WYOMING, Mich. — Phong Nguyen is at it again.
In June 2022, he opened up his first restaurant, which also became the first of its kind in downtown Grand Rapids. Monsoon GR serves incredible Vietnamese food, inspired by Nguyen's home country and culture.
Now, he's helping his customers take a bite out of a different corner of the continent with his latest dining experience: K-Pocha.
“We love street food," Nguyen said. "When you go to Asia the most thing you will see is street food everywhere. You see a court of, you know, a lady who's making you one thing, selling you one thing, and then that's specialty on them."
At K-Pocha, that "one thing" or "specialty" item is a corn dog! There are so many different ways you can dress it up though. Whether you want it to be coated with crunchy ramen, covered by crispy potatoes, smothered in spicy Hot Cheetos dust or drizzled with zesty mustard or K‐gochujang sauce, you really can't go wrong.
They also serve a signature authentic dessert called Bingsu.
"It's like a milk shaved-ice. It's so delicious," Nguyen said. "It's just a special machine to shave the ice in a special way that is super thin. We have some food in there like mango and strawberry, and then we also have a mochi. So you bite on it, you have different texture, you know. You will have it melt in your mouth a little bit, so it's just all go together well.”
K-Pocha has only been open for three weeks now. Even though Nguyen said they barely put out any promotional material on social media, the community response has been incredible already.
Almost too incredible.
"For the first two days we opened, because the amount of support was amazing, we were sorry that we have to turn some people off," Nguyen said, admitting that they ran out of food. "But we did get a lot of people in, lining up on the corner, and it's amazing. Thank you so much."
K-Pocha is located at 5751 Byron Center Ave SW, Suite F in Wyoming. It's open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and closed on Sunday.