Nomade owner Patrick Jean, left, and executive chef Zoltan Kovacs pose in the outdoor dining space at Nômade in Westport.
File photo
WESTPORT — Patrick Jean, a partner in the popular eatery Nomade, is juggling opening Anan, a new French Vietnamese restaurant here, while helping to open a second location of Nomade in Boca Raton, Fla.
Jean is bouncing between Connecticut and Florida overseeing the development of the three restaurants and he sounds energized.
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“You’re excited, you’re very stressed, but you’re still excited,” Jean said.
The partners plan to open Anan at 190 Main St. in the fall. The restaurant will serve French Vietnamese food, a fusion cuisine that evolved from when Vietnam was a French colony, French Indochina, from the mid-1800s to 1954, Jean said. Nomade, the French word for nomad, at 150 Main St. features food from around the globe — North Africa, the Greek island of Santorini, Asia, Hungary, Spain, France and the Mediterranean.
The owners wanted to open Anan because they believe a French Vietnamese place would fill a void in the Westport food scene.
Rendering of the planned Anan restaurant in Westport by architect Mark Blair. Partners include Ciara Webster, Patrick Jean and chef Zoltan Kovacs who own Nomade in Westport.
Courtesy Mark Blair
“A lot of people actually know about French-Vietnam, a lot of people come into restaurants, ‘Oh, we love it, there’s nothing like that around here,’” Jean said.
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Jean acted as a consultant for Nomade’s Boca Raton location, which opened just last week. He said his partner, Ciara Webster, who is a co-owner of the Florida restaurant is hoping to start a Nomade franchise.
“People have no idea how much work it is to do and open a restaurant business,” Jean said. “After when it’s open, the work that’s behind it to keep it open, to make sure that every day, like I always say, you cannot put your guard down.”
Now the partners are still tweaking the menu for Anan, while they have been introducing some French Vietnamese dishes at Nomade as specials.
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“I believe the number one item that people are going to really go for, just everybody likes a good pho. We have pork belly bánh mì, people love it,” he said about dishes for Anan. Pho is a fragrant soup with a rich bone broth, vegetables, noodles and garnishes. Bánh mì is a classic Vietnamese sandwich with savory meat on a French baguette.
Patrick Jean, a partner in Anan, a French Vietnamese restaurant which he plans to open in the fall.
Courtesy Patrick Jean
Rendering of the coming Anan, a French Vietnamese restaurant in Westport by architect Mark Blair.
Courtesy Mark Blair
Rendering of the planned Anan restaurant in Westport by architect Mark Blair. Partners include Ciara Webster, Patrick Jean and chef Zoltan Kovacs who own Nomade in Westport.
Courtesy Mark Blair
Patrick Jean is a partner in Anan, a French Vietnamese restaurant which he plans to open in the fall. Photographed at Nomade
File photo
French Vietnamese cuisine is known for its blend of fresh Vietnamese flavors and ingredients combined with French culinary techniques; garnishes are typically Thai basil, fresh mint, cilantro and green onion.
“The food is very light, it’s very enjoyable, the flavors are like very amazing,” he said.
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“You eat that food and you don’t feel heavy,” he added. “It’s like you leave the restaurant, you have a great meal, very light, great flavor…you don’t feel like when you eat a burger.”
They will also signature cocktails with Asian ingredients, such as yuzu fruit juice, made from the aromatic citrus fruit native to Japan and lychee, a sweet small tropical fruit grown in southeast Asia, Jean said.
These drinks will be unexpected compared to the typical espresso martinis and cosmopolitans, he said.
“This is going to be different,” he said. “Because of that, I think people are going to love it.”
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The interior at Anan will also have “a very Vietnamese” look, he said, with walnut wood, plaster walls and Vietnamese pendant lighting.
Anan will seat about 55 people, and the bar will seat 12 in the restored 1852 building, the former space of 190 Main Bar & Restaurant, which closed in 2023. They are building a new all-season patio with “lots of wood and glass” and are winterizing an existing patio near the parking lot, Jean said.
Dining at a fine restaurant should be about “the total experience,” Jean said. “Everything is an experience from when you pass the door to when you have a drink, a cocktail, a meal, a dessert.”
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If all goes as planned, Jean’s schedule will become even more hectic soon as he plans to open third eatery in Westport this fall, Luya, a café at the former Rye Ridge Deli, 159 Main St., which includes his partners Webster and chef Zoltan Kovacs.
Dining and Cooking