Vince Nguyen won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific in 2023 for his modernist Vietnamese tasting menu at Berlu. Then he shut the restaurant down.

Now, at Berlu Bakery — his neighborhood shop at 661 SE Belmont St. — the celebrated chef is drawing fresh attention for something far simpler: a $5-to-$7 pastry case and a bowl of dessert soup.

Willamette Week named the bakery's chè — a chilled Vietnamese dessert soup built on lightly sweetened coconut milk — "Portland's Best Dessert Soup" in its Best of Portland 2026 issue, published Wednesday, July 22.

The dish swaps the traditional red beans and sticky rice for wiggly green mung bean jellies called cendol, seasonal Pacific Northwest fruit, fresh herbs like Thai basil or mint, and mini tapioca pearls.

Nguyen sources whatever fruit is at peak ripeness. This summer, that has meant two varieties of blueberries, one sweet and one tart.

From Noma to neighborhood bakery

Nguyen's résumé reads like a fine-dining greatest hits: stints at Noma in Copenhagen, Michelin-starred kitchens in San Francisco, and Portland's Castagna during its modernist era.

He closed the original Berlu tasting menu restaurant shortly after the James Beard win and opened the bakery in June 2025.

The pivot coincided with a personal shift. Nguyen became a father in 2024. In a September 2025 interview with The Oregonian, he said the bakery gave him space to explore Vietnamese culinary traditions he hadn't grown up cooking. "It was a great way to learn about myself," he said at the time. "I didn't realize how much I rely on food to learn about myself, learn about others and also express myself."

All of Berlu Bakery's pastries are gluten-free and dairy-free, a result of Nguyen's own food intolerances. The lineup includes pandan bánh bò nướng — a neon-green sponge cake with a gummy, airy texture — along with pineapple-cardamom cake, mango roll cake, coconut egg custard tarts, and clove canelé. The bakery's bathroom is wallpapered with an extreme close-up of the cake's honeycomb interior.

Most items run $5 to $7. The "One of Everything" box, 10 pastries, costs $53.30.

Portland's James Beard streak

Portland has won the Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific award four consecutive years: Nguyen in 2023, Gregory Gourdet in 2024, Timothy Wastell in 2025, and Ryan Roadhouse in 2026, according to an OregonLive roundup published in June.

Nguyen is the only one of the four who followed his win by closing his restaurant and reopening in a lower-price-point, daytime-hours format.

If you go

Berlu Bakery is open Thursday through Sunday at 661 SE Belmont St. Hours listed on the bakery's social media pages indicate a 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. window, though the shop closes when items sell out.

The space sits on the ground floor of an apartment building on Belmont, accessible by TriMet bus lines 6 and 15 and the Portland Streetcar's B Loop.

Details at berlubakery.com.