Duyen Ha is a purpose-driven entrepreneur with an extensive background as a Michelin-starred trained chef. While working as a professional chef in some of France’s most prestigious restaurants, she’s witnessed the incredible power of food and beverage to build relationships, enhance communal experiences, and extend the enjoyment of life’s most precious conversations and celebrations.
That realization sparked the deliciously simple idea of bringing the best and most exciting French wines to market. In 2020, Duyen founded BONDLE, a wine brand that specializes in selling premium French wines in the magnum format (1.5L).
Prior to launching BONDLE, Duyen attended Ferrandi Culinary School in Paris and graduated top of her class. Her culinary journey took her to work at restaurants such as Arpège (3 Michelin Stars), Mirazur (3 Michelin Stars) and Frenchie (1 Michelin Star), where she was exposed to some of Europe’s finest wine lists and professionals.
My name is dwan ha and I’m the founder of bondle we are a wine brand and importing company that specializes in French natural wines welcome to the Vietnamese I’m your host Kenneth win being part of a culture of nearly 100 million Vietnamese people in the world
Today comes with a lot of pain proud history and privilege join me as I highlight and explore the Vietnamese experience from all of thank you for coming on the podcast today of course you’re uh your name popped up uh several times uh in the last year and I was at a
Party recently and somebody said you know have you gotten uh Zuna on the podcast yet and I I just stopped everything I did at the party and I I messaged you and here we are so thank you here we are and I’ve known about you since you know I’ve moved back to the
State so I feel super honored to be on here so thanks for having me you’re very welcome and so let’s start with you being in New York I think you grew up in New York and you did a stint in Europe uh to get into the culinary business but
Let’s start off with growing up in New York what was that like and then what was the move to to Europe like for you yeah so my family is actually um based in Upstate New York so it’s like right by Binghamton and it’s like three hours north of New York City um so
Obviously a very different feel than New York itself but I had a lot of extended family live in the Bronx and like a big Vietnamese community so even as a kid we go down to the Bronx every summer almost every weekend um but moving and living up in Upstate New York it was
Interesting because it was like there is a big Vietnamese Refugee Community because um a lot of the missionaries brought people to Upstate because IBM was there so there was like a big manufacturing boom in the 90s so that’s why my parents kind of was able or why
We located over there uh but you know you know when I was younger we grew up in the Vietnamese uh town it’s called Johnson City but as I got a little bit older my parents kind of like you know started establishing themselves a little
Bit more we grew up in like a very very white like allwhite like neighborhood and town so um that was I mean you know we can talk about a little bit down but it’s like that also really affected kind of how I perceived myself and like the Vietnamese community and stuff um but
When I was 18 that’s when I moved to New York City so I went to Hunter College studied political science and women studies um and then you know I didn’t really start cooking until I was 25 years old and then I moved to France when I was 27 what what led to you
Cooking well I think all Vietnamese people can kind of like you know understand this where it’s like we have such a big food culture um and even when we were refugees in Vietnam like there are photos where it’s like everyone’s like sitting on the floor with like a
Sheet like all out there’s food everywhere but there’s like Wendy’s cups like you know we didn’t really have much but like you can really see the community amongst food and so I was always surrounded by that and like my parents on the weekends would like throw these huge parties cook all weekend long
Spend all week kind of grocery shopping prepping and so just being around that I just love the way that like food was able to bring people together and when I moved to New York in college I was like where are all these like like food like dinner parties and stuff and I realized
That wasn’t really normal for a lot of people so then I just started creating that myself and yeah I just started bringing a bunch of friends over started cooking and I just loved the way that that was able to like make people feel and I loved how I felt just doing that
For others and so that was the initial Spark and then I worked at Google um one for two years and the thing about Google is like they have these huge food dining halls with like a team of chefs the menu changes every day and so that kind of
Gave me a little bit more access to like like different Cuisines like Farm to Table Cuisine and so I was like okay like I really want to get into like food but I don’t really know how and so I was like maybe I’ll do like food Tech I’ll
Like you know try and like transition my way over um and so after Google I like started doing like social media marketing for restaurants and then finally like I had some clients and then my first restaurant I worked at was Marlo and Suns and I just like I was like Hey like
I would love to work in your kitchen and they were like well you can’t really just go into the kitchen like you can start at front of house and then transition your way over and so I actually worked front of house there for eight months like that’s how like
Dedicated I was to like wanting to finally get down there and after eight months they were working on this kimchi project and I was like hey like can I just kind of see what you guys are doing and they’re like yeah but we’re not going to work on it until like 10
O’clock at night and I think I got off at like 8 and I just sat there for like two hours and like waited and went back down at 10: I was like hey are you guys working on it yet and I think that’s when they saw like okay like this girl’s
