Capturing the Asian American experience in the South through food storytelling.
Hieu Huynh is an accidental journalist. At least, that’s how the documentary filmmaker and food scholar describes herself. She often reflects on the unexpected career trajectory that brought her short film, Rice & Grits: A Vietnamese American Culinary Journey in the American South, to the historic Plaza Theatre for a screening during the 2025 Atlanta Film Festival.
“Like a lot of immigrant kids, I went to Emory University with the intent of going down the pre-med track, majoring in biology and the STEM sciences,” says Huynh, who was born in a refugee camp in Indonesia after her parents fled Vietnam in the early 1980s. The family immigrated and, as part of a resettlement program, took up residence in Waycross, Georgia, where Huynh’s former schoolteacher parents worked factory jobs as they built their new life. She enjoyed a small town upbringing marked by her mother Nga’s cooking that fused Vietnamese and Southern cuisines for her family. Huynh also discovered a love for cooking and travel shows featuring luminaries like Julia Child and Rick Steves. “It instilled my love of food media and documentary film. It was how I learned about different cuisines and cultures.”
In high school, Huynh also developed a passion for reading and writing, inspired by teachers who became her mentors. So when she found herself at a crossroads before her junior year at Emory, she chose to pursue a minor in journalism, which led her to change her major to creative writing with a focus on poetry. Upon graduation, she began a decade-long career with CNN that included her dream job as a producer on both Larry King Live and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown.
Huynh left CNN in 2018 to pursue a master’s in poetry from NYU. During her studies, she completed a life-changing residency in Paris. “Not a lot of people know that Paris has one of the largest Vietnamese diasporas,” she notes. “It was such an eye-opening experience. I didn’t speak French, but I could speak Vietnamese. It helped me navigate the culture and provided the spark for my first documentary, Quan 13, which is about the Vietnamese diaspora in Paris through the lens of food.”
That short film encouraged her to apply for a filmmaking fellowship with the Southern Foodways Alliance two years ago. Her pitch included her desire to document the Asian American experience in the South by examining Asian restaurants. However, she soon narrowed her focus to her mother’s story. The result was Rice & Grits, in which Nga shares her immigration story while cooking with her daughter. Together, they make Vietnamese soup and a Vietnamese-style shrimp stir fry using Southern ingredients like grits and collard greens. Huynh muses that her mother thought she was only being photographed during filming, noting, “It wasn’t until the Atlanta Film Festival when she saw the film that she realized it. She loved it. I’m so glad I was able to capture and honor her story.”
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