Linh Tran

Linh Tran is a Vietnamese-Canadian food writer based in Toronto who has spent a decade covering Southeast Asian cuisines across North America with the specificity those traditions deserve and the mainstream food press rarely provides. Born in Saigon and raised in Toronto's Vietnamese community, she is one of the few critics who covers pho, banh mi, bún bò Huế, and bánh cuốn not as exotic subjects but as the everyday eating culture she grew up in — and she has the vocabulary to explain, in print, exactly why one kitchen's broth is correct and another's is not. She covers Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino, Malaysian, and broader Southeast Asian cuisines across Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and New York. Her guides to Vietnamese eating in Toronto are considered essential, her work on Filipino cooking in the city has helped bring that underrepresented cuisine into the mainstream food conversation, and her annual review of the Southeast Asian dining landscape across Canada is one of TastyPals' most-read editorial projects. Before TastyPals, she wrote a food column for a Toronto Vietnamese-language community newspaper and contributed dining criticism to several Canadian food publications.

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