Lake Travis - Westlake Edition | July 2024

Dining

BRITTANY ANDERSON

From left, Brooklyn, Dominic, Sara, Pat and Donovan Lee are the family behind Lee’s Kitchen.

ZIEM PHOTOGRAPHY

Brisket pho ($16) is served with rice noodles and onion.

The Hainan Chicken ($16) includes poached chicken and ginger-garlic rice.

COURTESY LEE’S KITCHEN + COCKTAILS

Lee’s Kitchen + Cocktails serves up family recipes

Lee’s Kitchen + Cocktails has been serving up classic Vietnamese dishes, including their high- ly-coveted pho and Hainan chicken rice dishes, to the Westlake community for the past year. A family aair Owners Pat and Sara Lee both grew up in the service industry. Sara’s parents owned a restaurant, and Pat, born in Vietnam, is the son of Tom and Thang Lee, who opened the Asian grocery store MT Supermarket in North Austin in 1983. “He was always around ingredients, and even just going to other restaurants, because he would help with deliveries and stu,” Lee said. “And that’s where he found his love and realized the impor- tance of good ingredients when creating the dishes. He’s super particular.” Together, the couple have opened and run a num- ber of Austin-area restaurants over the last 18 years. Lee’s Kitchen is their newest venture, opened in April 2023. Here, Pat created a menu of Vietnamese dishes he prepared growing up, or takes traditional dishes and puts his own spin on it. “We’ve done several dierent restaurants and concepts, and the reason that Lee’s came about [was] our rst few restaurants were all very casual dining, and then we moved to the Westlake area to raise our family,” Sara said. “We thought all of our restaurants are in other parts of town other than Westlake, and there’s really a void for Asian cuisine. So we made it into a goal to open one in Westlake so

that we could better serve our community.” Just as Pat and Sara were involved with their parent’s businesses, their three children are a part of Lee’s Kitchen. Their son Donovan helps with the restaurant’s operations and photography, as well as bartends, and their daughter Brooklyn created the restaurant logo and works as a hostess. Their youngest son Dominic even helps with “little things here and there.” “From the start of the idea, we wanted our kids to be super involved in it,” Sara said. “So, [it’s a] very, very mom-and-pop business.” What’s special about it? While their menu features classics such as pho, egg rolls, vermicelli bowls and a variety of meat, seafood, vegetable, rice and noodle dishes, Lee’s Kitchen serves Vietnamese-style Hainan chicken rice—a rarity among Asian restaurants in the area, Sara said. “It comes down to the sauces that go with it. Ours is a ginger scallion sauce,” Sara said. “It’s a pretty labor-intensive dish. It’s a poached chicken, and it has a mild sauce on it, but it’s not marinated. The sauces that come on the side that you dip it with are what really bring the avor. Then the stock as a result of poaching the chicken is used to cook the rice. It’s very aromatic [and] avorful.” The restaurant also recently started serving their traditional Vietnamese dishes for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays.

Lee’s serves appetizers such as Nuoc Mam Chicken Wings ($12) , plus a variety of cocktails.

COURTESY LEE’S KITCHEN + COCKTAILS

Shrimp and Pork Belly Spring Rolls ($9) are also sold.

CLAIRE MCCORMACK PHOTOGRAPHY

S. CAPITAL OF TEXAS HWY.

2244

LAS CIMAS PKWY.

701 S. Capital of Texas Hwy., Ste. G700, Austin www.leeskitchenatx.com

LAKE TRAVIS WESTLAKE EDITION