Serious and that was like my first you know kind of introduction into the kitchen and so I worked in New York for about a year and a half and then because like I said I had worked I started much later in my career as a chef and I was
Like competing against people who’ve been cooking since they were like 16 years old and so I was like how do I kind of FasTrack This and like get up to that level and so I was like well maybe I’ll go to culinary school and you know
If I’m going to go to culinary school anywhere like let me try and go into France and to Paris specifically so I applied and it’s called the school is called Fon D it’s kind of like their Premier school and it’s like in it’s integrated into the French system so
It’s like you have students who are like from high school college doing their masters but they have this really tiny international program and so I got in and you know that’s kind of how I started my career into cooking over in France now when you were at Google and you were doing work
There did you you work part-time uh by the time you got to Marlo and Suns and like how did that transition happen I you know I as a listener of your story I’m I’m curious because those kind of Life transitions are massive and to make that decision in New York City with rent
So high cost of living so high that must be so crushing if you’re not taking on both things at the same time well at Google I was there fulltime but something else was that I didn’t graduate college yet because they hired me I think I was just about to turn 22
So I was the youngest employee in my department and I was like well I can’t really go to school full-time and also work at Google so I stopped a school and then worked there until I was 24 my last six months at Google I started to actually taking night classes because I
Was like I guess just got to finish this degree um and then after Google I went back to school finished full-time so I didn’t graduate until I was 25 um but Google paid like I got paid enough to do that full-time but you’re right like doing that transition into
Food especially with social media marketing like we only had like two or three clients at the time it was me and my partner and it couldn’t support both of us and so one of us had to just like find another part-time job so that’s when I started working at Marlo Suns and
So we like I did a little bit of marketing like social stuff for them but it was really I got that job one to make money and two to work in their kitchen it led you down the path to uh fandi yeah led me down the path to feron
D and like also something to mention at you know when you do make these huge life changes and career changes obviously you have to like start from the bottom you know and like one of the hard things like I’m so happy I kind of fought through it is like there’s like
This sense of Pride like you know working at Google being so young there was a pride that I felt and I was proud when I told people and then going after and like having some of my old co-workers see me just like as a server
Or as a barista and just having to be like no like this is just temporary like I’m trying to work in the kitchen and even in the kitchen I started like shucking oysters but it’s like you have to kind of feel uncomfortable in the beginning but like also know where your
Path is to know that this is just a stepping stone yeah it’s all about the Reps yeah now let’s go back a little bit to when you were Upstate New York and you then find yourself transitioning into sort of like an All-American town and I’m listening to the way you
Pronounce your name and I just want to have a conversation about that because I think I have encountered a few people in the last few years about you know when we’re working in the public space you know we have these ways that we have to pronounce our name but I found out that
These ways to pronounce our names go way back in date to when we were children and we had to kind of come up with ways to pronounce our names a little easier now when I read your name it to me reads Zin ha um but you pronounce it
Differently so can we talk about the origin story of this totally yeah so I pronounce my name dwen like dwen and I think like I don’t know I’ve been pronouncing it that way since I was really young so I don’t have an actual memory of why I started pronouncing my
Name this way um but I think with the name the thing that’s really hard with Vietnamese is that like our names are not meant for the English language and even the last name like new like you know that there’s so many different pronunciations in English the way my
Cousins pronounce it is so different than people I meet from the West Coast or the east coast and so I think think a lot of it is like very I don’t know it’s like how you want to present yourself to the community and maybe for me how I
Came up with dwen when I was younger is like I don’t like when people ask me how do you pronounce your name I’m like dwen it’s like Gwen with a d and I think that made it really easy for non-vietnamese people to get an understanding of like
Oh okay like that’s easy for me to remember and I ask because your name resembles my name in Vietnamese um my name and I never use this but and I’ve never said it publicly but it’sin so it’s t n i I could imagine if I was I
Was born with the name Kenneth so um but if anybody ever asked me what’s your Vietnamese name I say th but it’s almost impossible for um an American person to pronounce it so I I bury it but I’m not so proud about that so proud of that I
Have to bury it but at the same time I want to ask you nowadays when you are now in the public um Arena and you know you were coming in touch with a lot of Vietnamese people do you ever think about rectifying the way you pronounce it or will you keep this trajectory
Forever well I just don’t know how I would pronounce it in English like yeah a Vietnamese person like when you asked me before the interview like how should I pronounce your name like you can totally pronounce it Zing you know a lot of people from the South pronounce it
