All the Homies Network, a Portland-based collective that produces content documenting a handful of BIPOC food owners, won a James Beard Broadcast Media Award in June 2023 for a video it created featuring Matta, a Vietnamese food cart. Richard Van Le, the owner of Matta, is pictured in this photo wearing a baseball cap and posing with the other members of All the Homies Network when the James Beard Award winners were announced.
Frank Le
When food cart owner Richard Văn Lê first moved to Portland, there wasn’t much representation in terms of Vietnamese food.
He said most restaurants west of 82nd Avenue primarily sold mainstays like phở and bánh mì. But since then, he’s seen the city’s food scene diversify.
“Portland five years ago, when I first got here, was very different than the Portland I live in now,” he said. “My day-to-day interactions are mainly with people of color now.”
At his food cart, Lê serves a variety of Vietnamese American dishes inspired by the meals his mother, grandmother and aunt used to make.
Its name, Matta, is his mother’s saint name, which was included on her tombstone.
“Without the women in my life, I wouldn’t be in this position that I am now,” Lê said. “Those three women in my life were, essentially, the foundation for what Matta is now.”
Lê is also a part of the All the Homies Network, a collective that documents a handful of Portland’s BIPOC food business owners through a variety of video content.
In addition to recipe tutorials and day-in-the-life videos of the various members, the network features conversations about their lives and interests outside of food, like camping and tennis.
“We’re trying to exude this lifestyle of, ‘We found like our people,’ and we want to keep building off of this community,” Lê said. “I think the overall goal for us is just to prove that Portland is changing in a really dope and diverse way.”
A video documenting Matta’s takeover of the Multnomah Whiskey Library recently won a James Beard Award in the Reality or Competition Visual Media category.
Lê said the network’s director, Mike Truong, has been submitting to the awards for years. All the Homies beat out much larger production teams at Bon Appetit and Bravo’s Top Chef to clinch the 2023 award.
“I still get kind of emotional thinking about it,” Lê said. “The fact that we won this award on the fact that we were just being authentic showed a lot.”
That authenticity, Lê said, is key to the network’s mission and appeal.
“We just have this really cool, eclectic group of people,” he said. “We’re all just BIPOC folks who feel that if we’re going to really change the optics and the perspective of Portland, then as a collective, we should be doing that together.”
The rest of the “homies” include Lê's business partner, Sophia Sanchez; Ian Williams of Deadstock Coffee; Lisa Nguyen of Heyday; Kim Dam of Portland Cà Phê; and Ethan and Geri Leung of Baon Kainan.
Matta chef Richard Văn Lê spoke to guest host Jenn Chávez on “Think Out Loud.” Click play to listen to the full conversation: