Lily Nguyen, 27

Hey there, I’m Lily! Twenty-seven, accountant by day, professional eater by night, and proud Richmond girl through and through. My parents came to Canada from Ho Chi Minh City in the nineties, and I grew up in a house in Richmond where Vietnamese was spoken at the dinner table, English everywhere else, and food was basically a love language all on its own.

Family is everything to me. I’m the youngest of three, with two older brothers who still treat me like I’m twelve, which is both annoying and secretly wonderful. My mom runs a small alterations shop in Richmond, and my dad drove a taxi for twenty years before retiring. Every Sunday we all pile into my parents’ house for dinner, and my mom makes enough food for roughly triple the number of people actually present. There is always pho, there are always spring rolls, and there is always an argument about something completely trivial, like the correct way to slice green onions. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. My grandma, Ba Ngoai, lives with my parents, and she is eighty-four, tiny, terrifying, and the best cook I have ever known. She has been trying to teach me her pho broth recipe for five years, and she still says my broth is, and I quote, acceptable. That’s basically a Michelin star coming from her.

I studied accounting at UBC Sauder, and I now work at a mid-sized firm downtown, doing tax and assurance for small businesses. I know, I know, accountant sounds boring, but I genuinely love it. There’s something so satisfying about taking a messy pile of receipts and turning it into something clean and organized. My clients are mostly family-run shops in Richmond and East Van, and I love that I get to help people who remind me of my parents build something stable. Tax season is chaos, obviously, three months of long hours and too much coffee from the place on the ground floor of my office building, but then April ends and I get my life back, and the first thing I always do is book a weekend with absolutely nothing scheduled.

Richmond is my whole personality, I’m not going to lie. The Richmond Night Market in the summer is my happy place. I go with the same group of friends every year, and we have a strict route: grilled squid first, then the tornado potato, then bubble waffles, then we just wander until we’re too full to move. I have strong opinions about which stall has the best takoyaki, and I will defend them. Aberdeen Centre is where I go when I’m homesick for no reason, just to hear Cantonese and Vietnamese around me and grab a milk tea. And Kingsway has the best pho outside of my grandma’s kitchen, don’t even try to argue with me about it.

When I’m not eating, I’m playing badminton, badly but enthusiastically. I play twice a week at ClearOne in Richmond with a group that’s half serious athletes and half people like me who are mostly there for the post-game bubble tea. I also love hiking, the Chief in Squamish nearly killed me the first time, but the view from the top made me cry a little, so now I go back every summer to prove I can do it faster. And I’m a big reader, mostly mysteries and romance novels, which I devour on the SkyTrain during my commute.

One of my favorite traditions is Lunar New Year at my parents’ house. The whole extended family shows up, the aunties argue about whose banh tet is best, the kids run around collecting red envelopes, and my grandma holds court from her armchair like the tiny queen she is. It is loud, chaotic, and completely perfect, and it reminds me every year exactly how lucky I am.

What I’m looking for in a partner: someone warm, funny, and family-oriented. You don’t have to be Vietnamese, but you do have to survive a Nguyen family dinner, which means eating a lot, laughing a lot, and not being weirded out when my grandma inspects your hands and announces whether you’ll be a good provider. I want someone who’ll come to the Night Market with me and try the weird stuff without complaining, who’ll play badminton even if they’re terrible at it, and who understands that Sunday dinner with my family is sacred. I’m affectionate, I’m loyal, and I will absolutely feed you. If you can make my grandma laugh, honestly, the rest of us are already sold.