FARGO - The increase in both the number and diversity of people in this area wasn't the only reason that Thuy Le and her family decided to open the city's only Vietnamese restaurant.

"I think there are people who are looking for something other than a chain," said Le, who manages the Saigon Vietnamese Restaurant. "I also think that people are getting really good about testing the waters.

"People are more adventurous," she said.

Le, 22, and her parents, Travis Le and Kim Nguyen, opened the restaurant in March in a downtown Asian strip mall that was built by Cambodian-born George Ley. He owns a popular grocery store in the mall, which includes a Cambodian beauty salon and Haitian clothing store.

"I want to bring to Fargo what other big cities have," Ley said of the mall. "There's no specific ethnic group that's really huge, but I wanted something for everybody."

Ley, 34, said he was looking for a Thai or Vietnamese restaurant to bookend the mall with his grocery store.

"We have a lot of people who go right from the restaurant to the grocery store to buy some of the things we offer," Le said. "I think it works out well to have us right next to each other. I know they're very busy."

Customers were waiting for available tables when the restaurant first opened, Le said.

"From the start we had pretty good support from the Vietnamese community, even though they could make this stuff at home," Le said. "Business slowed down a little bit when the summer came, but now it's coming back. There are some new faces mixed in with the regulars."

Le said many of the new customers are teachers and students from North Dakota State University's downtown campus, which opened its doors earlier this month.

The menu features traditional Vietnamese dishes, including beef noodle soups, chicken noodle soups and rice vermicelli.

The most popular dish is Pho, a beef broth soup with thin rice noodles and several choices of meats. It comes in a bowl "bigger than your head," Le said.

The restaurant offers exceptional food at a good price, said Dan Grabill, 18, of Moorhead, Minn.

"It's very authentic," Grabill said. "It's not Americanized."

Ley first opened the grocery store in 1998, but tore that down a couple of years ago to build the mall. The grocery store was expanded from 3,400 square feet to 6,400 square feet. He now orders from eight different suppliers.

Ley came to the United States when he was 15. He said he knows the comfort that can come from something as simple as native food.

"Some people will come in here and say, 'Oh, I haven't seen that for seven years,"' Ley said, smiling. "It's very gratifying. I remember I was crying when I first moved here. I was very depressed."

There also has been an increase of local customers, many who come to buy Ramin noodles and others "who are curious," Ley said.

The mall has a good chance of survival because it's unique and the businesses are a good fit, said Randy Long, spokesman for a group promoting business in downtown Fargo.

"The downtown is a perfect place for those businesses because they have such a niche," Long said. "They've done a wonderful job of developing that property to make it a destination spot."

The city also benefits by being able to promote ethnic cuisine both within and outside the area, said David Martin, executive director of the Fargo-Moorhead Chamber of Commerce.

"It reflects the culturally diverse population that lives here," he said. "It shows that we've got these sort of options in our community."