Kim-Dung Robinson
From a strongly traditional family in the Mekong Delta, Kim-Dung (pronounced Kim-Yung) was born and raised in the small northern Mekong Delta province of Go Cong, today’s Tien Giang province. She developed an early passion for cooking from her mother and tailoring from her father.
Kim-Dung fell in love with an American aid worker named Carl Robinson. They married and moved to Saigon where he became a war correspondent until war’s end in 1975. They then lived in New York for two years before moving to settle in Australia with their three children. Kim-Dung qualified as an interpreter in Australia worked on legal, social and education cases involving the Vietnamese community before taking a full-time position with a Commonwealth Government department, a job she held until 1998. Taking leave in 1989, she worked for several months in Hong Kong with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) dealing with a massive influx of Vietnamese.
Always disappointed with the poor quality of Vietnamese restaurants, she and Carl opened the Old Saigon restaurant in Sydney in 1990. The restaurant had a no-compromise genuine cuisine seen for the first time in Australia. It was an immediate success and changed the public perception of Vietnamese food. Kim-Dung and Carl sold the restaurant and in 2003 they moved to Brisbane. Kim-Dung’s extended family still live in Vietnam and she visits regularly. Always a frugal shopper, she knows all the newest and best places for bargains in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, in what’s become one of Asia’s premier shopping spots.
From a strongly traditional family in the Mekong Delta, Kim-Dung (pronounced Kim-Yung) was born and raised in the small northern Mekong Delta province of Go Cong, today’s Tien Giang province. She developed an early passion for cooking from her mother and tailoring from her father.
Kim-Dung fell in love with an American aid worker named Carl Robinson. They married and moved to Saigon where he became a war correspondent until war’s end in 1975. They then lived in New York for two years before moving to settle in Australia with their three children. Kim-Dung qualified as an interpreter in Australia worked on legal, social and education cases involving the Vietnamese community before taking a full-time position with a Commonwealth Government department, a job she held until 1998. Taking leave in 1989, she worked for several months in Hong Kong with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) dealing with a massive influx of Vietnamese.
Always disappointed with the poor quality of Vietnamese restaurants, she and Carl opened the Old Saigon restaurant in Sydney in 1990. The restaurant had a no-compromise genuine cuisine seen for the first time in Australia. It was an immediate success and changed the public perception of Vietnamese food. Kim-Dung and Carl sold the restaurant and in 2003 they moved to Brisbane. Kim-Dung’s extended family still live in Vietnam and she visits regularly. Always a frugal shopper, she knows all the newest and best places for bargains in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, in what’s become one of Asia’s premier shopping spots.
