“We honor tradition, but it doesn’t stop us from being creative,” says chef Nhu Ton, and the food she's cooking at Bánh Anh Em (and Bánh) in New York City is delicious testament to that philosophy.

Here she pushes Vietnamese cuisine past stereotypical notions of northern and southern styles to delve into both crowd-pleasing hits — like her flaky, well-stuffed bánh mì — and lesser-known regional treats, like bánh ướt chồng, a tower of delicate rice rolls you can fill with everything from grilled pork jowl to tart green mango. If you think you know Vietnamese food — even if you grew up eating Vietnamese food — Bánh Anh Em will show you how dazzlingly diverse the cuisine truly is.

And at the center of it is Nhu Ton, whose work ethic is unmatched. She bakes her own bread, ferments her own pickles and hot sauces, spends months on R&D to develop recipes that match her memories, and can often be found sleeping overnight in the restaurant itself, just to make sure everything goes right. In this interview, she reveals the flavors she grew up on, the at-times difficult journey that turned her into a chef, and how she transforms a country's worth of dishes and traditions into a restaurant that's on everyone's best-of lists.