A whiff of the ocean hits you before you even step foot onto the street. In this curious corner between Quang Trung and Nhà Chung, a new form of restaurant exemplifies the vitality and variety of Hanoi’s street food.

Street food enthusiasts might be a little disconcerted at first by the setting of Bánh Canh Ghẹ Út Còi; it is, essentially, a resourceful hybrid between the usual gritty, humble food vendors and more hygienic, sanitized restaurants. Here, you get the best of both worlds: the thrill of squatting and crouching while feasting and watching the street, or, if you feel like it, the quietude of sitting up straight in an air-conditioned space.

Bánh Canh Ghẹ Út Còi has expanded to several different locations.

We near the restaurant and get uncomfortable in the seating of our choice — outside, vendor-style, stooping over plastic stools and tables. A couple of young waiters in brown uniforms approach us and take our order. They move swiftly, even when transferring bulks of hot soup on a flimsy tray. They also carry warm, naive smiles that differ from the reserved and professional tone of a high-end restaurant.

The menu is simple yet broad-ranging. All of the options fit neatly on an oval piece of cardboard with colorful graphics. Their signature is bánh canh ghẹ — thick noodles steeped in crab stock that originates from central Vietnam. For side dishes, there’s also bánh bột lọc, a traditional translucent rice snack filled with shrimp and minced pork, and phở cuốn, sheets of phở noodle wrapped around fresh vegetables and shrimp. We go with the signature dish, the meal that brings the crowds here.

Bánh canh ghẹ is characterized by a thick, intensely seafood-scented broth.

The hardest bit about the entire experience is the wait. The eatery is packed during lunch hours as throngs of office workers from around the area flock to the restaurant. The table next to us ordered first and, naturally, their food arrived before ours. The sweet yet salty, mouth-watering scent of crab gets all the waiting tables craning their necks out to see if it’s their order.

Finally, it arrives. The vibrant, almost brick-red color of the broth marries well with the umami fragrance. Crab meat coats the noodles, two pieces of chả, two quail eggs, and a plump peeled shrimp. And then there’s the broth, which has a pleasing, almost gelatin viscosity, which provides its body and ability to glaze the noodles.

Not for those with lackluster chopstick skills.

It also makes picking up the noodles a struggle. Bánh canh is already a slippery type of noodle. Its thickness only allows you to fish out a couple of lengths at a time, and with silkiness from both their texture and the broth, some of these will fall off. At times, you might be left with no noodles at all on your chopsticks!

But the effort is worth it. The broth has a wholesome sweet-and-salty flavor that lingers in every part of your palate, even after you finish eating. The crab meat almost melts under the warmth of your tongue. The noodles have just the right firmness and bounciness to release the juiciness of the dish. The combination is so hearty and fulfilling that you might even forget about the shrimp, chả and quail eggs.

The silkiness that challenges even veteran eaters.

Bánh Canh Ghẹ Út Còi represents a new wave of street food that’s spreading across Hanoi. It shows how the city’s street food scene is ever-present. Although the original generations of some conventional eateries are fading away, foodies will always find a way to innovate the capital’s cuisine, adapting to new demands while sustaining its essence.

Bánh Canh Ghẹ Út Còi is open from 8.30am to 2.30pm and again from 5pm to 10pm.

This article was originally published on Urbanist Hanoi in 2019.

To sum up:

Taste: 5/5
Price: 5/5
Atmosphere: 4/5
Friendliness: 5/5
Location: 4/5 

Linh is 50% coffee and 50% whatever Hanoian snacks she's able to eat.

Food is history. For some, it may just be sustenance, fuel for life, something to wash down quickly with sips of water to keep the body going. But the reality is that many food types have directly influenced and changed the course of human history, like sugarcane, palm oil, and spices. On a national scale, many Vietnamese dishes that we adore today, like hủ tiếu Nam Vang or cà ri gà, are surviving proofs of the country’s storied past.

A slice of Saigoneer history

Seeing this sign makes my heart sing.

