A pioneering Vietnamese restaurant will soon serve its last meal. Xin Chao will close on Saturday, June 8, chef-owner Tony Nguyen announced on Instagram.

Nguyen and Masterchef winner Christine Ha teamed up to open Xin Chao in the fall of 2020. It quickly developed a following for the way it blended classic Vietnamese dishes with Texas-based ingredients and cooking methods. Dishes such as smoked duck salad, lemongrass-buttermilk fried chicken, and smoked beef rib with flat rice noodles made Xin Chao a hit.

The restaurant earned critical acclaim, too. It followed up a win for Best New Restaurant in the 2021 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards with a James Beard Award finalist nomination for Best Chef: Texas in 2022.

Unfortunately, the restaurant has suffered a series of setbacks over the last several months. Ha and her husband John Suh left Xin Chao last fall in order to focus on their two restaurants in Spring Branch, Vietnamese gastropub The Blind Goat and sandwich concept Stuffed Belly.

More recently, high prices for crawfish meant that this year’s season wasn’t as lucrative as expected, Nguyen tells CultureMap. Then the recent storms knocked out the restaurant’s power for almost a week and damaged equipment, which required expensive repairs. Between those financial challenges and the inevitable summer slowdown in business, Nguyen didn’t see a path forward.

“It was a hard decision,” Nguyen says. “I didn’t want to go down this path. I was hoping to bring nightlife to the location, but with what went on this month it’s been very hard.”

While he’s leaving on a down note, he’s proud of what he and Ha accomplished at the restaurant.

“My fondest memory was being a finalist for the James Beard Award and being part of culinary excellence and meeting all these chefs,” Nguyen says. “I achieved what I wanted with Xin Chao. It has always been a passion project. We showed a lot of love and passion through our food in that space.”

As for what’s next, Nguyen says he’d like to figure out how to build a business around the H-Town Bang garlic-butter sauce that he’s used for crawfish at both Xin Chao and Saigon House, his restaurant in Cypress that closed in March. He’s also contemplating creating online cooking content that would share his food knowledge with the world.

As for the building, Nguyen says he’s leaving all of the equipment behind for the next tenant. Property owner Adam Brackman tells CultureMap he’s ready to speak with interested parties. The building has a sterling history, having served as a home to innovative Texas comfort food restaurant Beaver’s for 10 years prior to housing Xin Chao.

“It’s a great spot with a great legacy. I’m looking forward to what’s next,” Brackman says.