Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns

Their Ha’s Dac Biet pop-up preceded the pandemic.

- By Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite

Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns met cute in 2015 while working in the kitchen at Mission Chinese Food on the Lower East Side. Ha, who grew up a first-generation Vietnamese American in New Jersey, had never heard of the place when he saw an ad for a dishwasher on Craigslist. His formative industry experience, at age 14, was juggling coffee orders at a Dunkin’ Donuts in West Long Branch, where his mother would drop him off before her shift at a nail salon across the strip mall’s parking lot. When they met, Burns was a seasoned pro by comparison: After high school in the New York suburbs, she studied at Ballymaloe, the cooking school in Ireland, and when she returned Stateside, she landed in the kitchen of Franny’s in Park Slope, a plum gig that on a cook’s résumé has come to represent the East Coast equivalent of a stint at Chez Panisse.