Nini Nguyen was 28 when she booked a flight from New Orleans to Vietnam for a five-week trip. It was the first time she’d ever left the United States, but she wanted to see her homeland.

Her mother’s family left Vietnam in 1975 — the same year as the fall of Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City) and the effective end to the Vietnam War. Her family never returned because of painful memories, but Nini needed to see it for herself.

“Being there was incredibly eye-opening. It helped me understand my family and why we are the way we are. In some ways, Vietnam even reminded me of New Orleans,” she explains. “It’s hot and humid, there’s French influence in the architecture and food, and it felt strangely familiar. That trip helped me connect the dots between culture, history and the food I grew up with.”

Seventy years of French colonialism in Vietnam between the 1880s and 1954 left its mark on the country’s architecture, society and cuisine. The area known as present-day New Orleans was colonized by the French almost a century before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Despite the 9,000-mile distance between the two, Nini immediately saw how the French had influenced her world.

Life in Louisiana

Nini grew up with her grandmother, who worked as an oyster shucker. As a child, Nini’s grandmother taught her to cook, starting with meat, vegetables and egg-stuffed buns called báhn bao.

She and her brother, Bobby, were fans of Food Network as kids, and they spent a lot of time watching the original Iron Chef (Chef Morimoto was Nini’s favorite) and acting out the kitchen challenges they saw on TV. As Nini got older, she began helping cook for the family during the week and loved the positive feedback from her relatives.

Nini’s original plan was to become a pharmacist, but one year after enrolling at the University of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina destroyed the campus and forced Nini’s family to relocate to Baton Rouge. It was there she learned more about Cajun cooking as she attended tailgates at Louisiana State University and worked in restaurants around the city. In her cookbook, she writes, “By the time I was in my final year of college, the thought of cooking professionally had all but consumed my brain.”

Life and Loss

After college, Nini left Louisiana for New York City to break into the restaurant business, and she landed a job at Eleven Madison Park, a fine-dining restaurant in the Flatiron District, where she honed her skills as a chef. In 2016, she was preparing to open her own restaurant in Brooklyn when she got word that her brother had been diagnosed with Stage 4 stomach cancer. Nini left New York to return to Baton Rouge and help care for him.

As Bobby dealt with his illness, Nini turned down a call from Top Chef’s casting director to compete on the show.

“… I couldn’t imagine leaving him knowing I would never have that time back. So I promised that if they were to call again, I would do it,” Nini writes in her cookbook.

In addition to losing her brother, Nini also lost the restaurant space in New York due to a zoning issue.

But Top Chef called again, and Nini went on to compete in Season 16. She went on to appear in Top Chef: All-Stars LA, Bobby’s Triple Threat, Tournament of Champions, Wildcard Kitchen and Last Bite Hotel.

The Making of Đặc Biệt: An Extra-Special Vietnamese Cookbook

With her culinary experience and understanding of her family’s origin story and cuisine, Nini felt duty-bound to preserve the recipes and heritage via cookbook, which took about four years to compile.

“The recipes come from my family, dishes I grew up eating and things I’ve cooked throughout my career as a chef. Some are straight from my mom, my grandmother or people in my community,” she says. “For me, writing this book felt like a responsibility. I was afraid that these stories and recipes could disappear over time, so I wanted to preserve them in a way that could be shared with the world.”

The cookbook is more than just a compilation of recipes. It’s part biography, part history and 100 authentic Vietnamese recipes with origins that reach all parts of Vietnam.

“I'm lucky because my family spans both northern and southern Vietnam. My mom’s mother is originally from the north but moved to the south in the 1950s, and my grandmother on my dad’s side is from the south,” Nini explains. “When I included dishes in the book, I often chose the version I liked best between the two grandmothers. I hope people trust that I picked the better one, at least in my opinion.”

The phrase “đặc biệt” is a descriptor in the Vietnamese community for things that are “special, distinctive or fancy.” In English, we can understand it as something or someone that is a little bit “extra.”

Nini’s extra-special Vietnamese cookbook embodies đặc biệt not only in spirit, but in physical presence. The book features vibrant photos with full-color printing that goes all the way to the edge of the page. The book also stays open to the recipe page as you cook. Ingredients are highlighted in bold, and recipes offer context for their role in Vietnamese cuisine.

“Everything was thoughtfully designed. The book stays open when you cook from it, the ingredients are highlighted in bold so they’re easy to read and every dish has a photograph,” Nini says. “The visuals were also important to me because I wanted the book to reflect my culture. You see Vietnamese textiles, newspapers and elements from everyday life. I wanted readers to feel like they were sitting at the dinner table in my world.”

The book is dedicated to Nini’s brother, who was also a chef.

“As a cook, he was someone who liked perfecting specific dishes. He made an incredible beef stew and the best carrot cake. When he loved something, he really mastered it,” she says.

One of Nini’s favorite recipes in her book is the Cabbage and Chicken Salad, which includes mint leaves, Vietnamese coriander, roasted peanuts and a dressing made from a traditional dipping sauce called nước chấm made with garlic, Thai chilies, sugar, fish sauce and lime juice.

The cookbook also opened a door for Nini’s family to express their pride in her work.

“My family never really understood why being a chef was a big deal. Even when I was on TV, it didn’t seem that impressive to them,” Nini says. “But when the book came out, and they could hold it in their hands and see our family photos, it really meant something. That’s when I think it truly clicked for them, and I could see how proud they were.”

What’s Next for Nini

Nini once again calls New Orleans home, and you can often find her at food and wine festivals. She’s also cooking up plans for a new restaurant and filming some other Food Network competitions.

“The next thing I’m really excited about is hosting a dinner series in New Orleans. I want to use my cooking studio to test my restaurant concept,” she says. “It will give me a chance to experiment with dishes, see what kind of Vietnamese food people respond to and explore what the service and experience could look like. It’s a way to build toward opening a restaurant while sharing the food with people along the way.”

In her spare time, you can find Nini hosting dinner parties and making pottery.