Mama Ðút: Vegan Vietnamese Recipes and Stories

From the James Beard–nominated owner of vegan restaurant Mama Đút comes a narrative cookbook sharing Thuy Pham’s remarkable journey from Vietnamese refugee to acclaimed, award-winning chef.

It took years for Thuy Pham to find belonging as a refugee to the United States from Vietnam. In elementary school, she often felt embarrassed by the homemade lunches her mother packed her—rice and bitter melon, steamed baos, or banh mi. Even as an adult, Thuy struggled with her intersectional identity as Vietnamese American. But after stumbling upon a photo of herself and her mother in an Indonesian refugee camp, she vowed that she wouldn’t waste the life her family had fought so hard for her to have, fleeing Vietnam when Thuy was a child as so-called boat people to obtain asylum in America.

Thuy returned to the kitchen, where her single mother had always enlisted her help, discovering meaning while cooking with the ingredients of her ancestors—hot mint, fish sauce, pandan, salted plum, spicy bean curd. As a vegan, she re-created the childhood dishes she longed for (and had previously thrown in the trash): vegan versions of baos, chicken curry, braised fish, and pork belly.

It was Thuy’s vegan pork belly that forever changed her life. At her daughter’s request and on a whim during the Covid-19 pandemic, she made pork belly on Instagram Live. In under forty-eight hours, Thuy and her pork belly went viral, requests flooding in for her recipes, for delivery orders, for a restaurant. Thus Mama Đút was born, named for the phrase baby Kinsley would repeat when she was hungry: “Mama Đút! Mama Đút!”—“Mama feed!”

In Mama Đút, Thuy shares vegan recipes and stories that bring to life the flavors, textures, and vibrancy of Vietnamese cuisine. While gently leading the reader into the world of veganism, Thuy reveals how eating chay—without meat—can be a delicious way to live and to keep the memories of her ancestors alive while showing anyone questioning their place in the world that you belong right where you are.