San Jose, CA is home to the biggest number of Vietnamese Americans in the United States and outside of Vietnam. How did your family come to the United States and ultimately resettle in San Jose?

My dad escaped Vietnam in either 1979 or 1980 and resettled in San Jose with his family. My dad was born in a district in Saigon called Thu Duc, a pretty special neighborhood back in the day because it was lively in terms of people, culture, and education in particular, and so he had the chance to get the best education when it came to elementary school and high school. This passion for education made my dad into a guy who always pushed his peers, siblings, and extended family members to get degrees and go for graduate programs. So when he arrived in San Jose, he took community college courses at San Jose City College and later went to Sacramento State. He later even got his master’s degree in Chinese Medicine.

My mom escaped Vietnam around 1979 or 1980 as well, when she was 14 years old. She met my dad later on while he was in Sacramento, though their story goes further back. My mom had actually met my paternal grandmother in the refugee camps and they kept in contact afterwards, and so when my dad moved to Sacramento for school, he actually stayed with my mom’s family through that initial connection. My parents ended up dating and after my dad graduated, he asked my mom to come back to San Jose and they started a life here.

How did growing up in San Jose shape your own journey of exploring or understanding your Vietnamese American identity?

I was born and raised in San Jose. I appreciate that we have a really large diaspora and a very dense one at that, all of which was really helpful for me in learning more about my identity. Being able to talk to other Vietnamese people, see them, interact with them, hear the language on a regular basis. Growing up here allowed me to work on my Vietnamese and be more immersed in the culture, like join Vietnamese Boy Scouts. Being immersed here also helped me see the complexity of the Vietnamese community. We have a lot of infighting and politics and factions. As I've gotten older, I realized how toxic it can get and how it could, in the long run, screw us over. I worry that we're gonna have so many people who are not going to want to be interested in their own identity because of all the infighting and tension. I don't mind when people have a different opinion or a different political preference, but at the end of the day, we need to understand that we are Vietnamese people and everybody here is our brother and sister and we have to work together if we’re going to make it in this world. We all came here from a place where everything was taken away from us, but because of the deeply ingrained political differences and beliefs, we're not having any conversations about it and fighting one another instead.. Then this next generation, who have no real connection to this history, are sitting back confused, wondering what is happening and why there are lines everywhere. Even though I was in Vietnamese Boy Scouts for a while, I stopped going because I wasn’t really learning much about what it means to be Vietnamese.

What about school? Did you ever learn about Vietnamese/Southeast Asian diaspora history in the classroom?

I really had to seek my own way of learning about who I am, and much of that didn’t happen until I was in college and took some Asian American Studies courses. Shout out to Dr. Eric Pito at SF ​​State, I got to learn about different Asian American identities and see how sometimes it can be similar to our own Vietnamese American identity too. My experience with the Asian American Studies department here drove my curiosity to be a part of the Vietnamese community after I left college, so when I came back to San Jose, I wanted to find ways to do more for my community. We're starting to see San Jose losing Vietnamese representation; I believe there's nobody on the city council right now who is Vietnamese, which is problematic especially when we have districts where there's huge Vietnamese populations. There’s also a generational divide. We've had certain Vietnamese leaders who are older than us and they often push other groups aside, which is not right in the first place but it also causes other groups to be upset at us, ultimately negatively impacting coalition building. That's why I'm a huge advocate of younger Vietnamese or minority leaders and rising up and getting into office. They have a new way of seeing the world.

Was there ever a moment you felt deeply proud to be Vietnamese?

I was involved in a few other Asian-centered spaces previously, but the first time that I felt I could take the lessons I had learned from those experiences and really put myself out there was when I helped lead and organize the Viets for Biden rally.