When I reminisce about my memories with Saigon in the late 2010s, in my mind, there is a special place for Baby African, the city’s only restaurant serving Nigerian food. My personal history is peppered with eateries like this: a dinghy teen hangout right outside the gate of my middle school where fried rice was the fanciest menu item, a phở place that serves giant portions, or a Korean bar where I heard Lou Reed for the first time with my ex. Some have shuttered forever, some have gone on to receive Michelin Guide approval, and some have miraculously stayed more or less the exact same for decades. My early 20s and Saigon’s 2010s were fragranced by spiced rice and flavored by greasy fried plantains, courtesy of the one and only Baby African.

Some of you, dear readers, might know what I’m talking about. In 2016, Saigoneer published a Hẻm Gems on Baby African, written by our former editor-in-chief and my then-boss. In the essay, she told the story of how she first got to know the restaurant thanks to her boss’s recommendation and made a trek all the way to the far-flung reaches of Gò Vấp to experience it in person. At Saigoneer, we pass down this nugget of obscure knowledge about Baby African’s existence the way a bún bò Huế vendor inherits her family’s secret broth recipe. Her boss entrusted her with the family heirloom, and she then passed the baton down to me, who was just a mere intern at the time. Eight years later, I’ve stepped in her shoes for a while now, so today, I will take over the family business in spreading our not-so-secret love for this hidden gem of Nigerian tastiness to everyone.

The rather spartan shopfront of Baby African.

Back in 2016, when Saigoneer’s intimate tryst with Baby African began, it was quite literally a hole-in-the-wall in the middle of nowhere in Gò Vấp, a peripheral district that’s not often associated with rare international cuisine. There was no shopfront, menu, placard, or any visible advertisements that could hint at its existence. Baby African operated on a need-to-know basis, within the walls of the owner’s kitchen and in casual orders made via WhatsApp. Over the years, I’ve quietly kept track of the place’s whereabouts. Despite a few location switcheroos and the ruthless global pandemic in 2021, the restaurant has endured. Last year, a post on their Facebook announcing a fresh new location prompted me to finally decide that I have to undergo this rite of passage myself and hail a cab to Gò Vấp. It’s high time I took over the Saigoneer family tradition of overeating Nigerian food on a workday and falling into a food coma.

African fares in… Gò Vấp?

After a mini panic attack over the way Gò Vấp organizes its addresses, I set foot into the place’s courtyard and there to greet me was a shiny red sign that read “Baby African Restaurant” alongside an internet picture of a plate of jollof rice. This was a tearful reunion eight years in the making. Inside the air-conditioned dining area, a few brightly patterned wooden tables sat in front of a wall-spanning menu boasting a range of West African dishes. In a corner, a pair of African diners were busy enjoying their plates of reddish rice. As soon as I settled down and offhandedly mentioned that we used to order their food for a “red-haired Canadian lady,” Ngân, the place’s co-owner, immediately recognized us and we cordially reminisced about the tininess of the previous location’s dining space.

A menu this big means big flavors.

According to Ngân, she runs Baby African with her sister, whose husband is a Nigerian living in Vietnam. Even though they receive few Vietnamese eaters apart from the neighbors, the restaurant is something of a staple for Nigerians in the city, a handful of Ghanaians and Kenyans, and the ragtag bunch of writers running this website. If Korean, Japanese, and Thai cuisines — thanks to the robust cultural exchange between their motherlands and Vietnam — have popped up in all nooks and crannies of Saigon, and Vietnam at large, African food has not. In the Phạm Ngũ Lão tourist quarter, an Ethiopian restaurant which has since shuttered was another uncommon representative of food from the continent, so the tasty food at Baby African is something to treasure.

Ngân has been running the restaurant for years with her sister and brother-in-law.

We promptly made an order and spent some minutes luxuriating in the cooling air-conditioned atmosphere inside. They still make my favorite, jollof rice with chicken, but Ngân suggested a mix of beef chunks and chicken to experience more flavors. The kitchen is in another room, but guests can catch a glimpse of their food being prepared through a glass display that’s built into the wall, showcasing rows of plates filled with toppings waiting to be piled on top of rice mounds. Apart from the distant clanking of cookware, the only sounds in the dining space were an unintelligible dialogue from the other guests and the random bangs from the wall-mounted TV above.

Egusi and fufu, like many African dishes, are eaten using one's fingers.

