Kim Nhung Superfood expands in Madison Heights while keeping Vietnamese culture at its core
With a new home, this long-standing grocery store is the heart of metro Detroit’s Vietnamese American community
Audio By Carbonatix
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Fifty years ago, Saigon fell — and with it, the world shifted for millions of Vietnamese families.
What followed wasn’t just exile. It was a resurrection, drawn from the grit and determination of a people who had lost everything but their own lives. From the ruins of war came everyday efforts to hold onto something sacred in a foreign land: bowls of steaming hot pho in cold Midwest kitchens, backyard herb gardens seeded from memory, and pantries stocked with the faint smell of a faraway home. In metro Detroit, these acts of preservation were made possible by places like Kim Nhung Superfood, the heartbeat of a community that refused to forget where they came from, even as they learned how to survive somewhere entirely new.
For decades, the Madison Heights business has been more than just a grocery store. It’s been a cultural beacon and gathering place for generations of Vietnamese families across Michigan. When Hang Phonrath and her family took over Kim Nhung Superfood in 2007, they were unknowingly stepping into a legacy — one built out of necessity, resilience, and a deep love for the taste of home.
That legacy began decades earlier in Garden City, Kansas, a town best known for meatpacking plants powered by its immigrant workforce. Long before Phonrath took over, it was her aunt and uncle, Kim Le and George Nguyen, who built the region’s only Asian grocery store. It became a magnet for Vietnamese workers from all over Kansas. “People from Topeka, Wichita — they’d drive hours just to get their groceries there,” Phonrath recalls.
Eventually, the family moved north to Michigan and brought the store with them. They named it after the two girls in the family: Phonrath’s aunt, Kim, and her daughter, Nhung. And like its Kansas predecessor, Kim Nhung Superfood quickly became more than just a place to buy rice noodles and rau răm in a region without a formal “Little Saigon.”
“You always heard people say, ‘Let’s go to Chợ Việt,’” Phonrath says, using the phrase for the ‘market’ that is central to Vietnamese life. “Then one day, we realized — Kim Nhung is Chợ Việt.”
Phonrath hadn’t planned on running a market. She grew up in Colorado, where her entrepreneurial parents, Ba and Điệp Le, ran a lawn service and once owned a restaurant. At the time her aunt and uncle offered to sell the business, Phonrath was running a nail salon. But something in the timing felt right. “I was 29,” she says. “We thought, ‘What do we have to lose?’”
So they packed up and moved to Michigan — and stepped into something much bigger than they expected.
Phonrath and her siblings didn’t just keep the store alive. They helped it evolve. Tapping into suppliers in L.A., Houston, and Florida, they expanded product offerings and made sure their community didn’t have to hop on a plane to find the flavors of home. “We wanted to make sure people here weren’t limited by what they could get in the Midwest,” Phonrath says. “We brought what we knew.”
But it wasn’t the variety that made Kim Nhung indispensable. It was the people.
Customers brought in mail for translation. Dropped off packages. Shared stories. Leaned on the store for far more than groceries. “We were the middlemen for everything,” Phonrath laughs. “It was more than a business. We became part of people’s lives.”
And sometimes, those lives would cross in unexpected ways. “I remember a moment when two elderly friends ran into each other in the aisles and exclaimed, ‘Oh my god, I haven’t seen you in ten years!’” Phonrath says. “And I’d be standing there thinking, I see you both every week — but they just kept missing each other. This place brought people back together.”
And now, that spirit has only grown — along with the store itself.
The new Kim Nhung Superfood opened in April just down the road, in a space at 29411 John R Rd. originally slated for Amazon Fresh. Now, it’s something far more meaningful: 25,000 square feet of market space, a fresh seafood section, a bakery, and a beer and wine license. What’s coming next is a 10,000-square-foot food court with seven independent vendor stalls. Each will spotlight a different culinary tradition, turning the market into a full-blown cultural destination.
“We want this to be a place where people feel welcome — where they can explore,” Phonrath says. “Not just Vietnamese people, but everyone. We want this to be your neighborhood grocery store, where you can also learn and celebrate.”
She’s even considering keeping one of the stalls open as a flexible space — for chef demos, pop-ups, or first-time food entrepreneurs. Something that could double as a launchpad and incubator. “There’s so much potential,” she says. “We just need to make it accessible.”
That idea — that food can be both a tool and a bridge — isn’t new. But in the hands of Vietnamese refugees and their children, it becomes something deeply rooted and radically resilient. It’s survival, turned into flavor. Memories, served hot.
I know that firsthand. As a kid, I grew up making hour-long drives from the tiny farm town of Millington to Kim Nhung with my family. For us, it wasn’t just a shopping trip — it was a pilgrimage in a big station wagon powered by dried squid and Pocky sticks. My mom’s face would light up the moment we walked through the doors. She knew exactly which herbs to pick through for each dish and which brands of rice paper and noodles she trusted. She was in her element, the air buzzing like birdsong, reveling in the weekly opportunity to be unapologetically Vietnamese at Chợ Việt. For me, it was where the seeds of belonging were planted.
That sense of connection wasn’t just mine.
Mythy Huynh, a chef and food creator known as @mightyinthemitten, found herself in Kim Nhung after moving to Michigan from California. In a place where she often felt like the only Asian person in the room, Kim Nhung became her tether to home.
“I didn’t know where to find my community when I moved here,” she says. “In California, it’s everywhere — you don’t have to search for it. Here, it was like searching for a piece of myself,” she adds. “It reminded me of the tiny Vietnamese-Chinese market across from my elementary school in Northridge. The owner used to slip me coconut buns after school. Walking into Kim Nhung felt like stepping into that same kind of love and familiarity with tight aisles, fresh herbs, and the auntie at the register that knows your name.”
Huynh eventually deepened her ties by holding pop-ups, hosting dumpling classes, and sharing her love for Vietnamese cooking with others from the aisles of flavors she grew up with.
For her, the store wasn’t just about stocking up on pantry essentials. It was about reclaiming a sense of belonging — about finding a place where the smells, the sounds, and even the small talk felt like home.
Today, as a chef and founder of MaMang in Flint and The Good Bowl in Traverse City, I can trace everything I do back to those early trips to Kim Nhung. It gave my mom — and eventually me — the tools to keep our culture alive. Through her food, I found my purpose. I’ve spent my life carving out spaces where food tells our stories, where tradition becomes menu, and where identity is something you can taste and fight for. Without places like Kim Nhung, a whole generation’s memories could’ve been swallowed by everything we lost.
Thankfully they weren’t, and the story keeps unfolding.
Phonrath’s daughter now runs the front of the store: a new generation, holding down the register, greeting aunties and uncles with the same warmth we grew up with. There’s a young woman working the cash wrap who was literally in the womb when her mother used to shop there pregnant. There are teenagers stocking shelves who once came in on strollers.
That’s legacy.
That’s survival.
That’s home.
April 30 marked 50 years since the fall of Saigon. It’s a heavy anniversary — one that weighs on every Vietnamese American household. For many, it was a tragic end. For those who made it to places like Madison Heights, it was a lifeline, and the opportunity to make it mean something.
“We want to give the next generation something to be proud of,” Phonrath tells me. “This store — it’s not just ours. It’s everyone’s.”
She’s right. What they’ve built was more than shelves and stocked produce. It was a north star — quietly guiding a scattered community home.
Over time, it became a cultural anchor. A launchpad. A community stronghold where memory and identity live, breathe, and grow. Where kids like me could feel connected to something bigger. And where now, as an adult, I can say thank you — not just for the groceries, but for the life, the flavors, and the future they helped make possible.