That whole experience felt to me, like for the first time, I was really connected to my community. I'm very grateful for the people who were able to be a part of the team, as well as the people who mentored me during that time. We had a large turnout, but only because of help from so many others. For example, not only from just the San Jose community, but from the communities outside of San Jose as well, including the Facebook groups where there's a large network of Vietnamese diaspora. It was so powerful to see all these people come together and contribute in as many ways as possible. One of the great things I've learned about that experience is that you're going to have people who are not going to like what you're doing, especially considering the political complexity in the Vietnamese community. I feel like there's no reason to be upset at folks who don't like what we're doing as long as we agree to stay on our respective paths and are given space to believe in what we believe. We wanted people to come and see for themselves what we were about and what we hoped to achieve.

Considering the political complexities you just mentioned, as you organized this rally, did you receive any pushback from community members? How did you navigate it?

I had this really funny experience where I was passing out flyers with a friend at Grand Century Mall in Vietnam Town. I passed out a flyer and the guy was like, “Oh, this is for Biden. Wow, there's really people supporting Biden?” And I said, “I mean, honestly, why not?” He takes the flyer and heads into a restaurant and runs into the kitchen and starts laughing loudly while holding the flyer up, saying things in Vietnamese like “Come on, Trump support is here!” My friend and I watched as he was laughing so hard with his fellow mates. I told my friend, who is Vietnamese and this being his first time really in the Vietnamese community, “That’s what you're gonna be up against. It's gonna be tough, but just believe in the process and what we're doing.”

I was really lucky because I was able to work with team members whose visions were so aligned from the get go. We talked about our goals, what we wanted out of this, our individual capacities, and clearly defined roles, and really tried to delegate and prioritize mental health in the process. Even though we had only four or five days to prepare, this rally was one of the best experiences I’ve had in my life, and when I felt so proud to be Vietnamese American. It was a huge turnout, and I’m grateful to hear about how many people were appreciative of this event.

Your dad was one of the speakers at this rally. How did this come about?

One of my tasks as part of the planning team was to get speakers and I told everybody on the team that this is a rally where I don't want to have political officials at this event speaking because that could be a huge turn off. I wanted real people to talk about their experiences and why they believe whether Biden should win or not. One speaker I really wanted was my dad because he speaks with such clarity and eloquence, because he was educated in Vietnamese. We hadn’t always been on the same page politically, but we had begun speaking more about politics the last few years, which brought us closer on the political spectrum. I asked him, “Dad, I'm doing this event and I really hope you can contribute because I think what you say will really have a huge impact on our community, especially with older folks. As younger folks, we have a language barrier with older generations, and it’s hard to have this conversation with our family members. And so if you get a chance to speak and talk about what's going on and how you can relate it, I know people will truly begin to understand what's going on.”

At first he was kind of hesitant, especially since he’s not really a political guy either and considering the world they came from, rocking the boat is seen as dangerous. He came around that night and wrote and memorized a whole statement. And so when he came up to speak at the rally, everybody was silent, really hearing what he was saying. And he brought up so many good points: how we're so disconnected amongst each other, as a whole community; how we come from a place where in so much war and we've had so much red baiting back then in Vietnam and yet applying the same techniques now; how we have our offspring who are born and raised here and they understand the world in a different way than we do and that sometimes we have to have this open mind; how there’s so much fake news everywhere so individually have to do our own research, not just automatically accept what somebody is saying. Everything he said resonated because not only was he such a good speaker, but because everyone could connect to what he was saying, imagining each of those moments in their own homes. I was definitely proud of him for being able to do that and I'll forever be grateful to him as well.

We can’t wait to hear more about Hot Boi Chili Oil, but first, tell us how you got here. Have you always been interested in cooking and being part of the food business? What is your own relationship to food?

I was a pretty fat kid when I was younger. I ate anything and everything because my parents taught me that way. I learned from my mom how to cook a little bit, and it’s funny because my mom cooks really good food and it was actually my dad who taught her. Even in the refugee camps, he cooked for everybody too. I also watched a lot of Food Network at home because every time I came home from school, it was on. So the passion and skill for cooking comes from both my parents. As I grew older, I've had so many times where family members would encourage me to start a food business. I never thought too much about it, but my parents were against it, always saying something like, “No, no, no. He can't do that because he has to go work for a company.” I think that they felt this way because so many Vietnamese folks work in the food industry, especially in San Jose, and they probably just didn’t want that struggle for me.

