In April 2020, Thuy Pham, a Portland, Oregon-based hairstylist, was locked down like the rest of the country at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. To keep her daughter and her clients engaged, she started cooking a soy-based vegan pork belly on Instagram Live. The venture took off, and in November 2020, Pham opened Vietnamese vegan restaurant Mama Dút (translates to “mama will feed you”), and she’s currently building a second location. In 2022, the James Beard Foundation named her a semifinalist in the Emerging Chef category. For this edition of Voices in Food, Pham talked with Garin Pirnia about her unexpected career trajectory, her experiences as a Vietnamese refugee and how we need to invest more in women of color.
I grew up cooking with my mom. As a single parent, she relied on me to help do the prep work and things like that, and I loved cooking. Cooking was one of those moments that I was able to spend quality time with my mom, because she worked so much. It was always a happy place for me.
At the beginning of the pandemic I had all this free time. I couldn’t work. My daughter was at home. She wanted to cook. And I needed to keep my kid engaged and I needed to keep my hair clients engaged on social media. So I just started doing little cooking things and showing them what we’re making. And [my daughter] Kinsley and I livestreamed testing out a recipe for vegan pork belly, and it just took off in a way that I never imagined. People were asking me how they could try it. And then within 24 hours, I got so many requests that I had a lightbulb moment: Maybe I can sling some [vegan] pork belly out of my house to just pay some bills.
And within 48 hours, I think I did 100 orders. I thought, “Let me find a way to do this legitimately.” I Googled “how do you start a food business in Portland, Oregon?” It told me to get licenses for your area. So I Googled “what licenses do I need?” And then they said, “Get a commissary kitchen.” I didn’t know what a commissary kitchen was, so I Googled “what is a commissary kitchen?” I looked at it as an opportunity to do something unapologetically me without having to take into consideration whether or not I was going to fail. I had the freedom of being OK with failing because I had something to fall back on.
“My mom and I struggled really hard. I think all those moments of not knowing where we’re going to eat next, seeing my mom work two, three jobs just to get food on the table — it’s built me up so that I have the bandwidth to fight for this little piece of equity.”
Less than 2% of investment money goes to women-owned businesses, period. Within that 2%, less than a percentage of that money goes to women of color. And when you look at the statistics of who is starting businesses, women lead the demographics in people opening businesses. And within that bracket, women of color, specifically Black women, are actually the number one demographic opening small businesses. But yet we see the very smallest percentage of investment money. There have been studies that show women-run businesses actually operate more successfully and have a higher percentage of success than male-run businesses.
When I started my pop-up and I was entering the world of ownership and entrepreneurship at the bottom rung of the ladder, I was surrounded by female owners and people hustling trying to make it. The more “successful” I became, the more I was pushed into bigger arenas of ownership and bigger opportunities for ownership. I’m not dealing with revenues of $5,000 or $6,000. I’m now dealing with revenues of possibly millions of dollars. The higher I go into that revenue bracket, the fewer women I see. The fewer women of color I see. All my contractors are men. I have had such a hard time finding any women-led construction businesses.
My grant administrator — she is the one person who is a woman who I get to see and talk to, but I speak every day to mostly men. And I’ll be real with you — looking the way I do, I oftentimes have to assert my opinions and the expertise that I do have a lot louder and a lot harder in order to be heard. I don’t know why that is, but it definitely drives me to build this business and take up some sort of space so that when I’m in a room with these big decision-makers and these big owners, I can be like, “Can we please add some women into the group?” That’s what drives me.
My family escaped the Communist Party and the Vietnam War by fishing boat in the middle of the night and ended up in the refugee camp in Indonesia, and then in Thailand before we were then sponsored to the United States to Portland. And that was in 1982. Portland was a very different city. To understand the dynamic of the city in the ’80s, early ’90s, you really have to look back to the history of the city and how it was built. The city was known for redlining.
“I’ll be real with you — looking the way I do, I oftentimes have to assert my opinions and the expertise that I do have a lot louder and a lot harder in order to be heard.”
Growing up in the ’80s as a Vietnamese refugee was hard because I never felt like an American. I never felt like I really belonged. So I remember going to one of the malls, and I can hear some people screaming, “Go back to your country!” As a kid, I didn’t register that it was about us, but I always remembered that moment. English was my second language at the time, so I don’t think it hit us how hateful those words were. My mom and I struggled really hard. I think all those moments of not knowing where we’re going to eat next, seeing my mom work two, three jobs just to get food on the table — it’s built me up so that I have the bandwidth to fight for this little piece of equity. It wasn’t until I turned 40 and did Mama Dút when I felt, “Wow, I can be who I am and people will still love me.” What is truly special about Portland is the people who live here really value community building. I don’t believe that I would have found the same success in the amount of time that I had if I wasn’t in Portland.
Our society is in this moment where people do want to listen, more than they ever did before. I’m 42 years old, and I grew up where a lot of things that were OK back then would not be allowed to happen now. If we look at the progress that we’ve made, I have hope that things will change. And if I didn’t have hope that things would get better, I wouldn’t continue to fight and continue to try to find equity in this world.
But I feel the anxiety and pressure of it every day. I think about how did I get here? How did I do this? How did I buy all this with just $500? I want my journey to send a message to everyone out there that women of color, when given opportunities and resources, will do great things. The chances of me, this Vietnamese refugee immigrant vegan chef who’s only had less than two years of experience, to be nominated for a James Beard — that’s a one in a million chance. And if that one in a million chance could happen to me because of my hard work, it can happen to anybody.
Before You Go
