A culinary victim of the Great Recession

Dearborn

It's over for Phuong Nguyen and Annam, her top-notch Vietnamese restaurant that gave West Dearborn the global panache and food cred it otherwise lacked -- and probably will again, sad to say.

She closed up shop over the July Fourth holiday. The framed Gourmet magazine cover and the blurb heralding her fare are gone, along with the clips from other critics and a particular one by my former colleague, Jon Pepper. He told Nguyen's story of leaving her native Saigon and landing, by way of Paris, in Dearborn and opening Annam. Me? I get the end.

"Dear patrons," said the handwritten note taped to the back door. "Annam (has) the regrets to announce that we are no longer in business. Thank you for your wonderful support all these years."

Made me sick, reading that note Thursday. Not so Annam's service or the food, which was consistently sublime, or nearly so, an authentic and bracing counterpoint to the processed, focus-grouped, heat-and-serve corporate chow that passes for restaurant food in so many towns across the country.

There was none of that at Annam, decorated by Nguyen's tasteful eye for combining contemporary European understatement with carefully chosen pictures of life in Vietnam. She developed the menu. She planned the wine dinners. And she -- a self-taught cook trained as a pastry chef -- ran the hot line most nights, a true chef-owner who greeted regulars like the old friends some became.

If you know anything about cheffing -- the hours, the preparation, the heat, the stress, the demanding customers lured by the latest good review -- you know that ain't easy. Even harder is doing it and getting recognition for it, up to and including Gourmet and the Zagat guide.

Now Annam is gone, a victim of the Great Recession, the continual leaning of Ford Motor Co., the haggling with the landlord and their corollary, the implosion of the West Dearborn business district. Annam, alongside the moribund Talal's, is yet one more casualty in a city accumulating empty storefronts like boys collect baseball cards.

"Dearborn is dead," Nguyen told me over a cool drink at the nearby Starbucks. "It's sad. Dead is when you drive and not every corner is fully leased. This is not normal for a downtown."

Maybe so, but it's the new normal for Dearborn and other auto towns hammered by the Great Restructuring of the Detroit auto industry. There are fewer jobs, fewer people willing to spend money, fewer corporate expense accounts free to buy business meals down the street.

Annam's revenue was down 50 percent from last year, she says, continuing a spiral turbocharged by the recession and cutbacks at Ford. Add the city's on-again, off-again, can't-make-a-decision dithering on paid parking and this summer's construction on pock-marked Michigan Avenue and it's a wonder all operating in the business district from Brady to Military aren't out of business.

Even though it's heading in that direction. Redeveloped buildings stand empty. Others carry banners promising the arrival of "Fatburger" (southwest corner of Military and Michigan), but Fatburger never comes. Ciao, the pseudo-Italian on Monroe, sits gutted by fire.

In West Village Commons, Najib Rizk's Le Cigar and his Maestro's restaurant next door are among the few original tenants who remain. Au Bon Pain, Caribou Coffee, Hot Spot and Super Cuts are all gone, leaving empty windows and spaces generating no revenue.

None of it is surprising, considering an official state unemployment rate north of 15 percent and climbing. Conspicuous austerity is politically correct, economically wise and perfectly acceptable, however much it undermines local businesses like nine-year-old Annam. And it inexorably wrings uniqueness and a sense of place from communities like Dearborn.

Nguyen's restaurant defied the white-bread-and-hummus stereotypes of Dearborn, drawing foodies and accomplished regional chefs (like Bacco's Luciano del Signore) who understood she was doing something there that was well-executed and really good, plain and simple.

Henry Ford's hometown will survive the loss of another restaurant, but Dearborn will be poorer for it. And I'll miss the beef noodle soup called Pho. Transcendent.

dchowes@detnews.com">dchowes@detnews.com (313) 222-2106 Daniel Howes' column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Catch him Fridays with Paul W. Smith on 760-WJR.