We're going to get to a point where all our elders are going to start to pass, and if we have all these older folks running the restaurants, who's going to run the restaurants from now on? With each new generation, what happens to our food? I want to be a part of the community that is actively continuing to make, honor, and even reimagine the type of food that we've grown up on.

You actually started Hot Boi Chili Oil while in the midst of the shelter-in-place during the heart of the pandemic. Tell us about HBCO’s origin story.

During quarantine, there was so much time for me to just do whatever I wanted to do and so I started experimenting with food. I've always loved chili oil. It's a type of condiment where it's great on a lot of different things. To me, if there's exactly no spice, I'm just like this has no flavor. Inspired, I just followed a recipe online and it wasn't really good at first, but only because I was accustomed to having some crunch in my chili oil because of my go-to brands, S&B Foods. I wanted to emulate that crunch/texture or make something similar to that, but with spice, because the original one has no spice. I tried a few batches but it still didn’t taste good, but I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. So don’t laugh, but I had a dream. I took a nap because I was tired and in those 20 minutes, I dreamt there were these clouds and I suddenly saw fried garlic. I worked on a new batch real quick and then I realized that the fried garlic really was what had been missing. I had my partner and a friend try it and they both thought it was really good. I started making my own chili oil for myself, but I would make a decent amount each time, and put the extra in leftover jars to share with my friends. They loved everything and how it is so crunchy even after a while. My friends kept pushing me to open a business, and since one of my passions from when I was young was to start my own business, it felt like the stars were aligning. It's my first time really getting into starting a business and everything I've been doing is just through intuition: like this sounds right, this is how I think it should work out. I’ve been trying to maintain a healthy mentality of I'm going to learn the most that I can and treat every opportunity as a learning opportunity instead of I'm failing, I'm going to give up right here.

What were some of the challenges you faced starting and operating a business in a shutdown?

One of the upsides was that because we were doing everything in a closed environment, my team and I were always staying inside and able to focus and stay on task. However, most of everything else was a challenge. Sometimes being able to have the right equipment was difficult. It was even hard to come by with ingredients; we had a number of grocery runs where stores didn't have all the ingredients, and most trips involved waiting in really long lines. No one was sure if we Lysol the produce, would that protect folks or would the chemicals actually be more harmful? And with inflation, the cost of ingredients are much higher, on top of how we only have so much money in our budget.

We knew that there were always going to be challenges no matter when you start a business, but in the pandemic we definitely had to get more creative and also be more flexible. I try to keep telling myself that it's going to be okay, that these are things that are going to happen. We just have to find a solution. For example, as we kept going, we've learned to seek out different types of suppliers, and there are folks who sell things in bulk for businesses, including one place in San Jose that is Vietnamese-Chinese owned that offers great products. Once we start doing more food related popups where we start making our own food, we will start hitting them up more. We also used to do everything by hand but now we have a machine that does some of the work, which helps us get everything finished on time.

HBCO’s mission is “Crafting an artisanal-garlicky-crunchy chili oil that brings the heat while raising awareness and advocacy for social justice.” What makes food such a powerful communicator, love language, and tool for community building?

Another huge part of HBCO is our social justice mission. When we started, we didn't want to just make profits all the time; we wanted a certain intentionality. This was during the time of peak COVID-19 and BLM protests. We couldn't go out because my dad was immunocompromised, and me attending a protest would potentially increase my dad’s health risk. So I thought to myself, if we're really going to start this business, we have to be able to be an ethical business and contribute to the community that we serve too. So that's why we've implemented donations from the start. As anti-Asian violence took off as well, we knew we had to contribute to organizations and actions fighting this as well.

Sadly, your dad is no longer with us. Did he get to see you kick off Hot Boi Chili Oil?

