Unknown: I had a great childhood.

A lot of freedom.

We would go in the forest and play, we'd climb trees try to find robin's eggs, try to catch gart snakes, we ride bikes, I go fishing.

Being outside has been my place of refuge.

My parents were boat people, meaning that they fled Vietnam by boat in the 70s.

So my mom was pregnant with me.

And they made a decision as a family that they had to leave.

They ended up sailing South, ended up on an island on the eastern coast of Malaysia.

So they built this tree house.

And that's where I was born.

And then we ended up in Illinois with my dad's brothers, my mom's brothers.

And we all ended up in this little house.

I can vividly remember being in kindergarten, that's when I realized that I was different.

You know, kids don't have filters.

You know, kids can be very mean, kids can be really cruel.

But it's just because they don't know any better.

They would pull their eyes back.

I hated it.

I didn't like it.

I want it to be at that time growing up, was to be white.

Every Friday was a very special day for us.

Because Friday meant that my parents got paid.

And we get to have McDonald's.

I felt like the more hamburgers, the more Big Macs that I ate, the more American I was.

But at that time, I felt like because eating McDonald's we were a normal family I knew growing up that it was very different.

I was very intuitive.

I also knew that I was very creative.

So at an early age, my parents taught us how to how to boil water make instant ramen.

And part of my early creative development, I think it came from that moment, you know, being able to add things into the ramen and make it different.

At 18 years old, I didn't know what I want to do.

I just knew that I like to draw, I like to cook.

When I had friends over.

I would just cook but it wasn't, it wasn't in a way where like, hey, I want to make a profession out of this.

I just wanted to do things that were creative.

And it wasn't until you know this one evening when I was online, and an ad popped up for culinary school.

Something clicked for the first time in my adult life, I knew that this was something that I wanted more than anything.

In 2008, I had this opportunity to move to Utah.

So I jumped on it.

Ultimately, over time, in 2011 got Best New Chef.

And it's one of the most coveted awards that a young chef can get.

Getting this award was life changing.

It opened up a lot of different opportunities.

And one of those opportunities was food television.

So the network really liked me, you know, so they casted me for a show called Food Network Star.

And we went to one of the contestant's friend's restaurant and I met the chef and he's like, hey, I want you guys to try this fried And I eat it and my eyes lit up.

I've never had chicken that had chicken.

so much complexity.

So much crunch different flavors going on.

You know I was inspired.

I was like blown away.

And the first thing that came out of my mouth.

I'm going to open up a fried chicken place one day from that day on, when I woke up every single day and when I went to sleep every single day, fried chicken was on my mind.

I would fry chicken for whoever would try it.

I wanted something to help lift the main ingredients, the fried chicken, and how it balances out the flavors.

So I started to add some acid to it some lemon juice, some lemon peel, and it made somewhat of a flabby sauce become elevated.

But it was still missing something.

The fish sauce moment came from the echoes in my mind, in my memory, my mom everything that she did, she goes you have to put fish sauce, it makes it taste better.

You know, as a kid, I'm like, I don't want that in there.

It's stinky.

It's fishy.

She goes no, you have to add it and makes it better.

So for me fish sauce was just easy to get.

We'd walk to the Asian market and I go through aisles of all of these three ingredients.

And one that stood out to me was for sauce.

So add a dash to it.

And then at that moment, that sauce is perfect.

I worked on the recipe for six years and then Pretty Bird opened up.

Using fish sauce in that sauce, slowly found his way into our slaw into our chicken.

And then the presence of fish sauce became so much more you know, and then I started to connect myself, my heritage, my upbringing, my identity to it and it was full circle it made more sense to me.

It's brought me closer to my identity as a Vietnamese American from you know, I've been ms immigrant family.

It brought me closer to my mom.

It allowed me to open up and pay more attention to what she was doing.

And through that made me a better cook.

I never thought that fried chicken would reconnect me back to my roots bring me home, you know, it wasn't even a bowl of fried chicken.

Who would have known.