L.A. East : In Vietnam, you can find a bit of Melrose Avenue and California cuisine at the City Bar and Grill

With all the Vietnamese restaurants that have proliferated in California in recent years, perhaps it is only fitting that a cafe featuring the cuisine of Melrose Avenue should strike pay dirt in Ho Chi Minh City.

Down to the cane furniture and amorphous watercolors on the walls, the City Bar and Grill is an unmistakable Los Angeles import in the former capital of South Vietnam.

Take the menu. In a city where a dish called pho is the staple, City offers a Tex-Mex omelet, filet of sea bass baked in foil or homemade fettuccine with prawns, basil and highland tomatoes. Pina coladas and Harvey Wallbangers also are available.

The waiters and waitresses, outfitted in starched white shirts with black bow ties and bright blue aprons, are attentive and falling over themselves with politeness. Better yet, none has a screenplay in development.

City is the brainchild of Alain Tan, a Vietnamese-born French citizen who left the country in 1970 when it was, he recalls, “very, very different.” He returned to Asia after working in restaurants in Santa Monica, Long Beach and Santa Barbara.

Tan, 38, opened his restaurant last month on Dong Khoi Street, the most famous boulevard in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. Stretching from the Continental Hotel to the Majestic, it was known as the Rue Catinat in colonial days. During the American presence it became Tu Do Street, notorious for its girlie bars.

The location of City is no mistake. Tan says he “didn’t design this place for Vietnamese,” preferring to go after the hard currency of foreign visitors and expatriate residents. Business is booming.

Thus, Tan has joined a long line of Vietnamese expatriates who are filtering back to Vietnam with business ideas, positioning themselves for an expected boom when Washington and Hanoi eventually normalize relations and the United States lifts a trade embargo.

Tan and his family, which remained in Vietnam after the war, opened a classic French restaurant called Mekong a year ago in a distant quarter of Ho Chi Minh City. That restaurant also has done well in a city where there are few outlets catering to Western tastes.

Like Mekong, City is actually a joint venture between Tan’s family and the city government. The municipality gets a cut of the profits in return for the use of the building. Tan’s official role is as management adviser.

Tan, who divides his time between Hong Kong and Ho Chi Minh City, says the design of the restaurant was a labor of love. “I feel comfortable with it, because I spent my youth in Los Angeles,” he says. “I really enjoy the lifestyle there.”

Helped by a sister who is a San Francisco fashion designer, Tan taught a cousin to cook in the California manner--which usually results in as much attention to the presentation as to the food. Even the meat loaf and mashed potatoes are artistically arranged in the nouvelle style.

One of his favorite recipes is the Philadelphia steak sandwich, which Tan said he borrowed from a sandwich stand on the corner of Lincoln and Pico boulevards in Santa Monica, where he stopped often for lunch.

“It’s something very homey,” says Tan, a huge gold Rolex on his wrist. “Like Mom’s cooking.”

Tan sneers in contempt when asked about his latest competition, a restaurant called Ham-Bu-Go Ca-Li-Pho-Nia, which, as the name implies, tried to break into the market with American-style fast food. “The food is not remotely American,” he sniffs.

At City, nearly all the kitchen staff, the cashier and the bartender are relatives, Tan says, so that he doesn’t face a common problem: the returning Vietnamese expatriate being fleeced by his staff. Waiters in the restaurant earn the equivalent of $25 a month, not including tips.

Tan and his maitre d’, whom he met at the University of San Francisco, have opened a classroom for the help in the third-floor garret of the restaurant, where they are trained to utter such phrases as “How are you this evening?” and “Won’t you take a seat, please?”

With salaries so low, it’s not unusual for each table to be served by five or six waiters, which also tends to underline the wall-to-wall service.

Dinner for two at City, including alcohol, costs about $20. If that appears inexpensive to Angelenos, it should be noted that a couple can dine well in most restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City for about $2.

Tan says most of his menu’s ingredients are obtained locally, except for the exotic liquors. He also calls on frequent guests to bring him such goodies as cheese, which can be hard to come by in Vietnam.

The decor was made locally--Tan even painted all the watercolors himself when he realized that he couldn’t obtain anything suitable on the local market.

“This place is a real gamble for my family,” he acknowledges. “I don’t think my family will be very prosperous if the United States doesn’t lift the embargo.”