In 1978 the chef Reyna Duong, along with her parents and 10 siblings, fled their fishing village in southwestern Vietnam. Duong was just a year old when she boarded the boat in the middle of the night, escaping the takeover of the communist regime. The family eventually landed in Long Beach, California.

It may seem like escaping a war as a baby would be the most defining aspect of Duong’s (or anyone’s) identity. But her life has been equally shaped by what happened after: the arrival of her youngest brother, Sang Duong.

Sang has Down syndrome. He was born in Long Beach, and Duong spent her childhood taking care of him alongside her parents, who opened their own clothing manufacturing business. At age 22 she moved to Dallas, initially working in the corporate world but ultimately becoming the owner of a Vietnamese sandwich shop, Sandwich Hag.

Sang is the reason she opened Sandwich Hag in Dallas, a restaurant that, in a city often ignored for its food offerings, is serving a dazzling take on Vietnamese home cooking. Thirty to forty percent of her part-time employee force, at the restaurant and for events, encompasses individuals with different abilities, including those with Down syndrome.

Duong initially hated cooking but had vivid childhood food memories of her mom making spaghetti seasoned with fish sauce, and bánh tét, sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and filled with mung beans or plantains. “She would hold yarn with her teeth and stretch and wrap the banana leaves,” she recalls. “Each one hung like a pair of…” she pauses. “What’s that? Bruce Lee?” she pauses. “Oh! Nunchucks. I mean, the talent of this woman.”

But the food memories are intertwined with difficult ones. Her parents did not understand how to handle a child with Down syndrome (on top of 11 others), and her father had a gambling addiction. He was physically abusive to Sang, she says, her tone slowing and her bubbly energy coming to a halt.

Life in Long Beach was chaotic and crowded. Duong’s parents were busy running their business, and they enlisted the help of their kids to stitch shoulder pads and steam garments. “I wanted to go outside and play all the time,” she adds, “but I was expected to be more responsible.” She didn’t even realize until later in life that someone close to her had sexually abused her as a kid—she brushed any feelings of discomfort under the rug. She was more concerned for her brother Sang.

“There were moments where I could tell they were embarrassed of my brother,” Duong says. “That was tough for my dad because in our community, it is a lot of saving face,” or wanting to create a veneer of stability in front of others.

When her parents were in their 80s, Duong assumed custody of Sang, after her father told her that Sang would become the state’s responsibility after he died. For the first time, Sang shared with her the extent of the physical abuse he had endured at his father’s hands.

Duong’s parents both passed within the next two years. When Sang came to live with her in Dallas, the two were still in mourning. To honor their mother’s memory, Duong cooked Vietnamese food. She made bun thit xao, thinly sliced pork with noodles, and fish sauce spaghetti. “When I would make my curry, every time, he’d go, ‘Oh, Mom made that.’ ”

Cooking for Sang, she realized that working in food was far more exciting to her than the corporate life. So she and her partner, Arthur Andrade, rented a tiny old cigar lounge in the Cedars district surrounded by yards of asphalt. Neither of them had any restaurant experience.