom-and-pop enclaves in Arlington or Carrollton, and we’ve respectfully married them with Western techniques and approaches.” The tasting menu will be available for one night only, on Wednesday, January 29. The cost is $125 per person and reservations can be made online.