Feeding the Future

Chef Jenny Lê works to inspire women in Vietnam and beyond

By Kaylor Jones / Photos by Claudia Johnstone

Jenny Lê could be found in the kitchen long before she became a restauranteur.

“I was born to Vietnamese refugees who taught me that food was survival, translation, and love, all in one language. When words failed, food spoke for us,” Lê says. “My work began in the kitchen, first as a daughter learning my family’s recipes, then at 16 flipping burgers at McDonald’s and pouring coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts, and later reading numbers as a business manager for a restaurant group.”

By age 28, she’d opened her first restaurant. Today, she’s best known as co-founder of Pho Bowl and Gastromé Market alongside her wife and business partner. No matter the venue, it’s about much more than the food – it’s about sharing stories.

“Every dish I’ve ever cooked holds a memory – chicken broth simmering overnight in my mother’s kitchen, the way a bowl of noodle soup tasted like comfort after heartbreak, or how the first bite of chà giò (egg rolls) reminded me that joy could be crispy and loud.”

Now, Lê is adding author to her resume. Her upcoming memoir, From an Empty Bowl to Empire, chronicles her story of migration, love, loss, and reclamation, starting with her earliest memory of hunger when her mother gave her an empty bowl and instructed her to ask for food.

“It’s the story of how I learned to feed myself after years of feeding everyone else. I hope readers walk away braver in their own hunger – to create, to heal, to take up space.”

Play Ball

From a young age, Lê felt just as at home playing sports as she did in the kitchen. She dabbled in soccer, basketball, field hockey, and tennis, always dreaming of the team jerseys, stadium lights, and boisterous cheers other athletes received.

“I watched men dominate the field on TV and wondered why girls weren’t given the same light,” says Lê, who was thrilled to see Vietnam’s women’s nationals team qualified for the FIFA World Cup in 2023 – a historic milestone never achieved by the men’s team. “The entire country erupted with pride, but once the celebration faded, so did the support. These women went back to being underpaid, undervalued, and overlooked, many still buying their own equipment and working extra jobs just to sustain their dreams.”

Lê had always had a special affinity with soccer – thanks in part to “its discipline, teamwork and poetry of movement” – and saw this as the perfect time to step off the sidelines and dive into an all-new passion project. As the founder of Đà Nang Rising W.F.C. (www.danangrising.com), Vietnam’s first women-led football club, Lê has been able to build the team she wished she’d had growing up.

The community-powered model focuses on supporting elite athletes through leadership development and shared meals. It all stems from Lê’s conviction that women don’t just deserve visibility, they deserve the infrastructure necessary to achieve success.

“In Vietnam, so many talented young girls play on borrowed fields, chasing dreams that have no system to sustain them. We’re building the country’s first women-led football ecosystem: a club, cafe, farm-to-table restaurant, resort, and mentorship hub designed to nurture talent, confidence, and community.”

One of her foremost goals is to foster a clubhouse environment that feels like home, treating the athletes like human beings by prioritizing guilt-free rest and healing – not to mention delicious food with great company.

“I hope these women will not only change their own lives but also rewrite what leadership looks like in Vietnam – fierce, feminine, and free. My dream is that years from now, a young girl in Đà Nang will point to the field and say, ‘That’s where everything changed,’” Lê says. “It’s my way of giving back to the country that raised my mother, and of feeding a new generation of girls with opportunity instead of limitation.”

Building an Empire

To Lê, food and sport are closely related disciplines. Much like a professional kitchen, the soccer field is a place where people come together to give everything they have for a common goal. And when it comes to her personal ventures, Lê’s ambition remains to feed the future in any way she can.

“Legacy, to me, is not ownership, it’s nourishment. I want to leave behind proof that empathy can build empires. That you can be both soft and strong, both healer and founder. My hope is that when people hear my name, they don’t just think of restaurants or football clubs, but of someone who dared to feed the future – even with just fish sauce, rice, and the sacrifices of her parents.”

At the end of the day, Lê knows that softness and sensitivity are not weaknesses, but superpowers, and she’s continually empowered to harness them by the incredible people in her life. “My parents, who sacrificed their lives so their children could have a better future; every woman who has ever held her dream quietly until the world was ready to hear it; and the girls of Vietnam and around the globe, including my younger self, whose joy and fire remind me what this work is all for.”

To her younger self, Lê has this to say: “Don’t dim yourself to be loved. Keep feeding people with your food, your words, your light. One day, they’ll call it empire.”