I think he sort of knew in some way that he was going to pass soon. He had been saying so for the last like five years or so, but I think he knew within that week that it was time. He had been preparing in a sense, like trying to do things that he didn't do in the past and had put off, appreciate his hobbies, appreciate the little things in life. One of the things that I got to see him do more toward the end of his life was pick up photography again. He's actually the one that got me into photography as well. I also have this particular memory where because he was in dialysis every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he would have to get up early on those days. He usually doesn't really wash dishes but I woke up really early one day to work on the chili oil and saw him just washing dishes. If my dad washes dishes, I'm just like, something's wrong, something's happening.

With so much uncertainty during the pandemic, starting a business was incredibly risky. I had a hard time explaining to my parents what I was trying to do, worried that I was not going to make any money (which, granted, is a valid point). We all just had to recognize that this business is an investment that like most businesses, might not see real profit until a few years in. I remember this upsetting interaction with my dad where he was like, who's going to want to buy chili oil? That really threw me off for a while, staying in the back of my mind. But a few months before he passed, he finally tried it and told me, “This is really good.”

How does your dad’s influence continue to inspire so much of who you are and the entrepreneurial spirit you have?

My dad and uncle did really well at first during the computer age thanks to my dad’s business intuition. He would find ways to capitalize on making a life in San Jose and reach the American Dream. For instance, he had a computer business at first where his Vietnamese friends who worked in computer companies would bring in computer parts that these companies would throw out, fixed them up at his shop, and sell them for thousands of dollars. He was a wedding photographer as well, and did all kinds of other business ventures as well. So growing up, I had a sense of what business meant and what you can do to make ends meet. Like him, I want jobs that are challenging where I can think outside the box and there's challenges every day that I can overcome, and something that is very gratifying at the same time.

What do you look forward to for HBCO as we enter into the new year?

One of the things that we want to do more of is open market popups, and eventually get into making our own food with our sauce. And even food that doesn't have to do with our sauce as well because I’m a chef first. I want to share my food with people and I've always made food at home where I've invited friends and family to try everything. I'm self-taught, but I've always wanted to work on all types of food and infuse our own community flavors, reimagining some classic dishes and changing them in a way where it keeps the whole essence of the dish, but also brings in new techniques to it. I always think about how this new wave of chefs and creators in general are all about taking what we know and flipping it a little bit. But also how beautiful that is in itself because I know people who are traditionalists and believe that we should always keep to the original, but we're part of a diaspora and we want to create things that reflect our own experiences and our own realities. Food speaks volumes about who we are and our identities, and so being able to share that with folks, to help them understand that this is the type of food that our community is raised on and what gives us life.

Over the years we have seen a huge growth in the number of Asian American entrepreneurs and the collective power of the community, fueled in large part by social media. What advice do you have for other Asian American folks interested in starting their own business?

My first piece of advice is to learn what you're passionate about. I watched “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” and he’s the type of guy where it's clear that this is his passion and he’s going to learn everything he can with this. I feel like I've tried to keep that mindset because there's just always something to learn. And when you find your passion or dream, go for it. Even though sometimes there's risk and naysayers, especially with parents too, and your own self-doubt in your brain, that imposter syndrome. You'll probably meet a lot of people who will just tell you directly, you can't do this. They'll find every type of rhetoric to pull you down. But go for it and don't let anybody else tell you otherwise because would you rather go on the next twenty years living with this regret? There's always room for redemption, whether you fail or not. And failing is like the best part of doing anything because you get to learn from it. What matters is you're working on it.

And nowadays, there's a lot more attention on the Asian community and we have a lot more folks who are trying to start businesses, whole communities wanting to support you. When I first started out, I was posting onto Asian Hustle Network and trying to get some feedback and build my customer base, and it's been great to see those customers come back. I also love seeing how whenever I post in a different group, there's folks there who give us shout outs because they really love us and what we do. And you can see that there are so many people who really want to be intentional about where they spend their money and who they support.

Website: hotboichilioil.com
Instagram: @hotboichilioil