"Most aspiring chefs break into the biz washing dishes in bustling restaurant kitchens, but for Vinh Nguyen, that education began at home. "My family and I made friends with everybody, mostly because of my mom's cooking," Vinh said during a recent phone interview. "My mom would make food and bring it over unabashedly to neighbors' houses, so being the youngest one, I always followed her in the kitchen like I was her baby sous chef.""
"Nguyen has since been at the helm of restaurants such as Cafe Colette, Silent H and Grumpy Pig, where he's spotlighted Asian food, and his fourth restaurant, The Airliner in Los Angeles' Lincoln Heights, shares that same mission. He opened the space with his partner, Gary Wang, in 2023, remodeling the 100-year-old building and adding an Asian flair to the bar and music venue that had existed in its previous iterations."
Vinh Nguyen grew up following his mother in the kitchen as she shared homemade dishes with neighbors. His family fled the Vietnam War, spent eleven months in an international refugee camp, and resettled in the United States, first in Clayton, Alabama, then California. Childhood experiences included hand-delivering spring rolls and a deep connection to immigrant food. Nguyen has led restaurants such as Cafe Colette, Silent H, and Grumpy Pig, emphasizing Asian flavors. In 2023 he and partner Gary Wang opened The Airliner in Los Angeles’ Lincoln Heights, remodeling a century-old building and creating an izakaya-style menu drawing from Chinese, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Los Angeles influences.
Read at Daily News
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]