Before the pandemic forced every bar and restaurant into a sudden shutdown, DTF, short for Dao Tu Fook, had just opened on Chakkaphatdi Phong Road. Now, this new Sino-Southeast Asian throwback in the Old Town is ready to get back to business.

Owned by one of the founders of the popular Made By Legacy flea market and Mad Face Food Week, the restaurant features the stripped-down, shophouse aesthetic of the 1950s and ’60s post-war period in Southeast Asia. Meaning, the interiors are made to resemble a state-run food shop like you might have found in Hanoi. Think exposed brickwork, vintage wooden furniture and rattan-backed chairs, Chinese antiques, jade-colored tiles and the showpiece: a four-door Morris Ten parked quasi-permanently underneath the staircase in the back of the dining room.

The food is made for group dining, although the owner says there is a tasting menu that allows one or two customers to try four dishes at a time. Expect a range of Chinese and Southeast Asian dishes, like ang-num fish (fried false trevally fish with ginger and scallion, B260), claypot-roasted duck with five spice gravy (B320), salad hoo moo (pig ear and wood ear salad with spicy, sour dashi dressing, B220) and Yunnanese chicken curry with egg noodles and assorted pickles (B260).

For drinks, you’ll soon be able to choose from house wine (B120 glass/B300 carafe), as well as classic cocktails from the mid-twentieth century, a.k.a. the “Godfather Era.”