Ying um but in English like it’s always like people are like oh is it Duan and like that just doesn’t sit well with me either for some reason like I just don’t like the way that it sounds um and you know even in school like that’s something even to this day when people
Meet me or like they see how it’s pronounced F or see how it’s spelled first and they’re like oh G and it’s like I always still correct people though like I think I have some Vietnamese friends who just don’t they’re like whatever like however they want to pronounce it don’t really care
But like now I feel like DW has become a part of my identity but like when I was younger I had thought about oh maybe I should just change my name and just have it spelled dwen because that’s how like I you know I like it pronounced but I feel like for
Me to have stayed in touch with my Vietnamese Community is that like I’ve kept it yeah and that’s such a a phenomenon that happens a lot that people have to change their name I’ve seen nwe n you know that’s spelling officially changed or wow MC n guu n
Mcin yeah it’s it’s uh it’s very interesting how you know but and I go through life trying to remove the Judgment that I have on myself because of my Americanized uh name and and the birth uh so I I deal with this a lot in
My own head that but I realize like the Judgment that we are have for other things comes from the Judgment that we often times have on ourselves so very I try to like wake up to you know I mean it’s so it’s funny because like my husband he’s a French Moroccan
And his last name is samrai and it’s like and I’m like I don’t want to also change my last name because one I love ha but also DW Sami like no one is ever gonna be able to pronounce either and I was like you know what like I think it’s just overly too
Complicated B have you watched the bear I have watched the bear I’ve watched the full first season I’m I can’t watch it back to back like I think maximum I can watch two episodes at a time and then I need like I need like a few days break
Before I can go back into it I’m the same way I couldn’t do more than two episodes it’s a lot but people who have I’ve spent 12 years in the kitchen you’ve spent a lot of time in the kitchen um professional kitchens and the speed and the frenetic energy and the
Craziness and the Egos and all of that is so accurate in the bear wouldn’t you say it’s so accurate it’s like too accurate you know to the point where it’s like a little PTSD for like some scenes but I wanted to ask you how different is the French cooking scene
Versus the American Cooking scene H uh it is really different it’s definitely more formal uh I feel like in the US you know a lot of people I was cooking with or even a lot of my chef friends a lot of people didn’t go to culinary school um and they just kind of
Learn on the job and they’ve been cooking at a young age over in France it’s like you know in high school they kind of make you decide like what career path do you want to go in and also it’s less frequent where people are changing careers compared to over here so it’s
Like they like once start cooking in high school like rarely will they kind of change to something else which is so different from kind of our mentality um and so because they’ve been in school for so long and cooking and like fine dining is such like a huge pillar over
There and like everything kind of stems from that so it’s like even when people have more like casual restaurants oftentimes they have started from fine dining and then decided to switch over um so because of that it’s like it’s really rigorous and the hours are just
Also super crazy as well like yeah the hours are even worse it’s insane because in France they have a lot of labor laws where I think now you’re not technically allowed to work over 39 hours per week but that’s the case for pretty much all Industries besides the food industry
Like the government really turns a blind eye because it’s like one it’s really expensive to hire staff it’s like what the like owners are paying to the government in terms of taxes is way more than what you know people are paying over here so therefore you have less
Staff for front and back of house and it’s like but you’re still having like to you know cook at this like certain level so over there I was working about like you know i’ go into to work at 8 in the morning and I would leave at like
Midnight you know something like that yeah how do people have a life and why would anyone choose to live that life for their whole career that’s such a good question like for me I knew that I wasn’t going to live in France and do that forever so I
Was like all right like this is my sacrifice for these you know two to four how many years I wanted to do it but yeah it really it got to me uh by the like I mean Monday you go in I’m feeling good Tuesday I’m like all right I’m kind
Of tired and by Wednesday I’m like so done and it’s like and yeah it’s just like this super vicious cycle God it think about it and I just think it’s almost like it’s almost like slavery right yeah you’re bonded you’re bonded to these workstations in cramped areas
And you don’t see the light of day and you’re just8 to midnight that’s like horrendous and you know when if I hate to make this comparison but when you think about Like a Surgeon or these doctors in training I uh I hate to say this but I need those people to be in
Those places for all that time to get that train so we the public is is being taken care of we need the maximum amount of time those human beings can be in that environment so they can pick up and learn and get the experience totally but
Is there another way to do this with the kitchen work that I mean I like commend a lot of restaurant owners and chefs who are trying you know what I mean like even just like the snow tipping policy like last night I went to King Fisher in San Diego Vietnamese restaurant highly
Recommend it to anybody you know they’re really kind of like trying to push the envelope and you know they don’t have there’s a no tipping policy and what happens is then like a lot of you know the pool there’s still 18% service charge but now that pool’s also going to
