What does the best Vietnamese food on Martha’s Vineyard have to do with some of the Island’s most glorious dahlias? They both come from Khen’s Little Kitchen chef-owner Anh Ho, whose grandmother Thi Khen Tran first began selling authentic Vietnamese food at the West Tisbury Farmers’ Market in 1987.

One of the market’s most popular vendors for his spring rolls, egg rolls and extra-crunchy chili crisp, Anh added the dahlia booth late last year after a pandemic-era project blossomed into a major obsession.

“My mom and I bought, like, 10 tubers off of this website, just for the heck of it,” he said, during a tour of the West Tisbury property where his grandmother lived and cooked before her death in 2017. It’s Anh’s home now, and he has surrounded it with about 5,000 dahlia plants representing 30 varieties of the vibrantly-colored flowers.

One of Anh's favorites is the prolific two-tone 'Edinburgh' dahlia.

Jeanna Shepard

One of Anh's favorites is the prolific two-tone 'Edinburgh' dahlia.

Jeanna Shepard

That first purchase of tubers during the pandemic soon led to more as Anh discovered the beauty and diversity of the dahlia genus, which blooms in a wide array of sizes and shapes and virtually every color except blue.

“I’m completely obsessed with them,” he said. “I used to grow other flowers too, but last year I just went to all dahlias.”

In early September, Anh’s flower beds and hoop houses blazed with hundreds of blossoms in brilliant shades of bronze, yellow, pink and red among their dark leafy stems. Some dahlia varieties have multi-colored petals, while others actually change color over their period of bloom, Anh said.

“Eventually, this yellow is going to turn pink,” he said, indicating one planting of lemon-colored dahlias.

Along with his flowers, Anh grows food in West Tisbury as well — mint, scallions and other herbs and vegetables for Vietnamese cuisine that made his grandmother locally famous and that continues to draw eager customers to the Khen’s Little Kitchen booth at the market.

Watermelon vines sprawl outside the hoop houses, which Anh builds himself using a hoop-bender that bends metal pipes into hoop-shaped supports. He also has set up an automatic system for watering and fertilizing, so that he can work in the kitchen while the plants are being irrigated and fed.

“The only thing that we do by hand is harvesting,” said Anh, who immigrated from Vietnam with his parents in the late 1990s to join his grandmother on the Vineyard. His mother, Phieu Thi Phan, and father Khuyen Kim, Ho, still live in Oak Bluffs.

After attending Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, Anh earned a scholarship to study engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. In his first year, however, he realized his real calling was in the kitchen and switched to the Johnson & Wales University culinary program in Rhode Island, where he discovered the science and craft of baking bread.

Anh has built his own hoop houses and designed an irrigation system to streamline his operation.

Jeanna Shepard

Anh has built his own hoop houses and designed an irrigation system to streamline his operation.

Jeanna Shepard

“I fell in love with it, like, immediately,” Anh said.

He was working happily at the celebrated Clear Flour Bread bakery in Brookline when his grandmother grew ill with the cancer she would battle for 10 years.

“She needed someone to run the business, to help her with the medical bills,” said Anh, who thought at first it would be a temporary commitment. “My plan was to go back to Boston to bake bread,” he said. But as one year rolled into another, Anh kept on cooking and selling his grandmother’s cuisine at the farmers’ market, becoming the new face of a beloved Island tradition and continuing the business after her death.

He recently introduced the Khen’s Little Kitchen chili crisp after sampling the condiment at a New York restaurant, though he initially pooh-poohed the idea when a cousin suggested it.

“Who is going to pay for fried garlic?” Anh recalled asking. But social media posts about the crispy, spicy oil changed his mind, and he now sells his own version, laden with crunchy garlic and onions.

With two booths at the farmers’ market, Anh relies on help from family friends to sell the flowers while he tends the Khen’s Little Kitchen booth. The rest of his dahlia operation is a one-man show, developed by trial and error over the past few years.

“I like to figure out all the steps, because I do this by myself,” said Anh, who propagates most of his dahlias from tubers or cuttings, also known as clones. He will continue to harvest flowers for the market until the season’s first killing frost, which Anh hopes will hold off until November. Anh hasn’t been growing dahlias long enough to be sure just when the frost will come, he said, but he knows what to expect: all 5,000 plants will be blackened and dead, leaving him to clear away the debris and lift their tubers from the soil.

Keeping the tradition of his grandmother's egg rolls going.

Jeanna Shepard

Keeping the tradition of his grandmother's egg rolls going.

Jeanna Shepard

“It’ll take me about a month to clean it all up,” he said. Anh uses a hose to clean the tubers of dirt before dividing and sorting them for next year’s planting, which actually gets under way in the current year. After a few weeks of storage in his basement, Anh said, the tubers are ready to begin their cycle anew with a gradual awakening to warmer indoor temperatures.

“By December 17, I’ll start to wake them up, and then by January 17, I’ll pot them up, and then I have a nursery,” he said. “By March 17, they’re in the ground.”

Anh’s hoop houses keep the tubers snug through the chilly days of Island spring, giving his plants a head start on the cut-flower season. This nearly year-round production schedule tends to keep him close to home, Anh said, but he doesn’t mind.

“I actually love doing this so much [that] any time I go on a trip, it’s more painful for me to go away and worry about them,” he said.

Louisa Hufstader is senior writer for the Vineyard Gazette.

With two booths at the farmers' market, Anh enlists help from friends to man the flower booth.

Jeanna Shepard

With two booths at the farmers' market, Anh enlists help from friends to man the flower booth.

Jeanna Shepard

Anh introduced his own chili crisp this year - and it's a hit.

Jeanna Shepard

Anh introduced his own chili crisp this year - and it's a hit.

Jeanna Shepard