Delicious food and Chef Nini Nguyen’s hometown of New Orleans are synonymous. Nini has witnessed this firsthand as people flock from every corner of the world to revel in the Creole and Cajun flavors that are so deeply ingrained in the Crescent City.
But there’s another side to the city’s beloved food scene that she wants to share in her new cookbook—a side she came to know during her early childhood. Some of Nini’s fondest childhood memories are the days spent visiting the Asian markets in New Orleans East with her grandmother and seeing their community’s influence on display.
“This was way before farmers’ markets were cool,” Nini says. “But these markets are probably exactly like you’d think. I remember walking around in awe, seeing fish on piles of ice and vegetables from my neighbors’ backyards.”
The ingredients they found on those adventures were then brought into the kitchen for family meals and dishes for large gatherings. Nini would watch as her grandmother cooked the day away.
Those moments were the metaphorical match that lit the fire in Nini’s soul to one day pursue food professionally and turn it into a career that’s culminated thus far in this latest cookbook project, Đăc Biet, which comes out this summer.
But it wasn’t until after earning a business degree that Nini started working toward food service as a viable career. However, it was the late 2000s, and the poor state of the economy left many searching for well-paying jobs that were few and far between.
Nevertheless, Nini waited tables before making the leap to attend culinary school. “I didn’t have the confidence to start out with because everything about professional kitchen culture is so intimidating,” Nini says. “I built confidence when I worked in kitchens in New York. I would make Vietnamese food for my coworkers, and everyone loved it and would tell me that I need to open a restaurant.”
Emboldened by their encouragement, Nini agreed to appear on season 16 of Bravo’s Top Chef. Her experience was cut short when she exited early on, but her journey wasn’t over yet. She acquired a considerable number of fans, which caught the eye of producers, and they invited her back for the special upcoming season of Top Chef: All-Stars.
Like all good things, timing played a huge role in Nini’s success story. The show aired during the COVID-19 pandemic and garnered a huge number of viewers. Nini’s fan base skyrocketed. That’s when she started her own business teaching cooking classes online.
Nowadays, it’s not just the techniques that she looks forward to passing on, however. Nini has also made it her mission to keep her favorite Vietnamese foods alive for her generation and those to come. She has proudly carried her roots with her throughout her career, but her Viet-Cajun cooking classes and this new cookbook have opened her eyes to the influence it has on the South’s Gulf Coast region.
“It’s almost been 50 years since Vietnamese people left their country as refugees to settle in the United States, especially in the Gulf Coast area,” Nini says. “This book, for me, is a celebration of Vietnamese culture here in America. We like to say that it’s 100 recipes, but it’s really closer to 125.
I really had to take a lot of time off from other things to really focus on this because this is my legacy. I’ve put my blood, sweat, and tears into this book.” In her dedication, Nini is doing her part to ensure the culinary traditions of her fellow Vietnamese Americans—in the South particularly—carry on for generations to come.
