Gao Serves Transporting Vietnamese And Thai Food In Miami Beach

Long before she moved to Miami and opened vibey, crowd-pleasing Italian restaurant Call Me Gaby, Cathy Arrighi had dreams of creating a pan-Asian dining wonderland.

Born in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother and Corsican father who owned restaurants in Saigon, this dream seemed like Arrighi’s destiny. Cultures have melded together throughout her entire life. She lived in Cholon, which is Saigon’s Chinatown, before moving to France as a child. Along her path, she learned to speak Vietnamese, Cantonese, French and English.

And she turned into a prolific restaurateur with a portfolio including Cote d’Azur destination Chez Wong, which served Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai food. For Arrighi, all of it just naturally blended together

“It’s pretty common in France to have those three cuisines in one restaurant,” she says. “And when I moved to Miami over 20 years ago, I couldn’t find this type of restaurant. Here, Vietnamese food is hard to find.”

So last August, Arrighi opened Gao in Miami Beach’s buzzing South of Fifth area, which is also home to prominent restaurants like Call Me Gaby, Joe’s Stone Crab, Carbone, Catch and Stubborn Seed.

Gao, located at 1 Collins Ave., serves transporting Vietnamese food like soul-warming pho and terrific crispy shrimp rolls that you wrap in lettuce. Standout dishes that veer toward Thailand, meanwhile, including a fragrant and beautifully balanced green curry chicken as well as a hard-to-find-elsewhere steamed curry with cod known as hor mok. Dim sum and fried rice will work nicely for those craving good Chinese food.

And the indoor-outdoor setting of Gao is alluring and lush, with both rustic and refined woods alongside greenery and other earthy elements.

“The idea is to have these cuisines in this kind of a different environment, which is a little bit upscale, with nice service and a nice ambiance and contemporary decor,” Arrighi says. “And it’s about having this cuisine presented with, of course, authentic flavors but with a modern twist.”

So Arrighi serves what she calls Vietnamese bouillabaisse. This, of course, resembles a French dish but is powered by Asian flavors. Arrighi first created the base for this bouillabaisse, which features lemongrass and shrimp paste, at Chez Wong. Gao’s riff on bouillabaisse is also loaded with cod, prawns, mussels and calamari.

“Asian food is not, for example, like just a filet mignon that you grill,” Arrighi says. “It requires a lot of ingredients, a lot of flavors.”

Another example of an elaborate and uncompromising dish at Gao is Saigonese tamarind soap with shrimp, organic chicken, tomato, pineapple, fried garlic, bean sprouts, cilantro and other fresh herbs.

For Arrighi, it’s important to create a family-style dining experience. She wants every dish to be shared. She wants visitors to eat certain entrees with jasmine rice and others with sticky rice. She wants spring rolls to be wrapped and dipped correctly. She wants dishes to be savored individually and not mixed together.

“I’m very proud of this cuisine, but we have to make sure that our guests eat it in the right way,” Arrighi says. “We guide our customers on how to eat. Otherwise, you will lose the experience.”

What Arrighi has done and is doing is a familiar narrative around the country. Talented chefs and restaurant operators work in or open Italian restaurants because Italian restaurants are popular. Then they create something that showcases their heritage while educating diners at the same time. (For example, Ori Menashe worked at Angelini Osteria before opening Bestia and then went on to celebrate his Middle Eastern roots at Bavel and Saffy’s. Along the way, he employed and inspired chefs like Lord Maynard Llera, who went on to win a James Beard Award for his Filipino cooking at Kuya Lord.)

Arrighi says she’s eager to create new dishes for her menu, and it’s easy to understand why. She still has many stories to tell about who she is.

“My intention is to start with this menu,” Arrighi says. “And as I do for Call Me Gaby, every six months we will remove some dishes and add other dishes.”