Kitchen Comeback: It's a Second Act for Both Ace Eat Serve and Its New Chef

"I took a little break from the kitchen, and there are so many reasons why I decided to come back, and it's not a coincidence that it was at Ace," says Khamla Vongsakoun, who officially took over the position as executive chef at fourteen-year-old Ace Eat Serve in January.

Vongsakoun, whose ancestors were from North Vietnam, was born in Laos, where his parents and grandparents lived. The second-youngest of seven siblings, he was two years old when the family immigrated to Colorado in 1977. "I can only imagine the culture shock moving here from a country like Laos, where it's humid and hot — and just coming here in the middle of winter and not speaking any English whatsoever," he says. "Just being able to adapt to that and make it with seven kids, it says a lot about the strength of my parents and how they raised us."

Vongsakoun and his little brother "got away with a lot of things — they probably got tired of parenting by the time they got to us," he jokes. Because of that, he admits he wasn't the best academically, but he decided to go to junior college and picked up the solo morning dishwasher shift at a Village Inn to pay the tuition.

"Strangely enough, I found myself very comfortable in that situation and decided that I wanted to become a prep cook and further my career. It all started from there," Vongsakoun recalls. "I fell in love with it the moment I stepped into the kitchen."
His first job cooking was at the Old Spaghetti Factory, where he regular made "tons of pasta, twelve to fourteen pans of lasagna and a hundred gallons of tomato sauce" at a time, he says. He started with that company washing pots — "and you can probably imagine how much cheese gets caked onto the pots and pans. It was an incredibly difficult job."

But he stuck with it, and all the while, "I would watch the cooks," he remembers. "Every single day, I just kept learning while I was washing dishes," until one day the kitchen manager gave him a shot working a station on the line, "and I never looked back."

Vongsakoun continued to work in Denver kitchens before moving to Las Vegas in 1999. He lived there for six and a half years before going to Atlantic City to open Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, which is where he had the opportunity to work with celebrity chef, restaurateur and cookbook author Michael Mina.

After stints in Philadelphia and New York City, he returned to Denver for a buzzy new gig: executive chef at the now-closed Departure, which debuted inside the Halcyon Hotel in Cherry Creek in 2016. It was the second outpost of the Portland-born pan-Asian concept led by culinary director Gregory Gourdet, who had recently been the runner-up on season twelve of Top Chef.

Though Departure's Denver location shuttered in 2019, Gourdet's star has continued to rise — most recently, he won his third consecutive James Beard Award, nabbing Best Chef in the Pacific Northwest region for his wood-fired eatery Kann. "[Gourdet] is a culinary genius, I think, and he's one of the most humble, incredibly nice chefs I've ever worked with," Vongsakoun says.
He also notes that his role at Departure was "one of the hardest jobs I've ever had — and one of the most rewarding. ... We had quite the team there," including Taylor Stark, who is now executive chef at Michelin-starred restaurant the Wolf's Tailor, and Ben Love, who's leading the kitchen at Rioja. "Gregory let us spread our wings," Vongsakoun says.

But ultimately, the demands of the industry and the often-grueling schedule took a toll on his marriage, and he ended up getting a divorce — a story that's common in the culinary world. Plus, when the pandemic hit, "it affected a lot of people, including myself," Vongsakoun recalls. "It was hard to find good, hardworking employees. A lot of cooks left the restaurant around that time."

Vongsakoun made a move that's not so common in the industry: After more than three decades in the kitchen, he decided to take a break and began applying for front-of-house roles. "I didn't get a single phone call — you can only imagine getting a résumé that shows thirty years of chef experience applying for a server position," he jokes.

Eventually, though, a friend who had opened a restaurant gave Vongsakoun a shot at working as a food runner, then a server and bartender — which is the role he enjoyed the most. "Bartending is very similar to being a chef, in a way," he says. "You're creating, you're setting up a station, you have mise en place, but you're also serving and talking to guests. It's the best of both worlds."
The experience gave Vongsakoun a new perspective. "It really opened my eyes and made me see chefdom in a different way and the whole restaurant in a different view," he explains. "Not only that, but you can only imagine, being a chef for so long, the only thing you hear from guests is generally complaints. I hate to say it, but it made me a true pessimist, and it really darkened my soul in a way. ... Going in the front of the house really made me see that there are some genuinely nice people in the world who are really appreciative when they come into the restaurant."

Vongsakoun was traveling in Portugal when Josh Wolkon reached out to him about the open executive-chef role at Ace. Wolkon is the founder of Secret Sauce F&B, which started with the much beloved but now closed Vesta Dipping Grill and now comprises Ace and its next-door sister restaurant, Steuben's.

Over the years, Ace has managed to keep its chefs on board for long stints. From 2017 until last summer, Thach Tran was leading its kitchen; after he left, the first chef to take his place wasn't the right fit.

Wolkon had reached out to Vongsakoun before, but this time, the move felt right. "We had multiple conversations, and a seven-course tasting later, I got the job," Vongsakoun says. "The team that we have here is incredible, and Josh is amazing — he's a great person to work with, and I've felt since I've started here that his trust has really given me and my team strength here to expand, just being able to think outside the box and get creative and do things differently."
That means leaning into more snackable, shareable dim sum-style fare and making the menu "lighter, cleaner and sexier," Vongsakoun says.

Highlights include tuna tartare inside crisp spring roll wrappers with yuzu-ponzu aioli; a Little Gem salad with bright carrot-ginger dressing and crunchy cashew crumbs that can be ordered chilled or grilled; and tom kha xiao long bao (soup dumplings) — a dish created by chef de cuisine Stewart Gray.

Beloved staples like the crispy beef and broccoli and Peking duck carved tableside will stick around, as will the popular wings, though Vongsakoun dropped both the price and the portion size to encourage people to sample a larger variety of dishes each visit. "There's no point in changing something that works," he notes.

Among the standouts from the larger-format dishes are the Cantonese clay pot chicken, which is served sizzling and includes a layer of crispy rice at the bottom; and the Thai-style whole Colorado striped bass with chili coconut dressing and green mango salad.
Vongsakoun advises diners to save room for dessert, because "chef Michael [Kurowski] has done an amazing job with it; it's beautiful. It's really clean and approachable." Highlights include colorful dragonfruit cheesecake with mango-pineapple chutney and a mochi brownie served with miso banana semi-freddo, gianduja chocolate, turon (Filipino banana lumpia), sesame almond crunch and kumquat.

Vongsakoun is also excited about the revamped brunch menu, which will fully launch this month.

"I don't think it could have been a better transition from my break," the chef concludes. "The team is amazing, 100 percent. My sous chef is killing it. We're already working on the fall menu."

Eat, serve, score!

Ace Eat Serve, 501 East 17th Avenue, is open from 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 4 p.m. to midnight Friday, 11 a.m. to midnight Saturday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit aceeatserve.com.