Bui restaurant in Berkeley

Ate dinner at Bui (formerly Saigon City) restaurant in Berkeley tonight. The food is delicious, particularly the banana flower salad, but the best part of the meal was chatting with the chef and owner, Patrick Bui, afterwards. He was a mechanical engineer for Bechtel and at age 34 left to follow his lifelong dream of being a chef. He said the first few years were the hardest, going from a six-figure salary to making about $8 an hour. But, he says, those years are like a test. If you make it through, you can be successful doing something you’re passionate about. Those are the stories I love hearing because they reassure me that I’m going to be ok.