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She tops a bowl of bun moc, a northern Vietnamese pork meatball noodle soup, with scallions and cilantro. From the fridge, she pulls out a jar of pickled chili garlic and places some of it in a small bowl.

“A few slices of pickled garlic and chili can elevate the entire bowl,” she says, wrapping up her video on how to make authentic northern-style bun moc.

Each of Logan’s Vietnamese cooking clips on TikTok attracts 500,000 to two million views. Over the past six months her channel has gained 54,000 followers and more than one million interactions, and her videos are widely reshared on online platforms. Thousands of comments, many from Vietnamese viewers, praise her skills and authenticity, noting details like pouring hot water over braised fish or adding beer to banh xeo batter to make the crispy savory pancake even crunchier.

“She’s more Vietnamese than I am,” one user wrote, earning over 3,000 likes. Viewers from the U.K., France and across Africa also join in, curious about her recipes.

Logan, who grew up in Illinois in an African-American and Mexican family, met her Vietnamese boyfriend, Giang, in late 2020 after moving to Seattle to study data analytics. Giang, now 25, is originally from Hanoi. Their early dates often involved eating at Vietnamese restaurants, where she first tried banh mi. “I was completely won over,” she says, describing the contrast between the crispy baguette and the creamy pate. She soon explored noodle staples though Giang would often point out that some restaurants did not capture the authentic Vietnamese flavors.

Her initial exposure to Asian cuisine came while working part-time at a Thai restaurant. She also had a close Vietnamese friend in high school and spoke regularly with a Vietnamese couple who frequented her workplace, often discussing pho and Vietnamese culinary traditions.

In 2021, during the Covid lockdown, she tried cooking Vietnamese food for the first time after relocating to Chicago with Giang. They began with simple meals: steamed vegetables, fried eggs, fish sauce for dipping, and banh cuon, the steamed rice rolls. Without a steamer, she improvised by cooking the rolls in a pan. Many batches failed, some coming out were too thick and others sticking to the pan or refusing to flip properly.

Her first visit to Vietnam in mid-2022 opened her eyes to the diversity and depth of its street foods. The flavors were nothing like what she had experienced in the U.S., she says. She began distinguishing northern pho, light, slightly sweet broth served with fried dough sticks, from the southern version, which is bolder and commonly paired with hoisin or fresh chili.

During her one-month stay she learned to make pate from Giang’s father and how to mince garlic and shallots from his mother. It was during this time that she realized fish sauce is “the soul of Vietnamese cuisine,” a key element that binds flavors together. She returned to the U.S. with a suitcase full of Vietnamese ingredients like beef stew seasoning, MSG, dried shiitake mushrooms, and soy sauce.

Since then Vietnamese dishes have made up nearly half her meals every week. Her favorite is braised pork belly with eggs, which Giang had his mother cook for her once. She learned to make caramel sauce from scratch and now pickles carrots and daikon at home to accompany the meal. “Getting the flavors right is my way of honoring the cuisine,” she says, adding that this is why she often searches across Chicago for specific ingredients like banana fritter flour or fresh duck.

In late 2023 she returned to Vietnam for three months, determined to try as many dishes as possible. Before arriving in Hanoi, she asked Giang’s mother for bun rieu cua, a crab and tomato noodle soup, and she promptly ordered fresh crabs from the central city of Hoi An. But when Logan saw the crabs still alive and moving in the kitchen, she screamed in shock, unaccustomed as she was to live seafood. In the U.S., meat is usually pre-cleaned and packaged. But within weeks she learned how to handle raw ingredients on her own.

When she returned to the U.S., she felt her cooking had “leveled up.” She stopped relying on seasoning packets and began recreating flavors from scratch. Admittedly, not every dish was a success: several times, her bun rieu lacked the signature sourness and was missing key toppings like crab cakes, as she could only find pork. The dish remains her most challenging to date, often taking over three hours to prepare.

She cleans and chops over a dozen ingredients, fried tofu, sliced herbs, and makes the crab mixture from ground pork and fresh crab. The broth requires repeated tasting, and she relies on her boyfriend to help get the balance right. “He was genuinely surprised by how closely it tasted to the northern version the first time he tried it,” she says.

As her videos continued to gain traction, friends and coworkers began messaging her for Vietnamese recipes. Even complex dishes like banh xeo and bun thang, a Hanoi-style noodle soup with multiple toppings, drew wide interest.

American girl is famous for Vietnamese dishes

Most of her recipes come from social media or from messaging Giang’s parents. Giang’s mother, Nguyen Ngoc Han, 53, says she is impressed by Logan’s progress. During a Lunar New Year visit the family taught her to make fried spring rolls, chung cake and traditional noodle soups. “She is proactive, skillful and highly motivated to embrace Vietnamese culture,” Han says. Once she was shocked when Logan independently made beef stew and pressed rice noodles to serve with fried tofu and fermented shrimp paste, dishes she had never taught her.

Giang’s support also plays a role, as he frequently encourages her and praises her efforts. “I never imagined pairing eggs with shrimp paste, but when she pulled it off, I had to admit it was good,” he says. Logan now knows how to cook over 30 Vietnamese dishes. Her has set her sights next on nem chua (fermented pork rolls), bun thang and mi Quang, a dish named after the central province of Quang Nam.

“I believe I can make anything as long as I have the right ingredients and a recipe,” she says. “Vietnamese cuisine deserves to be known and appreciated by many more people around the world.”