Backup house and so I mean that’s more about the discrepancy of what front and backup house are making but in terms of the hours like I I don’t know I to be honest I haven’t fully cracked it and I think probably that’s one of the reasons why I
Got out of the industry because it’s like it’s just not sustainable and I also didn’t want to open a restaurant where I knew I had to kind of put people through this yeah I I don’t know how long all of this can be sustainable you know um but
The act of making food at a high level is proportionate to any money that could be paid on a normal salary uh in LA or America it’s yeah proportionate it’s I mean and especially in France like the hours I told you I mean you have chefs making about I mean
When I was there about 1,400 per month to like 1,800 per month you know like it’s insane but then you have a diner coming in and I think they’re dinner just food not including wine or anything is about 400 per person so yeah it’s yeah it is kind of like modern
Day slavery but it’s like unfortunately that’s but the thing is that they also know that there’s a demand for the chefs you know what I mean I remember I went into the office at one of the restaurants I worked at and the resume stack was like this thick for Chef so
Like they know if somebody leaves there’s definitely someone else that’s going to come right in and take their place it’s amazing it it’s almost like the entertainment business as well like in the film industry you know the the 90 80% of like the bottom you know below
The line is getting paid very little and even when you’re first starting out in these executive positions um you have to be an intern for a few years and you have to learn the the ropes and you have to really pay your dues and this is a
Thing that all the big agencies or Production Studio companies or what they know that at any given time there’s a stack of resumes you know like for the mail room at CA you know it’s just like it’s impossible even as a Harvard lawyer to to even get you know in sometimes
Totally totally so unfortunately there’s just all these industries obviously including the food that just kind of reaps the benefits and takes advantage of people and at what point did you start your company bondle bondle uh so I started during covid um a little backstory so the first uh so France went
Through two lockdowns and the first one happened around March of 2020 and a month before then I was skiing with my older brother and I tore my ACL and I had to get ACL surgery so I had still had health insurance in New York and so my parents were like don’t
Do the surgery in uh in France just come home we’ll take care of you like you know just get it done here so I I flew back got my surgery while I was recovering everything shut down uh and so I just had a lot of time to kind of
Think M things over just kind of wait for the restaurants to reopen was really excited to go back I went back to France June 2020 started working again the restaurants hadn’t fully open like you couldn’t have diners come in but we kind of did like you know the three course
Like takeaway service that a lot of more fine dining restaurants did and then I think around August everything reopened but you know October it started to get bad again so France went through a second lockdown so from November 2020 I think until like April 2021 and at that time I was like look
Like you know one I’m like so exhausted from being in this industry but I still wanted to open a restaurant but I’m like I have no idea how this is even viable I no one knew what was happening with the world and I always wanted to start like
A wine importing company um because when I worked at Marlo and Suns in New York it was all French wines and the wine list changed every week so during like staff family meal like even though I was cooking I still got to learn a bunch about like you know French wines and
Natural Wines in particular and so I was like you know that sounds like such a cool concept like to have a restaurant like maybe I could bring cool French Wines in and like you know stuff like that and so I was like maybe this is my chance to start this wine importing
Company that I always wanted to do so it was me uh the Somalia at the restaurant I was working at in Paris her family’s head a Vineyard in provance for seven generations and so she just had all the right connections and kind of knew like
Our pet what I was looking for and then my partner and so we just kind of came together and we started I think we like uh formed the LLC November 2020 and you know took us about a year and a half to get our licenses get the right like uh
Winery partners and stuff and then launch December 2021 so when you decide that you want to launch this wine import company what are you looking for in terms of The Taste the body like I I I can imagine it going into Infinity with the criteria so I like on on your
Whiteboard um your proverbial whiteboard what do you put down and what are your partners and what do you guys what kind of discussion do you have saying uh these are the criterias we want for the wine that’s such a good question because there are so many little things have to intersect
Perfectly uh well first we started off as a magnum only wine company so Magnum refers to the format so a standard wine bottle 750 milliliters a magnum’s double that so they’re bigger and the reason why we wanted to start a magnum Ling company is one like being in hospital
Hospitality it’s like SS chefs like we just love like we love family style meals and Magnums is the equivalent of that for wine it’s so communal it’s so salvatory um and so I wanted every time people were drinking my wines to kind of have that like moment and also because
Of covid we spent so much time being alone that I was like you know what like I want people to start Gathering again um and so part of that when I’m picking my wines of what wines I want to import I need to think about like okay like can
I drink like a magnum of this you know there are so many wines we were tasting they’re like this is delicious but like I could probably just have one glass two Max so there’s that but also being a chef I’m thinking about wines that are going to pair really well with food so
