Thuy Pham gained local and national fame as one of Portland’s standout pandemic restaurant success stories. The former hair stylist started making plant-based pork belly on Instagram Live when the COVID lockdown kept salon doors closed. With a hit product on her hands, she launched Mama Đút, a vegan Vietnamese restaurant that earned a James Beard nomination and a feature on Netflix’s Street Food USA.

In November 2023, Mama Đút closed with little warning, and Pham largely disappeared from Portland’s restaurant scene, save the occasional pop-up or fundraiser. But she’s still involved with food. A Mama Đút cookbook is in the works, and she’s worked as the development manager at Growing Gardens since last April. The Portland nonprofit teaches gardening in schools, correctional facilities, and home backyards. We caught up with Pham to learn what gardening and food sovereignty mean to her.

MERCURY: Why did Mama Đút close?
Pham: People wanted to talk about my success, but what I really wanted to talk about was what the food meant and the people that brought the food together. It became less about cooking food and more about managing the business the more successful I became. I realized that the longer I stayed in something that I was unhappy in, the less opportunity I was going to have to truly find something that made me happy.

How did you get involved with Growing Gardens?
Years ago, my brother was incarcerated at Sheridan’s correctional facility. My family would drive out there to visit him, and the visits were always tough. But my brother was really in good spirits when he got fresh produce from the garden. He would be like, “We got cilantro for our sandwiches,” or “My buddies and I got a tomato, we're all going to split it up.”

I later discovered that Growing Gardens was responsible for these gardens. I started as a volunteer, and was a featured chef for a couple of their fundraiser dinners. I eventually came on as part of their board of directors. When I was reevaluating what I wanted to do after I closed Mama Đút, I was like, if I can go do something with Growing Gardens in food empowerment while writing my cookbook, that would be really fulfilling work. 

What role has gardening played in your life?
My family came over from Vietnam in the '80s, and the accessibility of diverse cultural produce wasn't what it is now. We lived with my great auntie and uncle on North Interstate, and there were like four families in that house. My auntie built a garden in the backyard, and it was like her little piece of Vietnam back there: Malabar spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, cilantro, hot mint, perilla, water spinach, bitter melon. Visitors would bring seeds from Vietnam, or mail them. That type of immigrant gardening saved my family from going hungry a lot of times. It was food sovereignty, but it wasn’t the word I was using — it was survival. 

My family taught me how to be resilient in times of scarcity. But they also taught me that sharing will bring abundance. My great auntie and uncle took us in and shared food with us. Whenever they had extra produce, they would take it to church and share. They taught me how to come together as a community.

What do you do at Growing Gardens?
My work in development is to build relationships and develop sponsorship and relationships with funders. I'm also helping chefs, food makers, and farmers fill the gaps. I was helping farmer Luis Muñoz of Irie Farms film a mushroom cooking video, and he was telling me that he was going to lose a bunch of money because he had to throw away all these mushroom blocks because of a deal that changed. So I connected him with Nan Chaison at Phaya Thai Express, because Nan had shown interest in turning Phaya into a community space on the days she's off. We hosted a mushroom party at Phaya and helped Luis sell some mushroom blocks.

I’ve been doing outreach to food makers, restaurateurs, and farmers to share whatever resources we have. I’ve connected Luis with lots of chefs around town, and I’ve helped Masa Fresh, an online local farmers market, with different grant opportunities. Especially now, it’s really important for them to know we’re here for each other.

Spreading Vietnamese culture was a big part of Mama Đút. Are you still able to do that at Growing Gardens?
Absolutely. We’re a multicultural organization. When I was starting, one of our garden educators was translating our gardening manual into Vietnamese, and we just finished developing a Vietnamese gardening program. Our school program supports Title I schools that have a large number of Vietnamese speakers. 

It's been wonderful to see the commonality in things that a lot of us brown folks grow, like spinach, okra. Fatou Ouattara from Akadi calls those little round eggplants African eggplants, but I call them Thai or Vietnamese eggplant. In Mexican cuisine, chayote is often in soups, but Vietnamese people eat chayote, too.

What does food sovereignty mean to you?
I don't think we can have sovereignty in any other parts of our lives unless we have food sovereignty. We need to have food sovereignty if we want healthy and thriving communities. Going into the histories of colonization, if you look at how European cultures and others have colonized Black and brown communities, they do it through food. Because if you limit their ability to sustain their own bodies, then how can they possibly think about pulling themselves out of poverty? People deserve good food.