Vietnam War veteran Dave Soderquist will never forget the first time he heard about the Vietnamese restaurant opening inside the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post.
“I’m like, one more time, there's a Vietnamese restaurant inside the VFW? Got it. Let's try it out,” Soderquist said.
It’s a somewhat common reaction to the V Cafe, said John Phelps, another Vietnam vet who also serves as the VFW post’s senior vice commander.
The restaurant opened in Post 10056 nearly two years ago.
“Some people, you know, they'll smile and kind of nod their heads or something,” Phelps said. “It seems a little strange, but it's just because they wouldn't think a thing about it if it was a Japanese restaurant or a German restaurant, because of the name of the Vietnamese conflict, and not World War II.”
Though the post has always been open to the public, profits were dwindling.
First-generation Vietnamese immigrants KimChi Vu and her husband, Elvis Nguyen, stepped in, proposing they open their first restaurant there, the V Cafe.
The restaurant has grown to be a popular spot for veterans, residents and tourists, keeping the post afloat with the extra bar traffic.
Vu and Nguyen’s parents fled Vietnam after the war ended. A majority of the post’s veterans fought there. Now, they forge bonds over food.
“Imagine all the tragedies that all the members here have seen and gone through,” Vu said. “Imagine all the tragedies and traumas that my family, my parents, [and] my siblings might be too young to have known, but my extended family and [their] heartaches.
“You know, there's one place that can just bring everyone together. It's around the dinner table.”
The short documentary titled “Her Parents Fled Vietnam. These Veterans Fought There. Now They Eat Together.” traces the stories of Vu, Nguyen and four Dubois residents who are interconnected with the V Cafe in several ways.
A dinner service on June 21 reveals the quiet rhythm of the V Cafe as locals and tourists filter in, Vu and Nguyen move quickly behind the counter, and the ways in which food, memory and history overlap in a space shaped by war, loss and strong community bonds.
The V Cafe is located inside the Dubois VFW post. (Reilly Strand) 
One of the V Cafe's signature dishes called shaking beef. It's served on a sizzling platter. (Reilly Strand)
Great Food And Good Times
Vu never thought she’d run a Vietnamese restaurant inside a VFW post, let alone in a small Wyoming town. Or, in a memorial room named after a fallen Marine with Vietnam veterans as a large part of her customer base.
“You kind of learn to embrace it and accept that there's a reason why you're doing what you're doing right now,” Vu said. “And I firmly believe that a lot of it has to do with me wanting to share my culture and my roots.”
She and her husband serve up Vietnamese dishes with a Wyoming twist in a space many in town once thought wouldn’t survive. Before the V Cafe opened, the post’s bar was only open once a week.
Vu keeps an eye on the front of house and prepares ingredients while her husband maneuvers the wok, mixing their dishes with fiery flair.
Their goal is to bring great food that brings people together to share laughter and stories.
“What do laughter and stories bring? It bonds people,” Vu said. “And bonding does not mean you have to be a particular race, a particular background, [or] a particular gender. It has no bias at all. All it knows is it's great food and good times.”
Nguyen and Vu have been married for 20 years. They grew up across the street from each other in Orange County, California. They now own two restaurants in Dubois, the V Cafe and Tacos Esteban, their newest addition.
The cafe is marked by the couple’s commitment to finding positives and continuing to push forward. They moved to Wyoming seeking a quieter life after Vu battled thyroid cancer.
When the job they moved here for didn’t work out, they pivoted to opening the restaurant.
Vu says it’s American history come full circle, “With a side of pho.”
Survived War And Pirates
Nguyen and Vu’s parents are boat people, a term used for Vietnamese refugees who fled their country by sea after the Vietnam War ended.
As a Republic of Vietnam veteran, her father fought against communism, but Vu’s parents weren’t able to escape until 1979.
It was a harrowing journey as they left their home with two small children, risking violence and even death to expand their family in America and give their current and future children, like Vu, more freedom.
“Not too long into their journey, my parents, along with many other boats, encountered Thai pirates,” Vu said.
Historical newspaper reports from the late 1970s and 1980s show many refugees were terrorized by Thai pirates. They faced murder, rape, violence and theft. Vu said her family was scared but unhurt.
“They were all blindfolded and then pulled for hours through the ocean,” Vu said. “At the very end … the one thing they took were the compasses from everyone. And then that's when, guns drawn, they said, ‘Now, scatter around, leave, but don't come to our country.’”
Her father, who was declared the boat’s captain, used the sun and moon to guide the boat on a four-day journey to Malaysia. That’s where they began the process to immigrate to America.
“You can't help but get emotional, because it's not just for them,” Vu said. “Here, my parents had my sister and my brother with the hopes of coming to this new country and to expand our family. You wonder, like, what sacrifices have they made just to do that, to give us this better chance at life.”