I’m thinking about like Cuisine a lot where it’s not overpowering but it’s not too light um you know we are actively looking for female wine makers as well I’m trying to have a lot of inclusion and diversity um so that’s part of it and then also in terms of natural wine
Like I’m looking for wine makers that are you know really taking care of the land like you know not adding a lot of sulfites preservatives herbicides and so those are like the four main criterias that I’m looking for that last criteria is a sketchy criteria um because I’ve
Heard that most of the wine that we drink has all these preservatives these sulfites these poisons that we’re drinking and it’s not killing us right away but it is definitely not good for us is that true uh the average conventional wine yes you know I think it’s very similar
To what you’re thinking about with like food as well you know like natural wine is more of kind of this umbrella because there’s natural there’s organic biodynamic um but I would say like if you’re getting wine from like a massive Vineyard like you have to think about it
Like grapes it’s still it’s a living thing it’s a plant you know so it’s like to ensure that there’s consistency year after year to ensure that like the grapes like there aren’t all these bugs like there has to be a lot of you know sprays chemicals and stuff and even to
Tweak the wine to make it literally I mean it’s a plant like you know it’s like eating anything year after year it’s going to obviously be different if you’re just letting the natural expression come up on its own um so that’s what we’re going after for you
Know the wines that we have but it’s also a Gamble and it’s a huge gamble for the wine makers as well where it’s just like it’s not going to taste the same obviously they’re going because it’s like one of its like native yeast fermentation like you know there’s no
Commercial yeast being added so then you’re just letting nature do its thing but how does native yeast actually stay alive and viable it’s like you got to make sure that the plant is living you got to make sure that your their the ecosystem around the vines is like
Healthy um so there’s a lot that goes into that part yeah there there’s a lot of chemistry and then to add all of this up it needs to taste a certain way and how did you come and arrive at the way this should taste I’m sure your similer
Partner has a lot to do with that but what’s the process of getting this taste right yeah I think like that’s so good because it’s like in the natural wine space you have I mean when you’re talking about organic like it can go through the whole Spectrum you know but
I think in America in particular people are expecting or think that natural wine is going to have this like really funky sometimes Barnyard taste and yeah that’s one side of you know the industry but there’s also a whole other side and it’s funny because in France natural wine
That coin that term does doesn’t fully exist like I would talk to like the front of house team at the restaurant and they’d be like all these Americans are coming in and asking for natural wine but it’s like they’ve actually like some regions in France have been making
Natural wine since forever you know organic wine and so like to them that’s just how everything has always been and so it’s a big marketing word that’s been like poined up I think since the 80s but you know I still use it because it’s still also people can identify a little
Bit more of like the type of wines that I’m you know importing in but in terms of taste they’re really clean on the palette and I’d like to say my wines are very elegant you know where it’s like it’s yeah I would say that’s probably the best way to describe them they’re
Just elegant wines um that like are super balanced um and you know doesn’t overpower the food but but it does carry on its own and how did you come up with with the name bondle so bondle the first I mean one because they were magnet it’s all it
Started as a magnum only wine we now have standard 750 milliliters that we launched two days ago um but because of that like we I wanted like to think of a word that like also encompassed like I don’t know togetherness this feeling of like friendship and bonding so I was
Like oh I really like the word bond like how do I kind of round this out a little bit and I wanted to create my own word because you know if we ever got big enough like Airbnb or Uber something like that I was like it’d be easier to
Remember um so I just thought Bond I like that let me round it out a little bit to bondle yeah I it’s a very catchy name I read it as bonay I love it that Americans what like frenchify it I I don’t know maybe one day we’ll start saying Fong but as of
Now was bondle very cool um success in the food and wine space um requires a lot of gritty determination and that can’t be all you know this gritty determination maybe it’s a distinct pallet maybe it’s like this ability to network Beyond from where you come from
Maybe it’s like style as it relates to the way you present things there’s so many things that you need uh when you’re in the food space or any creative space but where you have taken Bondo in the last you know two years since its existence what do you think are the most
Important things that a brand or a company like yours in the food space wine space needs I would probably say community community is super important in this not as just an entrepreneur and finding other people other entrepreneurs other Founders um but being it’s such a people focused industry you know and for
Me I think the success that bondle and even my cooking career has gotten it a lot of it was people had opened doors for me and you know I moved here from Paris when I like a week before I launched the company so December 2021 and I’m being from New York I just
Really didn’t know anybody out here in La I had like one friend that worked in fashion that moved out like several years ago um but it was like me reaching out so there’s like you got to have the sort of determination and also like the tenacity to just kind of put yourself