While we were waiting, Ngân brought out a small portion of egusi and fufu (on the house!), because she thought it would look great in our photographs, and she was right. Popular in Western Africa, egusi is a stew made of squash seeds, dried fish and spices; it is rich in protein and umami, and there’s a mellow touch of heat from chili. To my palate, its fish-derived umami resembles an XO sauce while the seed starch brings to mind cooked eggs. Accompanying this powerhouse of flavor is fufu, a thick, starchy paste often made from pounded cassava, green plantain, cocoyam, or any combination of them. We made a disc of fufu in our palm, and used it to scoop the egusi.

The joy of jollof

A portion of jollof rice with fried chicken, beef, and plantain, and a side of coleslaw.

My plate of jollof rice (VND100,000) arrived on the table with a thud, just as grand and overflowing as I remember from all those years ago. The rice grains were brightly colored, coated in spices and flecks of radiant cooked-down tomato. A gentle aroma of chili pepper and curry powder teased my nostrils. On top, a small chicken drumstick that was deep-fried to golden crispiness and chunks of fried beef glistened. The portion was rounded out by slices of fried plantains and a generous serving of coleslaw. Our photographer quipped that it looked like “African cơm gà xối mỡ,” which was both a hilarious and strangely apt description. Still, in cơm gà xối mỡ, rice is more often than not an afterthought, resulting in frequently undercooked, bland, and unsatisfying grains. That’s not the case with Baby African, where the situation is reversed: jollof rice is the headliner and the rest are merely backup dancers.

A West African feast.

Whenever we used to order Baby African to the Saigoneer office for lunch, we had to plan ahead to make sure to starve ourselves in the morning, because the portion is so colossal that one average human won’t be able to finish it in one sitting, and you will feel enchanted to finish it, because the rice is ever so enticing. The grains are plumped, richly spiced and seasoned, so, coupled with that slight sweetness of the cooked plantain, make for a perfect bite. The chicken is fried to crispiness, not hardness, but the beef can be a tad tough to bite into. By the time I could see the bottom of my plate, I was heavily carb-loaded and swimming in an intoxicating mix of nostalgia and digestive satiation that I fell asleep numerous times on our cab ride back to the city center.

Each portion comes with a lot of delicious rice, so prepare for a carb high.

Jollof is the most common dish in West Africa, and there are a myriad of variations across the region, though Nigeria and Ghana are particularly passionate about their claims on the dish’s national origin, so much so that it once led to physical altercations between nationals. The core of jollof is long-grain rice cooked in tomato, onion, chili, and spices; it’s simple in execution but complex in flavors, so I’ve personally made a similar version at home that was quite tasty on its own.

Perhaps, Baby African might end up not being all that special for you to warrant the long distance of travel or delivery, but it contributed majorly to my journey back in the late 2010s to appreciate Saigon for all of its dynamic quirks, diverse cultures, and frenetic energy. After being away for years, I found it challenging to foster my sense of belonging with the land and reconnect with the pulse of this city. While at Saigoneer, it was via the discovery of places like Baby African, run by people with unique stories to tell, that made me realize that Saigon is a wondrous mix of rarities and that I greatly enjoy sifting for gold in the chaos. Baby African might seem out of the box for Vietnam, but it’s more emblematic of Saigon than you might think.

Baby African is open from 11:30am to 10pm.

To sum up:

Taste: 5/5
Price: 4/5
Atmosphere: 4/5
Friendliness: 5/5
Location: 3/5 — The address might look like a hẻm, but the restaurant is actually on a side street facing the canal.

Khôi loves noodles, is a raging millennial and will write for food.

Step inside the kitchen of any household in Saigon and chances are that you will find one or two ready-made curry powder packets in a cupboard waiting for the family's next weekend treat of cà ri gà (chicken curry).

While one can easily find cà ri gà in food stalls around the city, unlike street dishes such as bún bò, cơm tấm or bánh cuốn, cà ri gà is more often eaten within the convenience of one's own home. Components of the dish sometimes vary between each household, but they always call for a curry powder mixture. Half of a typical serving of this mix goes into the chicken's marinade while the rest goes into the sauce, which is a combination of water, either milk or coconut milk, potatoes, taro, sweet potatoes and carrots. There are other variations of curry, but cà ri gà is the most common, and in some regions it is eaten with noodles or bánh mì.  

