Jenny Nguyen - How To Be a Drop of Water

 

I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. First generation Vietnamese American and an only child. [audience laughter] Growing up, my parents always told me that assimilation, fitting in were the key to achieving the American dream. After all of these years, I'm not entirely sure any of that is true. Starting at a very young age, I fell in love with sports. “Vietnamese girls don't play basketball,” they said. Then at the age of 17, I came out to my family as a lesbian. “Jenny, you've always been a tomboy. It's just a phase,” they said. Then my first year away at college, I was so disillusioned by the food that was served in the dorms that I phoned home and asked mom for some of the recipes that she made when I was growing up. 

 

By the end of my first year away at college, I phoned home again, except this time, it was to tell them that their daughter no longer wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a chef. They weren't disappointed, they were horrified. [audience laughter] This was when my dad gave me the best advice. He said, “Why don't you find the worst job you can think of in your field, do it for a year, and if you still want that to be your life, then go for it?” So, that's what I did. About a week later, I got my very first kitchen job at the local Red Robin. [audience laughter] 

It was called the Friar Boy position. That's not its technical name, but that's what we all called it. It was dirty, filthy, stinky, thankless work. And I was hooked. 

 

So, I moved back to Portland and enrolled into culinary school at the age of 22. While doing that full time, I also worked a couple part time jobs in downtown Portland at some fine dining restaurants, one of which was this hip little Italian joint. My first day, the owner of the restaurant, he invited me into his office and offered me a line of coke. [audience laughter] On day two, I must have did something to really piss the chef off, but he threw a pan right at my face. I ducked and it hit the stainless-steel wall beside me. And by day three, I was about to learn my very first kitchen life lesson. 

 

Chef had put his rib eye up in the window, and I realized that I had mistimed the fried onion garnish to go on top of it. I felt the skin on my left forearm bubble and burn. Chef had thrown a pan of hot oil at me this time, except I didn't see it coming. And he got me. The woman who was training me at the time, she must have registered my blinding rage before I did, because she took my shoulders, and she squared them up to hers and inches from my face, whisper, yelled this wisdom, “Don't you fucking cry. If you cry, they win. You don't want them to win, do you? Do you?” I sucked the hot, wet tears back into my face and I dropped a metal cage around all of my soft parts right then. I wanted to win, and I wasn't going to let that asshole or anyone else stop me. 

 

Now, this was right around the time I was reading Kitchen Confidential and watching just about every gritty TV drama and movie there was about chef life. And it turns out that at its core, all of it is pretty accurate. [audience laughter] But I was in love. I was living this fiery life. I felt like I was living the dream, working as a line cook in downtown. Sure, it meant starting off every day with a quad shot latte just so I could get amped. And then, about halfway through my shift, until I was mopping the floor and locking the doors, it was drink after shot after drink after drink. And I drank even more when I wasn't working. 

 

One morning, I woke up on the guest bedroom floor. And my girlfriend, she gave me an ultimatum. She said, “Jenny, either the job goes or I do.” She said I was an alcoholic and a workaholic, but I didn't really see it that way. I was in love with cooking. The tickets rolling in. Me and my boys in the trenches, fighting through fire, hot oil, blood, sweat, a hundred tiny battles every night. When the war finally subsided, I just wanted to keep that high and adrenaline of being on fire, being under fire, burning, even if that meant lighting myself on fire. 

 

I did eventually leave, but I kept on cooking. And I kept up with the lifestyle at every new restaurant, and I kept on burning. I was faced with so many challenges, and I met them all head on and I defeated them. Sometimes it meant working five people's jobs at once. Sometimes it meant choosing lust over love. I felt like battle after battle within those four stainless steel walls, it protected me, it gave meaning through duty, as if the sum of my actions equaled what it meant to be a chef, a lone wolf, driven by fire, desire and living life on the fly. Hell, I even fired this girl one time just for touching my chef's knife. My journey was complete. I had become the asshole. [audience laughter] 

 

So, after about 10 years of working in kitchens, I finally earned my stripes as an executive chef. The title afforded me many luxuries, like a 401(k), pretty cush salary and paid time off. In the winter of 2015, I took the longest vacation I'd ever taken since I started working. I decided to go to Vietnam with my parents. It was my first time going and their second time back since fleeing in 1975. My favorite part about being in Vietnam were the markets, the food markets, the night markets, the floating markets. An entirety of its culture laid out, a feast for the senses. Spices, every shade of the sunset, herbs and vegetables, every hue of the forest. Friends, families, strangers, everyone coming out to meet, to mingle, to drink, to laugh and of course, to eat. 

 

On our very last night in Vietnam, we met a woman who invited us back to her family home in Saigon for dinner. She said she lived with 23 people, from her grandpa to her nieces and nephews. From the moment we stepped foot into her family's home, we were so warmly welcomed. It was like a familial embrace, like a family reunion, except these were all people we'd never met before. I remember as we made our way up to the fourth floor of this family's home, there on the ground was a bamboo mat. And on the bamboo mat lay 30 dishes to 40 dishes, from grilled eggplant with nuoc mam and mint to fried whole fish, from pickled daikon to crushed Thai red chilies. The entire room was damp with the smell of a thousand ingredients brought together just for us. 

 

The din of children's laughter, the men boasting, the women exchanging recipes and compliments, everybody handing dishes back and forth, back and forth. It was all so overwhelming and so chaotic, but in its own way, a type of magic. This feeling was so different from the fiery life that I was living back home. To me, this felt as if I was stepping to the edge of a river for the very first time. And I started to wonder, if I could just step a little further in, if somehow it could fill me up. 

 

I sat on the floor, cross legged and I feasted. Family poured in and out of the room, sitting on couches, on the window sills, some even in the stairwell. Everybody balancing bowls of rice in their laps. Here I was, a stranger in somebody's home, yet a home away from home, awash in a culture. I just wished my entire body to become a sponge, so that I could soak it all in. 

 

Coming back home, I knew I needed to make some changes. In Vietnam, it felt as if people spilled their emotions out onto the street. And the community, they scooped it up and they shared it around. And that made it feel like no one was ever really alone. When I got back, I didn't want to feel alone anymore either, but I didn't know what that meant and I didn't know how to get there, but I put in my notice. 

 

After 15 years of busting my ass working in kitchens, I quit my job. And then, I picked up the phone. I called friends, family. I started to talk to strangers. Slowly, I lifted that cage from around my soft parts. I found that by being open and vulnerable, my heart actually grew bigger and stronger. And with it, this sense of a community formed. I wanted to hold on to this feeling, so I decided to build a place to grow it. 

 

In April of last year, I opened a sports bar unlike any other called The Sports Bra. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

It's a place where people can come to gather, celebrate and watch women's sports. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

When I walk through The Sports Bra, I get the same feeling I got when I walked the markets in Vietnam. Sing song of laughter. Strangers sharing stories, safety and company, community united by a common thread. 

 

When I was developing the menu for the Bra, I knew I wanted it to feel familiar, but I also knew I wanted to pay homage to everything that came before. At the top of the menu, you'll find mom's baby back ribs. Now, this is exactly the recipe that mom sent to me when I was away at college, missing home. It's my favorite dish that she makes. In Vietnamese, it's called Thịt Kho. It turns out that my burning desire wasn't to be dangerously independent. It was to be a part of something bigger, to be a part of a community. I found that by stepping out of the fire and into the water, it helped put out the parts of my life that were consuming me. And at the Sports Bra, I see water everywhere, and it fills me up and there's plenty to share. Thank you.