Out there and I just reached out to like people that I admired other founder friends other Chef friends and like I just started gifting people bottles and instead of delivering them I just went up and like hand delivered it myself to kind of start the conversation and like
I cannot even like tell you how many people just from that had like invited me to a party and like took me around the room and introduced me to others then it kind of grew and it grew and grew so I would say to like really find
Success is like to find the sort of people that can help you get there well that’s a good answer because you know uh Community is is is almost like a very small kind of enclav kind of thing and when I think about like you know wine a wine company it’s like you
You got to scale it but you can’t scale anything such as food and be without this sense of community or like without having this tactile kind of like connection with your community in order to kind of figure out where the projection of the future of the company goes without this
Like tactile kind of like interaction with the community that you want to serve yeah and there’s community in different ways there’s Community with like you know our consumers you know there’s like the online community there’s the inperson there’s my founder community so it’s about like finding
Kind of those people and then that’s the thing like all of the people that you’re really tight with are going to be quote unquote like your brand ambassadors and so it’s like without that and without the people who’ve really helped to get you there and it’s also for me as a
Company to always go back and like reserve them to help them you know and it goes both ways no you also have this community event which is zin’s friends um how did this come about and how does it serve Bondo it sounds very uh synergistic it is and it didn’t really
Start out that way it was it just kind of happened um but DW’s friends so when I was living in New York there was a restaurant um famous Filipino restaurant Jeep marara so um Nicole at the time when and this is like my first start cooking in New York uh she was doing
These like guest Chef Series so she would bring in a chef and they would kind of spin their Cuisine with Filipino Cuisine and it ended up not she didn’t do it as long as we were hoping for me to kind of come on to that platform but
It was um you know it was an idea for me to come on and so I was just getting kind of nervous of like actually cooking for all these people like a real menu that I made so I started DW’s friends as a way to just bring my friends over and
Let me just kind of experiment and have them try some tisses I was kind of coming up with and then I would have people just like write like little forms like how I can improve what they like what they didn’t like and I think because they were sharing it on social
Media other people had kind of picked up and like hey like could you cook us a dinner and then I started traveling a lot and as I was traveling people were like oh if you’re traveling to the city can you do a dn’s friends here so it
Kind of turned into this like Global thing and it would kind and so for many years obviously I wasn’t doing it when I was working my crazy chef hours in Paris but if I ever found like a little month break or so I would find a way to kind
Of resume it so I would come in with the food um figure out wine pairings and then there would be like another host friend that lived in that City and they would help me find space and then get the guest list going wow sorry we there was a little
Yeah have you have you done it in LA so when I first I have done an N La so I’ve done a decent amount in La so when first moved here um my one friend that I had mentioned that had moved out here a couple years before me her sister
Is an influencer and all her sister friends are influencers and she was like Hey like I really want to introduce you to my sister’s friends how about you do aw’s friends and like we can also introduce bondle um and then that would be a really good way for you guys to get
To know each other and so it turned into a five course meal because I have five different wines so each course is there’s a wine pairing and I’d go up and I talk about the whole experience I talk about the food the wine how they pair well together uh the cuisine is
Vietnamese with some French influence um for every dinner I also create an entirely new menu It’s just something that I and I’ve so many different menu ideas and recipes I want to do so I just always kind of try and do something different um and so from that one dinner
That I did they were all posting it and then it kind of quote unquote exploded um a ton of people started sending me messages of like hey can you do this dinner for me um I’m having this get together my birthday’s coming up so last
Year we did about I think we did about like like over 10 dinners while within the first year of Building B yeah it was but you know something else is that like being a new company and like being a Founder like I try my hardest to not
Take any money from the company you know like we didn’t have a salary like none of the co-founders and so DW’s friends was my way of kind of sustaining myself uh while also being being able to push the brand and so it just came at like the perfect time and opportunity to kind
Of merge the two together and you know when I was looking up back at like all the people who had um had a DW’s friends and had requested the dinner it was actually the Asian Community like every single host was Asian and like you know
For me Co growing up in like a very diverse like I ended up having a very diverse group of friends um it was really beautiful to kind of come to LA and seeing how the Asian and the Vietnamese Community has like really shown up for me um so that’s another
Part of community element that I talk about where it’s like you know they’ve shown up for me and like I always am trying to return the favor what a beautiful story story and I know that the Vietnamese community in Southern California is very strong I mean obviously Orange County is very very
Strong um we are continually building the entertainment Community the chef’s Community all of the creative Community here in LA to you know to represent because I think um La is the Cradle of a lot of creative communities and the Vietnamese Community happens to be um a
