Have You Eaten?
In Vietnamese culture, we don't greet each other by asking how you're doing. We ask if you've eaten. The right answer is always no — not because you haven't, but because the question was never really about the meal.
There's a Vietnamese greeting that doesn't translate cleanly into English.
Ăn cơm chưa? — Have you eaten yet?
We don't ask how you are. We ask if you've been fed. And the right answer is always no. Not because you're hungry. Because saying no means the conversation continues. It means: come in, sit down, let me know you better. The meal is the excuse. The connection is the point.
That's the spirit I wanted Lửa & Lei to carry. And last night at Bread & Circus, it did. Check out the photos from the event from our amazing Campaign Photographer: Corey Gross.
How Jordan Taylor Changed What I Thought Was Possible
Jordan Taylor is from Sioux Falls. He grew up here, left to learn, and came back — not because he had to, but because he chose to. Because he believed this city deserved what he'd become.
A few years back, Jordan with the En Place team and the Hello Hi team put together a Hawaiian dinner collaboration in Sioux Falls. I was there.
I walked out of that room differently than I walked in.
It wasn't just the food — though it was extraordinary. It was the proof of concept. That a chef in Sioux Falls could do something that layered, that intentional, that generous with its influences. That a collaboration between kitchens could feel like a cultural event. That our food scene had a higher ceiling than most people realized — if the right people decided to push it.
Jordan decided to push it. He's been pushing it ever since.
What he and his business partner Barry Putzke have built is remarkable. Bread & Circus. Pizza Cheeks. Perch. En Place Catering. Each concept different. Each one distinctly Sioux Falls. They didn't just raise the bar of our food scene. They moved the ceiling.
His story sounds familiar to me. You grow up here. You leave because there's more to learn than the city can teach you yet. You find it. And then you come back — and you bring it with you.
That's exactly what I'm doing too.
Tony and Jordan
My brother Tony taught himself to cook.
He grew up in our family's kitchen — the same tradition my parents carried when they moved to Sioux Falls in 1993 and opened the first Vietnamese restaurant in town. Tony absorbed everything. The technique, the instinct, the patience that Vietnamese cooking demands. And then he traveled. He kept learning. He brought things back.
Pho Quynh is where he kept those recipes alive. Where he kept getting better.
Watching Tony and Jordan work together last night was something I'll carry for a long time. The Sioux Falls native who left and came back, riffing with the Sioux Falls kid who never left the family kitchen. Two paths to the same table. Two people who found a shared language in the food they made together.
That's not just a beautiful dinner. That's a bridge.
And that's exactly what this campaign is about.
New Friends at the Table
I made new friends last night. Real ones — the kind you make when a meal slows everything down and a conversation goes somewhere you didn't expect.
I shared the vision we're building together for this city. Not the talking points. The actual vision. What it looks like when local businesses have a city in their corner. What it feels like when collaboration is the norm instead of the exception. What Sioux Falls becomes when we stop treating nights like this as rare and start treating them as the standard.
People heard it. They leaned in. They shared their own.
That's what sharing a meal with strangers offers — the highest form of friendship our culture knows how to give. You sit down as strangers. You leave as something more.
To the People Who Have Had My Back
None of this happens without the people who believed before the proof was there.
To my friends and volunteers who have shown up from day one — you are the reason I know the bright future of Sioux Falls isn't just a line in a speech. I see it in you. Every table we set, every room we fill, every night like last night — you remind me that what we're working toward is real.
Thank you. Again and again.
What We're Building
Saigon-Sol was February. Lửa & Lei was last night. These dinners aren't sidebars to the campaign. They are the campaign — the argument made edible.
A Vibrant Community isn't a policy goal. It's Jordan Taylor coming home to Sioux Falls and raising the culinary ceiling. It's Tony cooking the recipes our family carried for decades. It's two kitchens deciding to trust each other with something neither had made before.
It's what this city looks like when we build bridges instead of walls. When we see difference not as a problem to manage but as a resource to celebrate.
Jordan showed me in 2022 what a collaboration could be here.
Last night, he and Tony showed me what's next.
Ăn cơm chưa?
Have you eaten? The answer is always no — because the question is really an invitation.
Pull up a chair. There's room at this table for all of us.
It's always been our city, and now is our moment.
Let's rise together. ☀️
— Vince Danh
Candidate, Sioux Falls City Council At-Large | June 2nd, 2026