Don Nguyen was born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Houston, Texas.<\/p>\n
After attending the United States Military Academy West Point and graduating from The University of Texas at Austin where he studied economics and mathematics, Don pursued a career in renewable energy trading and origination for ten years before finding his actual calling: reconciling the dichotomy of the Asian-American experience through barbecue.<\/p>\n
A trendsetter in craft barbecue, Don is recognized for spearheading the movement of incorporating ethnic dishes and ingredients with the techniques and smoked meats of Central Texas barbecue. He got his first backyard smoker the week before Hurricane Harvey and quickly found his voice building upon traditional Central Texas barbecue techniques modernized in the late aughts and mid-2010s by John Mueller, Aaron Franklin, and John Lewis.<\/p>\n
Don honors the barbecue traditions of Texas while propelling its evolution with deftly smoked brisket, beef ribs, and handcrafted sausages interwoven with ingredients from Vietnamese cuisine like fish sauce, tamarind, and fermented seafood pastes. Taught how to cook by his mom, his food is a reflection of what he grew up eating in Houston\u2019s Little Saigon, Chinatown, and trips to Vietnam visiting his family in \u0110\u00e0 N\u1eb5ng.<\/p>\n
The marriage of Vietnamese and Texas cooking traditions led to the creation of his pop up, Kh\u00f3i Barbecue, with the help of his brother Theo, in 2017. Kh\u00f3i means smoke in Vietnamese. Kh\u00f3i quickly received praise for dishes like brisket ph\u1edf, beef cheek b\u00e1nh x\u00e8o, and beef rib curry. Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor for Texas Monthly, asserted \u201cKh\u00f3i is expanding the boundaries of what barbecue can be.\u201d<\/p>\n
These dishes have helped shape the current zeitgeist of integrating flavors and dishes from minority communities with American barbecue traditions.<\/p>\n
As he continued to hone his craft and examine the role of Asian-Americans within the fabric of America, Don fell in love with the Carolina whole hog style of cooking after cooking one for the first time for pitmaster Rodney Scott in 2021. Don weaves the technique into Vietnamese dishes like whole hog b\u00e1nh cu\u1ed1n and th\u1ecbt n\u01b0\u1edbng. Scott says of Don\u2019s style of whole hog: \u201cit kind of blew my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the early days as a pop up, to evolving into its own culinary corner in Houston, Kh\u00f3i has been acclaimed by Eater and lauded by chefs Brooke Williamson, who expressed Don\u2019s work is a \u201cbreath of brilliant barbecue air\u201d and Bobby Flay, who remarked Don is \u201cdisrupting American barbecue in the best way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don is a Chartered Financial Analyst (\u201cCFA\u201d) charterholder, a Yeti Ambassador, and is currently reimagining a 1970s bungalow in Houston\u2019s Near Northside neighborhood to build a permanent brick and mortar space for Kh\u00f3i.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":7126,"template":"","class_list":["post-7125","chef","type-chef","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southernsmoke.org\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chef\/7125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southernsmoke.org\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chef"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southernsmoke.org\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chef"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southernsmoke.org\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southernsmoke.org\/zh_hk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}