Rising star and I I really want to push that narrative because I live it I’ve I’ve seen it and I’m I’m being in the middle of watching all of these amazing talented people like yourselves starting here and um as we continue to to get together and bond uh over food and and
And and making content and films and music it only gets stronger so you know welcome to La you know I know you’ve been here for a bit but welcome and I you know looking forward to uh this community of of food uh Network that uh you’ll begin to network here with uh a
Few chefs here yeah honestly I don’t think that bondle would have gotten to where it’s at if it if I had moved to any other city um I think that like one thing I love about La is like you know I feel like people here understand that
Like like there’s enough in the pie to be shared you know it’s like it’s not I don’t feel like everyone is like competing against me but I’ve had so many founder and sometimes even in similar Industries as me but still even open doors you know and it’s like
There’s such like this comaraderie that everyone has that it’s just like hey like if I win I want you to win as well that like I I feel so blessed to kind of have that around me yeah I I think there’s a a an abundance mentality uh
With most people uh that you come in touch with um in the creative space in La especially in the Vietnamese Community I feel like uh we are very supportive because we know that whatever flavor we bring to the table versus the our our the people next to us it’s going
To be very different no matter what it’s just going to be a different flavor profile you know we direct films differently we write films differently we we make wines differently we make um CNAC differently so all of it is wel and it’s like in order to build I I think
More representation and having a bigger market share of sort of visibility it’s important that we all bond together and and get these things done totally could not agree even more than that what what does it mean to be Vietnamese to you after all these years
Uh of of your experience as a chef and living and traveling overseas extensively well you know I think that the Vietnamese like Community like what it means to me so it’s like my mom is mixed so my mom is uh half white half American but both of my parents are adopted so we
Don’t really know what the background is but my mom grew up in Vietnam like we immigrated to the US 91 and Viet Vietnamese is my first language you know obviously like I have a very Vietnamese name and I speak the language uh but because I looked mix I
Think a lot growing up there were I had moments where the Vietnamese Community didn’t really identify with me and I think that like you know that’s kind of what got me to like have a much more diverse group of friends and try a lot of different things because I was like
Yeah Vietnamese but it’s like I also don’t really fit you know um totally in this like bubble and I think as I’ve gotten older like you know know even now every time I call my parents I only speak to them in Vietnamese so like I don’t forget it um I cook Vietnamese
Food much more now like I really try and bring out these slaveries in my Cuisine while maybe before I was more kind of you know leaning towards French or more Farm to Table um and so what does it mean to me I think a lot of it is like
Being like I’m very proud of being Vietnamese I’m like so proud of our Cuisine I think that like you know just the textures the flavors the profile like like I will always talk about Vietnamese food always trying and take people to a Vietnamese restaurant and I
Think like how we’ve been able to like come together even in times of like hardships of our history and our past and how Vietnamese people how we’ve like taken those hardships and like a lot of us have become entrepreneurs how we like stick together I think like yeah I would
Say proud is the word that I have your mother is amirian right so you said she had had American uh half half American white American half Vietnamese and your fathers full Vietnamese yeah and and so they came over in 1991 so you were born in Vietnam so I was born in the refugee
Camps in the Philippines yeah so my mom and like obviously nobody had papers back then and so during the refugee act essentially you just had to like go up to like the office and you like just had to look white or look half black and they would like be like okay well I
Guess that’s enough and you can go to America which is crazy and so my mom was telling me that even like she would see people tan as dark as they could outside to try and convince them that they were half black um and so we were sponsored
By the missionaries uh because we just didn’t have the money to go and like my family’s Buddhist as well they made us convert and like even like we had to go to church for the first couple years in the states and my parents even say like
Hey like we’re going to church but we’re still Buddhists we’re just you know uh like this is our identity um but my the mom was pregnant with me at the time and like she was like trying to hide it because she was scared that she couldn’t
Come to America and like I know she just had the right woman like the right Officer who like gave her the paperwork to go and then we go to the Philippines and it’s like you know I’ve seen some photos my parents try to describe it to
Me but I can only imagine like how insane it was but it’s like you had this like small 4×6 kind of Hut that like a five family would like live in and my yeah I was born there and so we were there yeah we were there for about I
Think six months before we moved to Upstate New York and it’s like you know even talking to my dad and asking him him his experience like one of the things that he always eats do you know those little peanuts that are coated with like coconut or stuff so like
That’s how my parents made money in the refugee camp like my dad learned how to make that and like he would sell it to like or he would barter that with other things so it’s like even when we eat that as a family now it’s kind of this
