For Leesburg Chef, Food Keeps Alive Familiar Traditions
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Patrick Dinh, 44, born to Vietnamese parents with a taste for French cuisine, is the executive chef at Tuscarora Mill in Leesburg. He spoke recently with loudounextra.com staff writer Sydney Wilmer about his life, why he loves to cook and what he enjoys about Loudoun.
Q You graduated from George Washington University with a degree in finance in 1986. But today you are a chef. When and why did you decide to switch career paths?
AGeorge Washington was and is a good school. I didn't know what I wanted to do with myself, and business school was a good, well-rounded thing to do.
I probably knew I wanted to be a chef in 1989 when I moved to California. I worked with Jeremiah Tower, and I saw how good it could be. It was probably one of my most formative cooking experiences. I also was with David Robins, working with a great organization. I ended up using that as my standard.
I enjoyed cooking a lot, and as finance and banking started going to the wayside, cooking became more and more what I realized I wanted to do. I could feed myself. It was a career for a lifetime; I could always learn something new. My parents owned a restaurant growing up. Working behind a desk just seemed really foreign to me.
Also, I don't have that high degree of greed in me. One of my finance professors once said you must prefer more to less. So everything you do in finance is about getting more. It made sense to me, but I didn't want to work that hard for that kind of dollar.
How long have you been cooking, personally and professionally?
Professionally, since 1987. I started at an Italian restaurant in Washington called Vivande. It is no longer there.
My father was the chef in the house. I pretty much taught myself how to cook, but my father taught me how to eat. He lived in France for a while, but he was Vietnamese. So culturally, he was about half-Vietnamese, half-French.
What role did food play in your family when you were growing up?
We grew up at the family table, so even through high school it was about sitting at the family table and eating. We didn't eat in front of the TV. It was a way of continuing the culture through Vietnamese food. All we talked about was the food.
