Creator
Tien Nguyen
Los Angeles food writer and cookbook co-author who worked with Nite Yun on My Cambodia.
Tien Nguyen is a Los Angeles food and culture writer who co-wrote My Cambodia: A Khmer Cookbook with chef Nite Yun.[1][2] She has written about food and culture for more than a decade and teaches food journalism at the University of Southern California Annenberg School.[3][1][4]
Career
Nguyen was a senior food writer at LA Weekly, where she traveled across Los Angeles in search of the city's best tacos and bowls of pho. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Lucky Peach, Interview, LA Taco and Jarry.[1] Her work has been honored by the Association of Food Journalists.[3] In 2019 she was an inaugural fellow of the Jack Jones Literary Arts Culture, Too conference for cultural critics of color.[1]
Cookbooks
Nguyen co-wrote L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food with chef Roy Choi and Natasha Phan. Anthony Bourdain Books/Ecco published it in 2013, and it became a New York Times bestseller.[1][5] She also contributed to Choi's The Choi of Cooking.[3] With restaurateur Adam Fleischman she wrote Flavor Bombs: The Umami Ingredients That Make Taste Explode (Rux Martin Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018).[1] The Red Boat Fish Sauce Cookbook (2021), written with Cuong Pham and Diep Tran, was one of NPR's Books We Love.[3][5] Sohn-Mat: Recipes and Flavors of Korean Home Cooking, written with Monica Lee, was nominated for an IACP award.[6][4]
My Cambodia
My Cambodia: A Khmer Cookbook (2025) is Nite Yun's Khmer cookbook, written with Nguyen.[2][5] It pairs recipes with the history of Cambodia's Golden Era and with cultural notes, among them the "rules of rice."[4] The recipes are arranged by the times and places of Yun's life, from her childhood in Stockton, California, to Cambodia and to her Bay Area restaurants Nyum Bai and Lunette. Among them are kuy teav Phnom Penh, nom pachok somlar Khmer, amok and nom kong, doughnuts glazed in palm sugar and topped with sesame seeds.[4]
Serious Eats, Saveur, Chowhound and the San Francisco Standard each named the book among the best cookbooks of 2025. NPR chose it as a Book of the Day, and The Washington Post recommended it.[2]
Works
- My Cambodia (Book)