Representation of like where we came from God that’s such a cool story yeah in 91 so like in the 90s right early 90s yeah think uh I have a good friend Jin Hoy he’s a community rights Advocate and he worked in the Philippines for the Vietnamese camps as
A lawyer from Australia and he did a lot of work maybe 10 years in in the Philippines uh he’s very proud of that time in the Philippines helping um the Vietnamese and he tells me uh the stories of how difficult life in the refugee camps were at the time so I can
Only imagine you know the the difficult times your parents had at that time yeah I mean like when my mom had my sister when she was 19 obviously this was a different time my parents were race Farmers so when they came to the States you know my Dad my mom was like
24 my dad was 27 28 with three kids they don’t know the language you know and it’s like it’s totally foreign and it’s like still just cannot believe how they were able to make it and you know the everyone started working in the manufacturing plants um and they were
Paying people like 50,000 a year which is really good for early 90s and you’ve just come from Vietnam but like my parents knew kind of longterm that like that wasn’t enough and so they my dad learned to trade so my dad learned like how to fix cars my mom like learned how
To do hair and like they would take English classes and because they were able to do that like I think IBM end up leaving like several years later so now you have all viese people who just know how to do this one thing not fully know the
Language and now they’re out of a job and because they were able to kind of think longterm that really gave them the advantage to kind of move forward nothing like a little pre-planning to see the future right yeah totally totally and you worked a little bit on the Obama campaign didn’t
You I did work on the Obama campaign and what did you do for so when I well I worked kind of uh for both campaigns the first one his 08 campaign I was still in high school and I went to this um like college prep program I mean very Asian
My parents put me in every year uh in high school and it was at Bingington University and I think Hillary Clinton at the time was campaigning as well and she like I was walking back from class uh to my dorm and like this car just kind of rolls up and then stops right
Next to me like this huge black SUV and like the window rolls down and it’s like Hillary Clinton and she like she’s like hi I’m Hillary Clinton how are you and she’s just like talking to me and I’m like but like no one else was with me at
The time it was just me so I’m like telling people this crazy story and like I was like I don’t think anyone believed but I think there was like um like a debate happening that night so then I was like you know I kind of just want to
Watch and see what’s going on um and then that kind of sparked kind of my interest in politics and it was more of like you know for me I always looked at Politics as like a way to help people on a much broader scale and like I really
Kind of wanted to do that as well um and then just something about Obama just like really I like identified so much on the issues and the policies that he was like fighting and you know um standing for and then I just started campaigning for him like even in high school and I
Voted class Democrat into a very Republican school so like I really stuck out um and then in 2012 I got involved much more so I was a community organizer for him um I organized for Brooklyn uh predominantly in Williamsburg and Greenpoint and you know every weekend we’d go down to
Pennsylvania um you know we would canvas down there phone banking calling Nevada other states um and so I was super involved and honestly it if it wasn’t for the Obama campaign I don’t think I would have had this sort of trajectory because it’s like they’ve taught they
Teach so much leadership in there you know one of the things I I still stick and I still hold dear is they’d always say like if you’re doing it by yourself you’re doing it wrong and so it’s all about like how do you find people to
Help you to get where you need to be and it’s like even from a small level to if you’re a volunteer to you know all the way up like they find ways to like make you feel really proud and to have these sort of leadership like sort of
Positions and it was such a great experience you know I’ve heard this from um another good friend of mine bwin he’s a director and he worked on the Obama Obama Campaign as well he said the same thing there’s tenants within that campaign that trickle down from the top
The ways of thinking and the success of that campaign for for the Obama campaign really is a reflection of the mechanical side the technical side of raising awareness within the communities that they were trying to get votes for and it worked beautifully as as we know in
History so I understand what you mean by that sort of like that formative time working for the campaign really shaped who you are and allowed you to kind of springboard and leap from where you were in those years to today yeah I mean you know there’s it’s
Like trying to imagine calling you know you’re phone Banking and they’re like hey we have like a list of Republicans in Texas we just want to make sure they’re voting Republican maybe you’ll have some Democrats go ahead and call them and say you’re from the Obama
Campaign and like to do that over and over and over again and like constantly being put in like uncomfortable positions like you you can’t do anything else but grow from that I look forward to your growth in the next few years um with bondle and hopefully with zin’s friends and the
Trajectory of what you’re trying to create I love creatives and I look forward to seeing all the things that you do thank you so much for coming on today thank you so much for having me Kenneth and letting me share a little piece of my story with your audience my
Pleasure thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth win special thanks to Britney Tran to Jane win Katherine win Tina fam Sydney Jamie and cryistal Trin please find us on Instagram Facebook and Tik Tok atth Vietnamese podcast