Welcome, and thank you for being here!
I’m Uyen Luu. Born in Saigon, raised in Hackney, and somewhere in between I became a cook, a writer, a photographer and a filmmaker — not because I planned it that way, but because I couldn’t stop being all of them at once.
I trained at Central Saint Martins in film and photography, back when everything was shot on celluloid and edited with blades and chinagraph pencils. I loved peeling those pencils. I believed images could hold whole worlds. Then digital came along and I began again from the start — learning, unlearning, relearning. Some things never change.
I have written five cookbooks on Vietnamese food — Vietnamese, Vietnamese Vegetarian, Quick and Easy Vietnamese and Recipes From My Vietnamese Kitchen — published by Penguin Random House and Ryland Peters and Small. Vietnamese was the inaugural Jamie Oliver Cookbook Club pick and named one of the best cookbooks of 2021 by The Observer. Quick and Easy Vietnamese was a finalist for the Guild of Food Writers Award 2025.
Since 2009 I have opened my home — now my studio in London Fields, Hackney — every weekend for a Vietnamese supper club. Strangers arrive as guests and leave as something else. I have watched bowls of phở quieten jubilant birthday crowds and comfort mourners. Food does that. It is the most honest language I know.
This Substack is where I write beyond the recipe. About memory and displacement, about the food that carries a culture across an ocean, about books I love and the stories that live inside ordinary meals. It is where I try to become a better writer and where I share something of myself beyond the plate.
COME AND SIT AT MY TABLE
Free subscribers receive regular essays, recipes and cultural stories about Vietnamese food and life.
Paid subscribers — £5 per month or £55 per year receive everything above plus deeper recipe guides, book recommendations and reviews, and tips on weaving Vietnamese traditions and ways of cooking into your everyday kitchen. More of everything, more often.
Founding Members — £250 For those who want to be part of this from the very beginning. You receive two seats at my supper club in Hackney — a Vietnamese feast cooked by me every weekend, worth £140 — plus a signed copy of one of my cookbooks excluding postage outside UK, plus the full paid subscription. Founding memberships are limited. If you’d like one please email me directly at uyen@uyenluu.com.
The supper club, the writing, the photography, the stories — it all happens because people like you show up. Thank you for being here.
Find me: Instagram @loveleluu uyenluu.com uyen@uyenluu.com