Ready-made curry powder in pre-mixed packets is sold at mom-and-pop grocery stores or supermarkets across the country, or straight from spice sellers in local markets. The easiest way to purchase is to simply tell the sellers how much meat or vegetable you're going to use, and they will do the rest. This highlights the varied nature of the dish.

In Curry: Eating, Reading and Race, a witty critique of the authenticity discourse in food writing and cultural identity, Naben Ruthnum eloquently captures the elusiveness and versatile character of curry:

Curry isn’t real. Its range of definitions, edible and otherwise, rob it of a stable existence. Curry is a leaf, a process, a certain kind of gravy with uncertain ingredients surrounding a starring meat or vegetable. It’s an elevating crust baked around previously bland foodstuffs, but it’s also an Indian fairy tale composed by cooks, Indians, émigrés, colonists, eaters, readers, and writers.

The same could be said of examining the history of how curry and curry powder became prevalent in Vietnam. The story is one of nuances and complexities that transcend binary perspectives of colonial legacies and anti-colonial movements, appropriations and reappropriations, authenticity and inauthenticity, the global and the local. 

The colonial invention of curry

Historian Lizzie Collingham writes in Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerers about how the establishment of the British East India Company (EIC) in India gave rise to the invention of curry. Central to the experience of employees of the EIC was the burra khana, or big feast. In between different types of meat, the British were served Indian dishes to alleviate the otherwise bland meal of boiled and roasted protein. Replicating British dishes proved difficult for a variety of reasons, hence the need to incorporate local cuisine. While the Indian dishes served on the British colonial tables varied and have their own names, the British lumped everything under the name “curry,” which was anglicized from the Portuguese terms “carree” and “caril,” generalizing terms that refer to Indian broths. These words were themselves derived from the Kannadan and Malayalam word karil and the Tamil word kari, both of which meant spices and sauteed dishes.

‘Our Burra Khana,’ one of 40 lithographs from Captain George Francklin Atkinson's 1860 satirical book on the lives of British colonists in India. Photo via The Internet Archive.

Indians were expected to adjust dishes to the tastes of EIC employees as well. One example Collingham provides is the Lucknavi quarama, which was transformed into kormas by altering the traditional recipe and adding coriander, ginger and peppercorn, which laid the foundation for the basic ingredients of a British curry.

Collingham contends that this period started the transnational spread of curry, as the British brought it with them wherever they went. Wealthy EIC members returning to England brought a desire for the dish with them, however the curry they ate in London was a mere recreation of the dish they consumed in India. Victorian cookbooks further promoted curry's presence, advertising it as an Indian staple that was easy to prepare in the convenience of one's home, despite the concept of an “Indian curry” was nonexistent in India.

Curry was eventually brought to France through the British and French colonies in La Réunion and Pondicherry, according to food historian Erica J. Peters in Appetites and Aspirations In Vietnam. By the time France established its colonial project in Vietnam, curry was already familiar to French colonists, but it remained foreign to their Vietnamese and Chinese subjects. Antoine Beauvilliers' famous 1814 cookbook, L'art du cuisinier, mentions curry several times and provides a recipe for curry and curry sauce. Meanwhile, French chef Auguste Escoffier's 1907 book A Guide to Modern Cookery offers many recipes that call for curry powder.

A Malabar chicken curry from Kerala. Photo via But First, Chai.

The French colonists in Vietnam maintained the diet they were familiar with in their home country, except that most of the cooks were Chinese. As French colonial administrator Charles Lemire writes in Cochinchine Francaise et royaume de Cambodge: “There are Annamese [Vietnamese] cooks, Tagals, even Indians; but the Chinese seem to be born for this job.”

When it came to actually eating the dish, Peters argues in her book that while the French generally stayed away from eating Vietnamese white rice, they would eat it with curry.

“As in all hot countries, the Indian curry is a dish that appears very frequently on the European tables [in the colony]. Spiced with stimulating condiments, cooled down with coconut milk, colored with turmeric or saffron, prepared with chicken or shrimp, it is an excellent dish, which one serves with Vietnamese steamed rice of dazzling whiteness,” exclaimed Lemire, as translated by Peters.

The role of South Indian migrants in forging Vietnam's middle-class identity

When the French settled in Vietnam, South Indians from the French colonies in Pondicherry and Karikal, most of them Tamils, also migrated for trade and job opportunities and mainly lived in Saigon, Chợ Lớn and the Mekong Delta.

