The following is what I’m trying to do, but breaks columns sorting and ordering
In the controller

var records = _service.GetRecords().Select(s => new
{
    RecordId = ...,
    ...

    NestedListDescr = s.NestedList!.Count == 0 ? null : s.NestedList.Select(sl => sl.Description).Distinct().Take(3)
});
return Json(await DataSourceLoader.LoadAsync(records, loadOptions, cancellationToken));

In the view

@(Html.DevExtreme().DataGrid<ViewModel>().ID("grid")
    .DataSource(d => d.Mvc().Controller("Home").LoadAction("GetRecords").Key("RecordId"))
    .SearchPanel(s => s.Visible(true).SearchVisibleColumnsOnly(true).HighlightSearchText(true))
    .ColumnHidingEnabled(true)
    .RemoteOperations(true)
    .Paging(page => page.PageSize(40))
    .StateStoring(state => state
        .Enabled(true)
        .Type(StateStoringType.LocalStorage)
        .StorageKey("storageKey"))
    .Columns(columns =>
    {
        ...

        columns.AddFor(m => m.NestedListDescr![0]).Caption("NestedList 1").DataType(GridColumnDataType.String);
        columns.AddFor(m => m.NestedListDescr![1]).Caption("NestedList 2").DataType(GridColumnDataType.String);
        columns.AddFor(m => m.NestedListDescr![2]).Caption("NestedList 3").DataType(GridColumnDataType.String);
    }))

I tried the below approach, which solved the sorting and ordering issue but it creates a much more complicated query in DB, which might cause loading issues when more columns or data have to be loaded in the future.

NestedListDescr1 = s.NestedList.Select(....).FirstOrDefault(),
NestedListDescr2 = s.NestedList.Select(....).Skip(1).FirstOrDefault(),
NestedListDescr2 = s.NestedList.Select(....).Skip(2).FirstOrDefault()

with

 columns.AddFor(m => m.NestedListDescr1).Caption("NestedList 1").DataType(GridColumnDataType.String);
 columns.AddFor(m => m.NestedListDescr2).Caption("NestedList 2").DataType(GridColumnDataType.String);
 columns.AddFor(m => m.NestedListDescr3).Caption("NestedList 3").DataType(GridColumnDataType.String);

is there any other way to implement the above?