A Miami restaurant named the best Vietnamese spot in South Florida is setting up shop in Salem, with chef and owner Jon Nguyen planning to open Tran An's second location at 206 Derby St. sometime in October. The restaurant will soft launch with selected staples pulled from its Miami flagship, though no exact opening date has been set.
Nguyen, whose hometown is Houston, named the restaurant after his grandfather and drew menu inspiration from his family's roots there, according to MassLive. Tran An first opened in Miami in 2020, and Miami New Times named it the city's best Vietnamese restaurant in 2025. Getting to that Florida debut wasn't Nguyen's first stop, either: before the standalone Miami location opened, Tran An launched in 2018 as a fast-casual stall inside the St. Roch Market food hall in the city's Design District, according to StarChefs.
Tran An's early food-hall stall preceded the standalone Miami location and was in the city's Design District.
From Government Studies to a Two-Michelin-Starred Kitchen
Nguyen's path to the stove was not a straight line. He began studying government at the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 before pivoting to culinary arts, eventually graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris in 2013, per the same StarChefs profile. From there he worked in New York City kitchens including Montmartre under chef Tien Ho and The Modern — a fine-dining pedigree that stands in contrast to the homestyle Vietnamese comfort food he now serves.
That resume helped Nguyen land the 2021 StarChefs Miami Rising Stars Award, which recognized his homestyle Vietnamese cooking and hospitality at Tran An. The original Miami flagship in Little River spans just 750 square feet with 20 interior seats, featuring 1970s-inspired retro decor designed by Nguyen alongside interior designer Mark Alan Diaz meant to evoke an immigrant family's home, according to a Miami restaurant profile from Postcard. Miami New Times has separately described the space as having orange lighting and midcentury-and-1970s spaceship decor.
What's on the Menu
The Salem menu is expected to echo Miami staples: noodles, banh mi, salads, pho, and poke bowls, alongside shareable dishes like shrimp puffs, spring rolls, and crab and pork imperial rolls, per MassLive's reporting. Diners can also expect a pho burger, a buffalo KFC bánh mì, vegan pho, and a Fruity Pebbles-based dessert, along with the restaurant's signature grandma sauce, a fish sauce condiment. Happy hour specials are planned Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m.
On the food side, Tran An's Miami menu features pho and iced coffee.
A Former Real Estate Office Turned Restaurant
Behind the scenes, getting the Derby Street space ready involved clearing a municipal hurdle. Salem municipal records show Nguyen petitioned the city's Zoning Board of Appeals in late 2025 for variances to convert the site — a nonconforming former real estate office — into a restaurant, according to the City of Salem. By September, the restaurant had begun recruiting front-of-house and back-of-house staff for the new location, with job listings noting Nguyen will be working on site alongside the local Salem team from day one, per BostonChefs.com.
Opening Amid Salem's Busiest Season
The October timeline places Tran An amid Salem's Haunted Happenings tourism season, a period that draws large crowds. Salem drew more than one million visitors in October, and the city also saw large October crowds.
Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo has said that tourism generates roughly $140 million in direct spending in the city, according to CommonWealth Beacon. Seasonal crowds can bring heavy foot traffic while making it harder for regular customers to navigate the city.
