Tam Pham and Harrison Ramhofer are ready to cook (and drink) at home again. Their Vietnamese drinking food and natural wine spot Tâm Tâm has been open for two years, during which time it garnered accolade after accolade (including being named one of Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants of 2024), and their home kitchen renovation is finally complete. At work, the husband-husband duo divide and conquer responsibilities—Pham is the chef and Ramhofer is the sommelier—but they applied a more blended process to their kitchen redesign. Together, they landed on an app-connected smart oven that doubles as an air fryer, a rice cooker that makes delicious use of restaurant leftovers, and a clever system that helps them keep their 26-bottle wine fridge full while still enjoying sips of their favorite vintages. It’s a kitchen inspired by their years in the restaurant industry but grounded in how, and where, they spend their time away from it all: with a cold drink and a warm meal, in the comfort of home.
Pham spent a few years working at Starbucks as both a barista and a manager and leaned on those experiences when designing their at-home coffee setup. Namely, he prioritizes high-quality beans, grinds them fresh, and keeps the brewing efficient. He uses the Fellow grinder, which he praises for how neatly and finely it breaks down his La Colombe beans, then transfers the grounds to a steeping bag. After 48 hours in the fridge, there’s a big jug of cold brew for the week ahead.
The Samsung Smart Range is loaded with high-tech features, like an app that can change the temperature of the oven or adjust cook time, and voice-assistant integration that lets you talk to the oven and ask it to preheat. But the couple’s favorite is air fryer mode. They use it to heat up the banh mi they buy on Sundays from a nearby Vietnamese bakery. In just five minutes the oven transforms day-old sandwiches into a hot, crispy delight.
At work, Pham uses a commercial rice cooker that can cook five quarts at a time, but at home he loves his Zojirushi and its more reasonable yield. Pham bought the rice cooker as a birthday gift for his younger sister, Lyn, who lives with the couple, and says they’ll never go back to any other. It cooks multiple varieties of rice, adjusting the time and suggested water levels with its fuzzy-logic programming. It’s also an ideal warmer for congee, the rice porridge they often make with leftovers from the restaurant.
Ramhofer is trying to drink a bit less while not on the job. The dual-zone wine fridge he installed preserves his collection at ready-to-drink temps (the whites on top are held at a slightly lower temperature than the reds on the bottom), but “the one thing about having a wine fridge is that it’s always empty. You end up always drinking it,” he says. A Coravin Timeless Three+ wine system, which uses a thin needle to extract wine without removing the cork, lets him indulge in a single glass without sacrificing the quality of the rest of the bottle.
