Hannah Wong with Haema

Hannah Wong is the Chef & Owner of Haema, an upcoming Asian street-food inspired restaurant in Brooklyn. Previously, she was the Executive Chef at Van Da, a modern Vietnamese restaurant in the East Village with a Michelin Bib nod. We chronicle her culinary journey from academic publishing to professional cooking. We converse on rethinking, reimagining, and repurposing restaurants as community-based third spaces rather than a traditional restaurant model. How do we radically restructure the power dynamics within a restaurant setting to redistribute resources back to the community while offering an equitable work environment for restaurant professionals?