Later waves of settlers came to Saigon as the city's status as a commercial center grew, while during the interwar years, there were roughly 2,000 Indians living in the city. 

Rue Ohier (modern-day Tôn Thất Thiệp Street) used to be an Indian enclave. Photo via Flickr user manhhai.

While the relationship between Vietnamese and these migrant Indians is often portrayed as antagonistic due to discrepancies in political privileges, economic power and beliefs regarding social order, historians argue that this antagonism didn't prevent many Tamil migrants from forming marital ties with the Vietnamese and Chinese communities.

Lâm, a Saigon native who operates a spice shop in Bến Thành Market, told Saigoneer about his family's history as it relates to curry. His maternal grandfather, who was Indian, moved to Vietnam as a teenager, where he worked as a cook and later married a Vietnamese woman. Not long after they married, he opened a shop selling imported spices such as cardamom, cumin and ready-made spice mixtures for curry, bò kho and ragout.

Lâm, who is in his forties, is the third generation to run the family business, which continues until this day. “You know, many Indians who came here were mostly cooks,” Lâm said in Vietnamese.

Vietnamese chicken curry is made with coconut milk and can be eaten with rice, bún, or bánh mì. Photo by Alberto Prieto.

Occupying a humble corner inside the busy market, Lâm's spice shop, Cà Ri Anh Hai, has been around for over 70 years. It's not hard to tell that this a spot frequented by many — as we were about to start our conversation, a man in a chef's uniform appeared and asked to get his curry powder order. On the shelves and the counters sit a smorgasbord of jars and containers of different spices and mixtures that could double as a museum.

Lâm's paternal grandfather is a Cantonese expatriate who also married a Vietnamese woman. According to Lâm, his family's partial Chinese identity played a crucial role in shaping Cà Ri Anh Hai. Like many Indians who came to Saigon under the French administration, most of his maternal family members left Saigon in 1978 for France, except for his mom.

When the spice shop was passed down to his father, whose nickname Anh Hai is the shop's namesake, Lâm's father started to experiment and incorporate more flavors adapted from Chinese and Vietnamese cuisine to develop more mixtures. Today, one can find almost anything here: from ngũ vị hương (five-spice) and rare spices to ready-made powder for phở, bò kho, bún bò, kebab mixes or Thai hotpot, although curry powder remains the shop's forte.  

Many curry powder producers today are still run by children of migrant Indians, or developed from Indian businesses in Saigon in the early 20^th century. Cà Ri Bà Tám, a popular brand in supermarkets and local grocery stores, is another example. Its website suggests that the brand was established in the 1940s by Indian spice sellers in Vietnam. Việt-Ấn, which has now become Vianco, was started as a joint business between an Indian migrant named Hari who came to Saigon in 1950 and a Chinese-Vietnamese man named Châu Vĩnh Cơ. Their website claims that its curry powder has been adjusted through several rounds of integration with local spices, giving its flavor a Vietnamese essence. 

“Different from the ‘original’ Indian version, [our] curry isn't too spicy and is less strong because it was toned down to suit the Vietnamese palate,” the website reads.

Curry powder packets. Photo by Thi Nguyễn.

Demand for curry and curry powder among the Vietnamese public was consistent with the emergence of a modern Vietnamese middle-class starting at the dawn of the 20^th century. Although the middle class didn't fully develop until the 1920s, a sense of modernity emerged at turn of the century through literature, public discourse, print capitalism and fashion. In Reinvention of Distinction, Erica Peters states that the consumption of foreign cuisine and food products was a major aspect of embracing concepts of modernity.

Indian spices and ingredients were also popular. Natasha Pairaudeau points out that in Franco-Tamil press at the time, “[for] an Indian, or more often specifically Tamil, cultural allegiance was openly displayed, in notices advertising everything from the latest Tamil music [that] just arrived at Saigon’s biggest department store, to troupes of visiting Tamil performers, to local Indian restaurants and suppliers of curry powders, chutneys, and palm toddy." In the early 1930s, Au Comptoir Hindou at 139 La Grandière (Lý Tự Trọng) was already selling “Garouda curry powder” and arrack, an Indian distilled spirit.

