Huynh Restaurant, an 18-year fixture of Houston's original Chinatown, has opened a second location at 2720 Richmond Ave. in Upper Kirby, serving the same pho, noodle bowls and duck salad that built its reputation in East Downtown. The move comes as the restaurant's original home at 912 St. Emanuel St. faces closure at the end of 2026, a casualty of the sprawling Interstate 45 rebuild reshaping the neighborhood.
Owner Cindy Dang told the Houston Chronicle that the new location keeps everything intact. “We have exactly the same menu,” Dang said, adding of the transition, “everything's the same.” The Richmond Avenue space seats about 80 people across two rooms, with roughly 20 more seats on an outdoor patio, compared to the original restaurant's 125 seats, according to the Chronicle's report.
Dang decorated the new space in white and green, with a windowed front, plants, family photos, a wine display and dark floral wallpaper, the outlet reported. She said she chose the Upper Kirby address for personal reasons as much as practical ones. “I just love the area, and a lot of our customers live around here as well,” Dang said.
A Menu Built Over Two Decades
The new location offers the full roster of old Huynh favorites: Vietnamese noodle bowls, specialty soups, pho and rice plates, per the Chronicle. Signature dishes carrying over include the duck salad with herbs, cabbage and ginger dipping sauce, a carrot-y beef stew garnished with basil and cilantro, and a lettuce wrap filled with ground pork, tofu and shrimp. The Upper Kirby menu also adds betel leaf-wrapped beef grilled over flames and served with vermicelli noodles.
Huynh's roots trace back to Van Bui, who opened Pho Huynh in Midtown in the mid-1990s before launching Huynh Restaurant around 2008; Bui closed Pho Huynh about a decade later and retired roughly a decade before 2026, the Chronicle reported. Dang and her siblings have kept the family business going, including a related Vietnamese restaurant in Shenandoah run by Dang's brother. Beyond the family's own account, Huynh's reputation drew wider recognition: former Houston Chronicle food critic Alison Cook included the restaurant on her annual Top 100 Houston Restaurants list for eight consecutive years from 2012 through 2019, repeatedly praising dishes like Bánh Cuốn and Gỏi Vịt. When Cook published a positive review of the restaurant, it reportedly sold out within a few hours. Esquire magazine also named Huynh to its December 2020 national list of “100 Restaurants America Can't Afford to Lose,” spotlighting the duck salad.
Finding a New Home Near Loyal Customers
Dang found the Richmond Avenue space two and a half years after first hearing about the I-45 transformation bearing down on EaDo, and she secured the lease with help from the landlord's favorable view of the original Huynh, according to the Chronicle. The Upper Kirby building has its own local history: it was occupied for 18 years by Sonoma Wine Bar, which closed in March 2025 amid post-pandemic economic pressures and inflation, according to Houston Food Finder.
The EaDo location's closure is directly tied to the $6 billion-plus I-45 rebuild, per the Chronicle's reporting. That megaproject, part of a broader effort spanning downtown Houston to Beltway 8, has already displaced or forced relocations for other prominent East Downtown institutions, including landmark restaurant Kim Son and local bar Neil's Bahr, as documented by the Houston Chronicle's ongoing project tracking business displacement. Hoodline previously reported that construction and road closures tied to the same project forced craft brewer True Anomaly Brewing to permanently shutter its EaDo taproom on Dallas Street after seven years in the neighborhood.
The Long Fade of Houston's Original Chinatown
Houston's original Chinatown took shape in East Downtown during the 1950s near Chartres Street, but most Asian-owned businesses migrated westward to Bellaire Boulevard during the 1980s and 1990s, leaving Huynh as one of the district's few remaining legacy Vietnamese establishments, according to historical background from Houstonia Magazine. Huynh's coming displacement mirrors that of Long Sing Supermarket and BBQ, a 40-year-old Old Chinatown staple that closed its Walker Street location in July 2017 because it sat directly in the I-45 expansion footprint before reopening in Midtown as Siu Lap City.
The North Houston Highway Improvement Project, valued at more than $9 billion, was temporarily paused by federal officials over civil rights concerns about displacement of minority communities before the Texas Department of Transportation signed a Voluntary Resolution Agreement with the Federal Highway Administration in March 2023, committing to displacement mitigation and housing initiatives. Greater Houston is home to over 157,000 Vietnamese Americans, the largest Vietnamese population in the country outside the Los Angeles metro area, a demographic base that underpins demand for Vietnamese dining across the region.
Huynh's arrival in Upper Kirby also fits a pattern of Vietnamese-owned businesses expanding into central, higher-income Houston neighborhoods. Hoodline recently reported on Katy-based salon Nhien Head Spa & Wellness opening in the same area, part of what appears to be a broader shift of suburban Vietnamese enterprises toward the inner loop. Whether Huynh's longtime EaDo regulars will follow the restaurant to Richmond Avenue before the St. Emanuel Street location closes at the end of the year remains to be seen.
