Thy Tran makes a happy living listening, teaching, writing, cooking, traveling and, most importantly, eating. She has 15 years of food industry experience across a wide diversity of disciplines, from restaurants and test kitchens to magazines and newspapers.
Trained as a professional chef, she established Wandering Spoon to provided cooking classes, culinary consultation, and educational programming for culinary academies and nonprofit organizations throughout Northern California. Currently, she is a chef instructor at two respected culinary programs: the International Culinary Schools at the Art Institute of CA-SF and Tante Marie’s. Thy is also the founder and director of the Asian Culinary Forum, a nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about Asian food around the world.
She co-authored The Essentials of Asian Cooking, Taste of the World and the award-winning guide, Kitchen Companion. Her work has appeared in numerous other books, such as Asia in the San Francisco Bay Area: A Cultural Travel Guide, and she has written for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Saveur and Fine Cooking.
She specializes in literary nonfiction about food, the rituals of the kitchen, and the many ways eating and cooking both connect and separate communities around the world.
Thy works on cookbooks by day, then creates literary chapbooks by night. An old letterpress and two cabinets filled with wood and lead type occupy a corner of Thy’s writing studio, for she is as committed to the art and craft of bookmaking as she is to the power of words themselves.
Awards & Honors
Individual Artist Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission to complete a collection of essays on how food changes in families across place and time. (2007)
Harry A. Bell Grant awarded for four months of travel and culinary research in Asia and India. (2001)
Kitchen Companion named as a finalist for Food Reference Award by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. (2000)
The Kitchen Companion received Best Reference Book Award (English Language) from the Salon International du Livre Gourmand in Périgueux, France. (2001)
The Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center gave its Best Business Plan Award for the proposal to establish Wandering Spoon, a mobile cooking school. (1999)
Scholarship for professional culinary study received from the American Institute of Wine and Food. (1996)
Selected Clients
Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture
Professional Affiliations
Amalgamated Printers Association
California Food & Justice Coalition
Community Food Security Coalition
San Francisco Professional Food Society (board member)
Community Affiliations
C.E.O. Women (workshop instructor)
Kearny Street Workshop (board member, writing instructor)
AVID, Galileo Academy (writing tutor)
Project Read (adult literacy tutor)
By Betzy Delgado, age 12.
Pencil on napkin, 1992.
© Thy Tran