Nga Chu, known to everyone as Nahji or misschu, is a restaurateur and caterer who has created a business that truly fuses a deeply personal life story and inter-generational commitment to Vietnamese food with a fun and highly professional service approach.
Born in Luang Prahbang, Laos, in 1970, Nahji and her family escaped the Pathet Laos Regime in 1975. They sustained themselves on the meager living conditions afforded by the various Thai refugee camps they inhabited over a four year period before the Chu family’s number came up and the Australian government made them one of the first Vietnamese/Laotian refugees to settle in Australia.
Nahji plays a big hand in the design of every aspect of her catering and restaurant experiences. These distinct creative abilities were honed whilst a student at RMIT, followed by broadcast journalism at Open Channel in Melbourne. A talented filmmaker, she produced a charcoal animation telling her story and that of many other Vietnamese refugees.
The Chu family own and operate several Vietnamese restaurants in Melbourne so Nahji’s decision to run her own business was an instinctive move that was padded by a wealth of personal industry experience, including; four years at Acme Catering; setting up three BITE stores in Melbourne, which were modeled on the highly successful Pret A Manger sandwich stores in the UK.
In 2005, Nahji established the misschu catering business in Sydney, supplying venues and events with her sublime Vietnamese-inspired canapés. The misschu tuckshop in Bourke Street Darlinghurst, opened in 2009 and in 2010 at the new Opera Kitchen at the Opera House; in January 2011 misschu opened in Exhibition Street, Melbourne and November 2011 in Bondi Beach.
misschu tuckshops are the first of their kind anywhere in the world and can be described as a modern day hawker takeaway with high end food at a low price tag. Designed for the modern eater on the go, misschu currently offers home or office delivery in Sydney and Melb CBD via electric bicycles.
Nahji’s rich Vietnamese heritage is the basis for the misschu menu, she is known as the Queen of the rice paper rolls and a real force to be reckoned with in the traditional, fresh, Vietnamese food and catering market.
This is the actual Refugee Visa that Nga Chu entered Australia with in 1978. The first image is her father followed by her two brothers. Miss Chu is the last girl on the Visa. Nga's mother and three other siblings travelled on another Visa.
