Minh Phan approaches cooking and feeding people as a way of honoring the never-ending flux of natural environments and holistic ecosystems. Minh’s commitment to changing how we view and interact with food, dining, sustainability, and our environment drives the intention and passion she possesses to pursue her culinary practice as an artistic endeavor with a community centered vision. After four years of operating the widely acclaimed porridge + puffs—an “unintentional restaurant with intention” created in 2014 to serve warm, high quality, playful porridges and dessert puffs—Minh opened a permanent location in Historic Filipinotown late summer of 2018. During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Minh shifted her focus from porridge to long format, multi-course dinners that showcased both a holistic, meal-based narrative and a diverse and nuanced interplay between ingredients. In late October 2020, Minh opened PHENAKITE, a forward-thinking fine-dining restaurant with a devotion to fresh, subtly radical, heartfelt cooking. Recently awarded a Michelin star and named LA Times’s Restaurant of the Year in 2021, PHENAKITE stands as the latest testament to the innovation, empathy, and soul Minh invests into her food philosophies and practices.