Chef Tuê Nguyen loves a good food court. With an array of culinary flavors in a single space, it’s easy for everyone in a group to find something they love.

So, when DoorDash alums Jon Goldsmith and Andrew Munday invited Nguyen to be part of Local Kitchens, a small-scale, multi-brand food hall out of San Francisco, she was intrigued. Instead of chain stalls selling pretzels and corn dogs, Local Kitchens highlights renowned chefs and the bold flavors and diverse regional dishes they’re most proud to serve. Nguyen joined the team. Today, Local Kitchens boasts 13 locations in the Bay Area, and its first SoCal shop is opening doors in Studio City this summer.

Nguyen is one of five inaugural chef partners at the Studio City location, where her menu items will include riffs on the classic Vietnamese street food dish com tam, or broken rice. Diners will also be able to peruse menus curated by Alvin Cailan, Einat Admony, Rick Martinez, Ari Fiengold and Max Cohen — a group of chefs from around the U.S. with more combined accolades and awards than Studio City has sushi spots.

“The Local Kitchens team is very selective about the chefs they work with,” Nguyen told me over Zoom in late May. “We are creating some really good food, yes, but we also want dishes that are rich in culture — and rich in stories.”

Nguyen, who is perhaps better known by her online handle, Tway Da Bae, has her own stories to tell. She spent her early childhood years in Vietnam, then lived with her family in Oxnard until going to culinary school in North Hollywood. When a staging role (or internship) at Spago in Beverly Hills proved uninspiring, Nguyen turned to social media, making how-to videos and sharing recipes for home cooks of any skill level to try.

“That was where I found the most success,” she said. “I encouraged people to either just cook, or to cook something that they might not be familiar with, like Vietnamese food.”

Her online presence and sphere of influence swiftly rocketed skyward. She has nearly 700,000 followers on TikTok, more than 500,000 on Instagram and more than 600 videos on her YouTube channel. Within her content portfolio is a wide range of casual tutorials: She’ll teach you how to make from-scratch strawberry matcha one day, then garlic yu choy (a green leafy veggie in the bok choy family) the next. She also provides videos on foundational kitchen skills, such as how to best store produce and stock a pantry. Throughout all of it, Nguyen is approachable, funny and coolly charming — a winning trifecta for a culinary influencer.

After a series of successful foodie pop-ups around Los Angeles, Nguyen partnered up with The h.wood Group (an L.A.-based hospitality company) to open Di Di in 2023. The upscale Vietnamese restaurant is on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood and serves dinner daily. Nguyen’s creations here include shrimp toast, coconut crepe tacos, garlic crab noodles and sweet-and-sour duck.

“When Di Di opened, I didn’t think that I was ready, but are you ever really ready to open a restaurant?” Nguyen asked. “It was just a why-not moment, and I’m so glad that I took it.”

Social media certainly has a dark side, but for Nguyen, it was a platform from which to show the world what she could do and a way to forge her own path when the traditional road to becoming a chef proved too rigid.

“I thought that was the only way, but I was just cooking other people’s food,” Nguyen said. “Instead, I can actually have my voice heard and use this community that I built to not only cook, but to cook the food that I like.”

Other ways to get to know the food Nguyen likes? Pick up a copy of her cookbook “Di An: The Salty, Sour, Sweet and Spicy Flavors of Vietnamese Cooking with TwayDaBae,” which came out last September, or cook her tried-and-true broken rice dish with her recipe here.

Fragrant Broken Rice by Chef Tuê Nguyen

(Serves 5-10 people)

Step 1: Ginger Garlic Mix

Prep time: 30 minutes

3 cups canola oil
2¼ cups garlic, minced
¾ cup ginger puree

Heat a stock pot over medium-high heat. Add canola oil, minced garlic and ginger puree. Stir well with a silicone spatula.

Cook for 25 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes until fragrant and slightly golden. Reduce heat to low.

Cook for 5 more minutes, scraping the pan to loosen any caramelized bits.

Transfer to a separate pan to cool completely. Once cooled, proceed to broken rice.

Step 2: Fragrant Broken Rice

Prep time: 20 minutes

3 fluid ounces ginger garlic mix (above)
1 quart (4 cups) washed broken rice (See note below)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon chicken bouillon powder
5 cups cold water

Measure all ingredients, then add ginger garlic mix and washed broken rice to a clean rice cooker. Stir well. Add salt, bouillon powder and cold water. Stir again to mix.

Cover and let rice cook (about 17-20 minutes). Fluff the rice, close the lid and let sit for 10 minutes. Serve.

Notes: Broken rice is literally broken rice grains. It can be found in select grocery stores. Though historically peasant food (broken rice grains were considered inferior to whole ones and were therefore cheaper), it is now a common and beloved street food dish. 

Vietnamese broken rice is often topped with grilled pork or beef, steamed egg-and-pork meatloaf or a fried egg. Fresh veggies (cucumbers, tomatoes and/or pickled vegetables) are usually added to the plate, too.