About Us

About the founders of An Choi
At the age of nineteen in 1979, after learning from a master chef of a well known dim
sum restaurant in Vietnam, chef/owner Thanh Truong flew to Belgium to face the real
world of cooking and to join his brother in opening and running a restaurant in Liege.
After two years, Thanh started to experiment with his own way of cooking to create a
nouvelle cuisine, which was the trend in Europe during that era. Nouvelle cuisine is a
way of French cooking that seeks to bring out the natural flavors of foods and
substitutes light, low-calorie sauces and stocks for the traditional heavy butter-based
and cream-based preparations. Finally, their restaurant, Le Dong Fang, was given the
title of the Best Small Nouvelle Cuisine Restaurant of Liege by food critics Gault et
Millau, in the 80's.
In 1985, Thanh left Belgium to reunite with his wife Christine to build their home
together in Los Angeles to continue his career and worked in a 300-seat seafood
restaurant in San Gabriel, California. A year later, Thanh and Christine decided to settle
in Pacific Grove. Soon after they moved to Pacific Grove, Thanh began work as a chef
for a well reputed Chinese/Mandarin restaurant in historic downtown Monterey for
years until the owner retired. Christine worked at the old Fort's Department store, now
Holman Building, as a cosmetologist. He starts working as a part time interpreter while
still cooking with different restaurants including Robata in Carmel with his close friend,
executive chef, Shigal. Later in 1989, Thanh took a break from cooking to proceed with
his full time career with Language Line Services in Monterey and used his knowledge of
inclusive languages of Chinese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, French and English
and interpreted for the company until 2008.
In 1992, Thanh and Christine had their baby girl, Emmeline, who is now giving a hand at
An Choi. With his full-time interpretation job, Thanh still felt in his blood that cooking
was his passion. He opened up his own restaurant a few years later, Noodles Etc, in
Marina, California where Christine cooked along with Thanh. Unfortunately, it only ran
for 3 years. The injury of his wrist forced him to take another long break. But it didn't stop
there. During those years, Thanh and Christine ran into numerous loyal customers of the
of their old restaurant around the Monterey peninsula awaiting to see them in the
restaurant business again. Because of that, Thanh and Christine were eager to find a
right place for the business to fulfill the request.
Thanh finally found a perfect space to bring their new restaurant to the Asilomar Forest
of Pacific Grove in 2007. In order to pursue his goal of taking his cooking career to
another level, he first consulted his plans of the restaurant with PG City of Commerce's
President, Moe Ammar. Then the Truong family created a menu of vast variety for their
new place and An Choi Asian Contemporary Cuisine was born.
Chef/Owner Thanh Truong has been working around the world and gathered positive
reviews from different food critics. Thanh creates variety of delicious heart healthy
dishes made with natural and fresh ingredients. An Choi's Kitchen cooks up the very
best cuisine of each country or province: Canton, for its roasted and grilled meats,
Mandarin, for the aristocratic cuisine gleaned from all Chinese provinces and light
Vietnamese dishes influenced by the French.
Chef Thanh had been chosen as a Volunteer chef to work with renowned chefs at the
Pebble Beach Food & Wine Event.

Please call for reservations. Party and conference room available for special events,
weddings, or private affairs. Please call 831-372-8818 for more information.