She’s often reminded of that history in the VFW post where many Vietnam veterans like Phelps and Soderquist have embraced the restaurant. Even when the restaurant was a point of tension for one Purple Heart veteran, their food built a bridge.
“When we first opened the cafe, he came, but he was very blunt,” Vu said. “He said to us, ‘KimChi, Elvis, I like you both very much as individuals, but the horrors of the war and having lost so many comrades still triggers me ’til this day. I am very sorry, but I will not be able to bring myself to come and support your Vietnamese restaurant.’”
She took no offense, but hoped he would change his mind. Last spring, he dropped by and ordered chicken fried rice.
“I shed a tear or two that day because it's a testament to the hope that with time you can, with your kindness, do something to hopefully show that you can … reconcile with your past to find a way, to find a path to move forward,” Vu said.
Connected Stories
When Phelps received his Vietnam War draft notice, he didn’t open it and went and signed up for the Navy, where he served from 1968 to 1972. Upon initially returning home, he didn’t feel pride in his service.
“[In] Vietnam, we weren't attacked. We felt it was just a political war, but we were told we were just trying to stop communist aggression, and we didn't,” Phelps said. “A lot of people died, and we didn't really accomplish much there.”
About a decade after returning home, he joined the Dubois VFW, then served as commander and is now the post’s senior vice commander. His pride in being a veteran grew, especially after his daughter and son joined the military.
His son, Chance, was killed in action in Iraq in 2004. HBO made a movie starring Kevin Bacon titled “Taking Chance” about returning the Marine’s remains to Dubois for his funeral.
The room the V Cafe operates in is named after Chance Phelps. It was also one of the last places Phelps saw Chance before he was deployed.
“I'm sure that the V Cafe has a lot to do with a lot more people, especially tourists and people from out of town, knowing Chance’s story from coming in this room and looking at things,” Phelps said.
Chance’s mother, Gretchen Mack, is a major reason the V Cafe opened up in the Chance Phelps room. It was her idea.
On June 21, the room was vibrant, loud and full of life. It keeps Chance’s story going, she said.
“It almost keeps him alive,” said Jeff Mack, Chance’s stepfather.
You can never replace the loss of a child, Gretchen Mack said, but Chance’s memory has brought so many unexpected people into their lives.
“It's like throwing a stone in a pond, and the ripples just keep going, and you don't know when the ripples are going to stop,” she said. “Hopefully that'll be the same with the V Cafe and the VFW.”
As Soderquist picked up his order from the V Cafe counter, he proclaimed “satisfaction guaranteed” with a big grin, prompting a hug from Vu and a smile from Nguyen.
He’s been thrilled to have the V Cafe in a town where there are limited food options, adding it’s like having a Michelin-star restaurant. Many people, like Soderquist, come in for the food but also because they enjoy visiting Vu and her husband.
Soderquist enlisted in the Navy on his 17th birthday and was in the service from 1966 to 1969.
“I had always wanted to be in the air Navy division. In my era, everyone was going to go,” he said. “So, it was a choice for me.”
As he walked through the bar and cafe area, he noted that the number of people milling about would have been unheard of at the post prior to the V Cafe.
“The smell and the aroma when you walk in, when they're cooking, is fabulous, and the food is phenomenal,” Soderquist said. “If the food wasn't good, the story wouldn't work.”
Wrapping Up
As the dinner service was nearly done, a customer came in and ordered three shaking beefs. It’s a popular dish that comes out on a sizzling platter. It also takes the longest to make and is inevitably ordered right before closing.
That doesn’t bother Vu. It makes her laugh and smile as she constantly reminds her staff to focus on the good vibes.
For the couple, almost every day is a 16- to 18-hour day. They juggle a family and two busy restaurants.
“At the end of every night, we are extremely exhausted, but it's a major sense of fulfillment for us, and we go home virtually every night smiling, knowing that the next morning, we're going to wake up very inspired to do it all over again,” she said.
As she and her staff closed up for the night, she paused to reflect in the dining room, sitting next to flowers a few residents delivered to her. They knew it was a special night.
“You can't help at the end of the night feeling so great and feeling so overwhelmed by all the love and support that was given to us,” she said.
They don’t plan to relocate the V Cafe. The VFW feels like home.
With the help of the VFW post, they’ve invested hours in updates to the space and plan to keep improving it.
While a Vietnamese restaurant in a VFW post might strike people as interesting or strange, chalking it up to an ironic story doesn’t do the place justice. That’s just the surface-level view.
“I think the most important thing is to look beyond that irony. It's almost a balance, right? Between the past and the future, kind of healing old wounds and embracing new beginnings,” she said. “And that's the way I choose to view it.
“You can choose to continue to say, ‘This is so weird, this is ironic,’ but by doing so, you kind of take away from the beauty and the poetry in the idea of what Elvis and I are doing with the V Cafe here inside the VFW post.”
Hannah Brock can be reached at: Hannah@CowboyStateDaily.com