Not only did curry and curry powder enter Vietnamese public life, but it also entered cosmopolitan Vietnamese homes. For example, in one paragraph of a short story published in 1931 by Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, meals prepared by a “Europeanized” Vietnamese woman are described:

In the middle of the table, foods like cà ri chà (Indian curry), Chinese fin soup, Western rotis, Thai braised meat in coconut milk are served in between small plates of Phú Quốc fish sauce...Nearby the flower vase sits beside two brands of wine, one reads Haut Sauterne and another Ngũ Gia Bì.

Another clue to the growing popularity of curry among Vietnamese bourgeoisie households is the modern cookbook Bổn Dạy Nấu Ăn Theo Phép Tây (Western Cooking for Annamites), written in 1889 by an anonymous author. It contains four recipes for curry, including kari créole,kari parisien, kari de crevettes and canard au kari.

Many recipes published in print media aimed at women also called for curry powder, such as thịt cua đinh xào lăn (stir-fried spiced crab meat), bộ lòng cua đinh chưng (braised crab innards), vịt nướng (roast duck), and lòng vịt chưng (braised duck offal).

In this sense, the meaning of curry and curry powder shifted away from a flavor enjoyed exclusively among the French as a marker of difference from their subjects towards a manifestation of Vietnam's middle-class identity. 

From home to nation to diasporas

Considered the first Vietnamese cookbook, Madame Lê Hữu Công's Sách nấu ăn theo phép An Nam (Cooking the Vietnamese Way), includes recipes for Vietnamese dishes, as well as Chinese and Chăm recipes. Historian David Marr cited the cookbook in his book, Vietnamese Tradition On Trial, 1920-1945, as an example of “self-conscious assertion of a Vietnamese identity.”

Besides familiar recipes, the book includes two recipes for cà ri lươn (swamp eel curry) and cà ri ếch (frog curry) in the Vietnamese section. Oddly, they are placed in a category of “different types of nem” (spring rolls). While this may seem trivial, it shows that curry powder, once a commodity associated with other cultures, had been absorbed as Vietnamese. In fact, cookbooks like Công's were later banned because the French authorities feared that their underlying nationalistic messages were harmful to the colonial regime. Similar cookbooks also acted as platforms for the anti-colonial writings of the revolutionaries such as Phan Bội Châu, Đào Duy Anh and Trần Huy Liệu.

Despite this ingrained nature of curry in Vietnam, there was still a distinction between an “Indian curry” (cà ri chà) and the curry which Vietnamese ate in the public consensus. A recipe for cà ri chà in Phụ Nữ Tân Văn suggests that Indian curry was a different breed, and that “to recreate the true flavor of Indian curry proves difficult, because its spices and ingredients are tough to make; Indians who eat curry won't ever touch [ready-made] curry powder, the type sold in markets,” which shows that Vietnamese curry employs curry powder. 

A recipe for “Indian curry” in Phụ Nữ Tân Văn. Photo via National Library of Vietnam.

“Vietnamese can't eat curries like Indians. Indian [curries] have to be thick, aromatic, rich, creamy and spicy. But here we put lemongrass, add sweet potato and taro because [Vietnamese] have a sweet tooth. So the curries we eat here are a hybridized taste, completely different from ones eaten in [India],” Lâm, the spice vendor at Bến Thành, said.

The role of curry powder in Vietnam is constantly changing, especially now that it is sold in neat packets that can be stored for up to two years. According to Lâm, this form of packing curry powder is not only convenient, but it also helps with exports.

“In the past...we only sold these spice mixtures within the country or to tourists and expats who came here wanting to find Indian flavors," he said. "Now, we can't just wait for shoppers to come anymore, we have to bring ourselves to them.”

The curry packets now travel the world, especially to where there are sizable Vietnamese diaspora communities. Lâm has shipped products to Vietnamese areas in Orange County, Texas, Atlanta, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as to a number of Vietnamese cooks in Cambodia.

Here in Vietnam, curry powder and Vietnamese curry continues to evolve. Midway through our conversation, Lâm shared that while the powder caters to Vietnamese tastes, Lâm often offers cooking tips so that home cooks can improve their curry.

“For example, if someone wants to prepare it with sweet potatoes, I'll suggest using [white] potatoes and replacing lemongrass with ginger to make the dish more aromatic,” he said, explaining that lemongrass' strong aroma can overpower the powder.

