There are dinners you attend, and dinners you carry home with you. The Gala Dinner closing Vietnam Grand Chapitre 2026 belonged firmly to the second kind.

The ballroom of the Sheraton Grand Danang Beach Resort & Spa had been transformed for the occasion. A live band, glasses of wine catching the light, black tie, and the ribbon of the Chaîne worn with quiet pride. And above it all, the voice of Donne Ray Radford of The Platters: warm, effortless, unmistakably classic. All of which gave the evening exactly the kind of elegance that cannot be arranged, only conjured.

The kitchen that evening belonged to Maître Rôtisseur Chef Nico Ceccomoro, owner of Cugini Restaurant in Hanoi and one of the Chaîne's most devoted long-standing members in Vietnam. He had flown down from Hanoi for the occasion, bringing his vision to work alongside the Sheraton's kitchen brigade. The five-course menu that emerged was the work of someone cooking with genuine feeling, for an audience he knew and respected.

The evening opened with canapés and Champagne. What followed was a dinner of real substance: Japanese tuna otoro to start, a risotto built on Parmigiano and ten-year Modena balsamic, and a standout third course "Crops and Water" featuring Carabineros crudo that drew admiration around every table. A 24-hour slow-cooked Wagyu brisket closed the savoury courses without fanfare and needed none. Each course was matched with wines curated by Thiên Linh Wine, a selection that complimented the food rather than competed with it.
Then the band stepped forward, and the room shifted entirely.

Once the music started, the floor was filled with happy people. People who had just shared something genuinely fine and were not ready to let the feeling go. New friendships forged over a few days spent together now found a second language on the dance floor.

The music was lively. The dancing livelier still. When the band finally took their bow, the room would not let them go. One more song. And then one more after that!

It was not a crowd that wanted the night to end. It was a crowd that had found, somewhere between the first glass and the last dance, exactly what they had come for. That reluctance - to step off the floor, to say goodbye, to let the night end - was perhaps the most honest measure of what the evening had been.

For some in the room that night, it was their first encounter with the Chaîne, and judging by the look on their faces as the last song faded, it will not be their last.

That, in the end, is the “Chaîne spirit” at its finest and most glorious form.

Joey Thinh
Interim Chargé de Presse