Christina Nguyen is an American chef and restaurateur. In 2024, she won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Midwest.
Nguyen's parents, who both grew up in Saigon, Vietnam, immigrated separately in 1975 to the United States as refugees.[1] [2] They met as students at the University of Minnesota. Nguyen has a brother.
Nguyen is self-taught.
Nguyen opened a food truck, Hola Arepa, in 2014. She opened a bricks-and-mortar restaurant also called Hola Arepa, which serves Venezuelan street food, in Minneapolis.[3]
Nguyen opened Hai Hai in Minneapolis, which serves Southeast Asian street foods, in the late 2010s.[4] The restaurant had previously been a night club.[5] [6] National Geographic said it had 'rocketed to prominence as a "new-school” Asian-inspired restaurant. Its menu is almost entirely unlike any of its peers—it’s filled with under-the-radar dishes you can’t order anywhere else, and evolves constantly'.[7]
Nguyen won the James Beard James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Midwest in 2024. She had been nominated for the award several times and had been a finalist for the award previously.
Nguyen is married to Birk Grudem.