This shows how curry, as a concept, a dish and a cultural category in Vietnam, can be diverse and ever-shifting within its own geographic sphere. With each path it takes, bounded by social, political and cultural currents, there is always assimilation at every corner, welcoming new layers of meaning stacked above the complexities of its birth.

This article was originally published in 2019.

Realizing the word that one is using refers to an entirely different object in another region is a situation many can relate to. The last time this happened to me, it almost cost me a bowl of Hanoi’s bánh đa trộn.

It’s impossible to explain why certain dishes have the names they do given the sometimes arbitrary, untraceable nature of language. This impossibility doesn’t mean that wondering about them is a pointless activity. Indeed, one shouldn’t resist the head-scratching nature of different dish names that the written language fails to distinguish, including food names that takes on different lives, taste and appearance when they cross regions. These questions always result in more traces, possibilities and questions about the past, and if one is lucky, unexpected discoveries along the way.

Chả and Nem

Chả is made from a mixture of fish flakes, vegetables, herbs and spices that are pulverized together and then quết (pressed and folded into a paste) until the final product is elastic and gummy. The paste is then put in boiling oil, which allows fat to infiltrate the meat and enhance its flavor while browning the skin. Just like the alluring smoke wafting off grilled cơm tấm meat, it’s hard to ignore the pleasing fragrance of shallots, herbs and fish that emanates from a bánh mì stall frying chả cá.

While someone from the southern and central parts of the country might be familiar with this version of chả cá, it refers to a completely different dish in Hanoi, though still with fish as the main ingredient. Making chả cá in a Hanoi eatery involves no grounding or quết. Instead, fresh fish is cut into cubes and marinated in a mixture of ground riềng (galangal), mẻ (fermented rice), pepper, turmeric, shallots and shrimp paste and then cooked on a charcoal grill before being pan-fried with a generous amount of dill and spring onions.

This is not to say that the ground fish form of chả cá doesn’t exist in northern locales such as Hanoi. Chả cốm, for example, consists of a mixture of cốm (flatten young rice kernel), mọc (pulverized pork meat quết into a paste) and lean pork, shaped into a round disc and fried. Ha Long also has chả mực, made using a similar method as the southern chả cá but with squid as the main protein.

Hanoian’s chả cá, also known as chả cá Lã Vọng.

The world of chả can be roughly divided into four domains: grilled or fried fresh meat, such as in the cases of bún chả or Hanoi’s chả cá, which is more commonly seen in northern provinces. This linguistic use is rare in southern and central cuisines. Meat mixed with spices and aromatics in a well-kneaded paste and sometimes fried seems to be the most ubiquitous use of the word in these regions. Examples include chả cá thác lác (southern-style fish cake with thác lác fish), chả lụa (a pulverized meat mixture made with the quết technique), and central Vietnamese chả bò (an identical dish to chả lụa but made with beef). The third grouping includes fried spring rolls like chả giò, common in southern and central cuisines. Meat or fish patties such as chả cá mòi (fish patties made with sardines) and chả rươi (patties made with mealworm and eggs) are more common in the north.

How to quết your chả.

Examining Hán-Nôm characters provides a possible explanation for why chả has so many different linguistic uses. Anthony Trần Văn Kiệm’s Nôm and Sino-Vietnamese dictionary and the dictionary published by the Nôm Preservation Foundation list six Hán-Nôm characters that translate to chả.

The first character, 鮓 in its traditional form and 鲊 in its standard form, is romanized as zhǎ. The word refers to salted, preserved fish, or a dish made with ground vegetables, flour and other condiments. Interestingly, in Chinese provinces like Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi, 鮓 (zhǎ) refers to a method of pickling vegetables and meat with rice flour or flour.

These dictionaries provide no information regarding two terms. 鮺 and ???? don’t have Mandarin equivalents because they are pure Nôm words that were introduced during the later stages of Nôm language development, when the writing system broke away from Han traditions.

Another character that piques interest is 炙 (zhì), which, according to Nguyễn Quang Hồng’s Nôm Characters with Quotations and Annotations, has three Vietnamese readings, including chá, chả and chạ. Chá refers to grilled or fried seasoned meat or fish. Chả however, is a term of negation (i.e. don’t) in Vietnamese. Another exclusively Nôm word with an identical meaning to 炙 (zhì), a definition of the frying and grilling method, is ????, pronounced as chả.

