Fresh Food Dudes

Thom Pham and Keyvan Talebi have much in common, besides being restaurateurs. They both look like they just stepped off the pages of GQ: Talebi in his boldly striped shirt, and Pham with his more formal but still high-style business attire. Both men are also in their mid-30s, dark-haired, and notably fit. (Pham is a competitive ballroom dancer who has also earned a black belt in judo. And Talebi was recently identified in Mpls.St.Paul magazine as one of the Twin Cities’ 101 most beautiful people; he’s not too modest to mention that his photograph commanded a full page.) Though they’re competitors, they call themselves friends. And they both live fast.

That’s where most of the similarities end. The son of a Vietnamese mother and an unknown American GI, Pham was born and raised in the Vietnamese town of Qui Nhon until he was 14, when he was adopted by a Minneapolis couple. Because of his American blood, he was shunned in his native homeland. “I wasn’t allowed to be in public school, and I wasn’t given a birth certificate,” he says. “Essentially, I didn’t exist.”

Talebi, by contrast, was a child of the upper middle class. Born in Tehran, he moved with his tight-knit family to Colorado when he was six. Two years later, the family headed to the Twin Cities so that Talebi’s mother could be close to Rochester’s Mayo Clinic, where she was being treated for breast cancer. As a youngster, he recalls, “my life revolved around tennis. I even practiced with Andre Agassi when we were both at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy.” He later earned a business degree from the University of Minnesota.

Still, Pham and Talebi do share something else—they’re changing the face of the Twin Cities’ dining scene. Pham currently owns three restaurants, most notably Azia and the recently opened Temple, both in Minneapolis; two more are due to open by mid-year. Talebi operates downtown Minneapolis’s Bellanotte, Lake Calhoun’s View, and his newest, Crave, in Edina. Their eateries have earned reputations for chic décor and dishes, along with a cocktail-fueled buzz.