Mai's Restaurant One Year Anniversary

One year ago today, a kitchen fire destroyed Mai's Vietnamese Restaurant in Midtown. Today, the family is looking forward to re-opening with a new and improved look. Anna Pham literally grew up in Mai's, Houston's first Vietnamese restaurant. "It's nice seeing three generations of family served here with my Grandma, Mai (my mother), and myself.

Three generations helped make this one of Houston's most popular spots. But last year, over thirty years of hard work was destroyed in minutes. A fire in the kitchen quickly spread. Everything inside was gone. Anna Pham will never forget watching her Grandmother that day.


"When she and my Grandpa first started the business, it was a means to support their eight kids. And for her to hand it over to my Mom, then to see both her and my Mom collapse, it was a really hard day for us."

Mai Nguyen, Anna's mother, and the restaurants namesake, was heart-broken. "I don’t want to remember that day."

Her heart is mending as Mai's is set to reopen in April. Anna Pham says the restaurant will be bigger, and updated, a project that started as soon as that fire was out.

"You know the next day we were already like no, we're going to pick up from the ashes, and we're going to dust the dirt off our shoulder. We're going to come back bigger and stronger. The building itself is modernized, but everything we're serving is still Mai's, it's still Vietnamese, truly Vietnamese."

Locals are excited this restaurant will soon open its doors.

Rodney Butler works in the area and said he visits often. "It's one of my lunch stops, once a week." Bobby Lewis remembers how popular Mai’s was. "It was good at the time; it was always busy during lunchtime, always a waiting line."

Mai's is set to re-open in nearly two months, on April 16th. Anna said you can expect the same food, and same hours, 10am-4am. The seating capacity has doubled, and the prices are either the same, or lower than the old menu.