Fredericton Chef Shares Love for Southeast Asian Cuisine With Pop-Up Restaurant
FREDERICTON – A local chef is planning to share his passion for Southeast Asian cuisine with his new pop-up restaurant venture: Broken Rice Street Food.
After spending time travelling and working in Southeast Asia over the years, Steven Coyle was looking for a way to share his love for the region’s food with others.
“Previously I’ve lived in Vietnam for a year. I was a chef out there and I traveled to Southeast Asia for three months to Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore,” says Coyle. “I traveled around basically just educating myself on dishes of those countries and just eating as much as I possibly could and immersing myself in the culture. I’ve just taken it from there.”
“Since I’ve come back from Asia, I’ve just had a desire to share those dishes with other people that I’ve met.”
Coyle is currently a chef at the 11th Mile, a restaurant in downtown Fredericton. The owners of 11th Mile have agreed to allow him to host regular pop-up events to serve Southeast Asian food.
“At first, it was just going to be one event, then as I looked into it further, I realized I wanted to do more than one,” he says. “I decided I’m going to start my own company. Starting off I am going to do Vietnamese food.”
The first Broken Rice event takes place March 2 from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.
“The first event is specifically going to be Vietnamese chicken noodle soup and I’m hopefully going to progress from there and try to share the other dishes from Vietnam, some that people here may not have heard so much about and just take it from there,” says Coyle.
“The idea is that it’s an evolving pop-up concept. That means I don’t want to stick to one specific thing. I want it to evolve over time so I can share as many dishes as I possibly can.”
Though there are a few Vietnamese restaurants in Fredericton, Coyle hopes Broken Rice Street Food will help expose even more people to Southeast Asian food.
“There are some Vietnamese restaurants in the city and I think there is a big demand, especially for Asian food, which I don’t think it’s catered too as much as it possibly could be. Also, it’s really just for me to throw my hat in the ring as well. I feel like I can add to the restaurants that we already have and this my version of these sort of dishes.”
Though he loves the idea of opening a restaurant of his own in the future, he says this venture is all about sharing his genuine love for the food.
“To be honest, for me the whole idea of this is so I can share my love of food with other people. If it takes off and I was able to have my own restaurant down the line, that would be fantastic, but for right now, it’s so I can share what I really love with other people.”