A little more digging reveals a fascinating link between zhì and the common Vietnamese phrase khoái chá, which describes the feeling of really liking something. The term, according to Vietnamese scholar An Chi, is rooted in the phrase quái chá, an abbreviated Vietnamese reading of an old Chinese metaphor 脍炙人口 (pinyin: kuài zhì rén kǒu; Vietnamese: khoái chá nhân khẩu). In Mandarin usage, 脍 (kuài) refers to thinly raw sliced meat, while 炙 (zhì) refers to grilled meat and 人口 (rén kǒu) is a person’s mouth. When put together, the phrase refers to the ecstatic joy of consuming a kuài or zhì dish, but it is often used as a metaphor to describe something popular, especially a poem or a work of literature that pleases people they way these meat dishes do.

A look inside Technique du People Annam provides insight about another character. The book, published in 1909, is a collection of drawings and text describing the activities and culture of Hanoi, written in both pure Nôm and Han characters. Its Vietnamese translation for bún chả corresponds to two exclusively Nôm characters. The first one, placed on top, is the written word for bún, and the bottom for chả. While the first character is recorded in the dictionary, the second is nowhere to be found. One can see its resemblance to 詐 (zhà), which means to cheat or pretend in Mandarin.

Bún chả in Technique du People Annam.

Overall, the Hán and Nôm characters associated with chả sometimes refer to a piece of meat itself, or the grilling, frying or grounding methods involved in its preparation. Chả, when used in modern Vietnamese, seems to fit under one of these two broad, flexible umbrellas.

This leads us to another common word, nem, which is often paired with chả in various idioms, including the famous saying “nem công chả phượng,” which describes a Hue royal dish commonly served to kings and elites in feudal times. The saying is sometimes used as a metaphor for a fancy feast, or fanciness in general. Công translates to peacock and phượng translates to phoenix, but the dish’s precise historic ingredients are unknown. The majority of modern interpretations rely on different definitions of nem and chả and rely on visual representations of the phoenix and the peacock.

Interpretations of nem công chả phượng. Photo via Hướng Nghiệp Á Âu (left) and Bepanvanphong (right).

Tôn Nữ Thị Hà, a descendant of mandarin wives in the Nguyễn royal court, suggests that the nem part of the dish is made with peafowl meat, spices and sugar and left to ferment for three days, while the chả is made with pheasant meat, ground with herbs and spices, quết and wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. Whatever the original dish, nem công chả phượng will look different depending on which meaning of nem and chả one uses. One can find spring rolls, sour nem and different types of sausage on a tray of nem công chả phượng in someone’s home or an online recipe.

Nem is most ubiquitously understood as a type of fermented sausage that uses lean pork, spices and rice wrapped in either guava or gooseberry leaves with garlic and chili and then further wrapped in banana leaves. This tight wrap produces an anaerobic environment that enhance the growth of lactic acid bacteria, which feed on the rice, contributing to the dish’s iconic sour taste and helping to prevent salmonella.. While people in the south and central regions simply use the word nem for this dish, northerners opt for the term nem chua.

This fermented sausage is popular in neighboring countries too. One can recognize it and its Vietnamese name in Thai (naem or nham), Laotian (naem moo or som moo) and Cambodian (nam) cuisines.

Nem enjoys another meaning in northern provinces. There, it describes fried spring rolls, which southerners often call chả giò and central regions, with the exception of Thanh Hóa Province, call ram. Although similar in essence, not all chả giò or nem within the same region are the same, with versions varying in their types of fillings and wrappers. Rice flour wrappers are more common in the north and central regions, while southerners are more familiar with wheat flour based wrap or rế, net wrappers. Interestingly, the fresh version of spring rolls are called nem cuốn (rolled nem) in Hanoi, while southerners are more familiar with gỏi cuốn.

When placed before other words, nem invites even more meanings. For example, nem chạo or nem thính is a dish that uses pork ear mixed with ground, roasted rice, similar to bì in Saigon.

The chả and nem pair also exist in the common saying ông ăn chả bà ăn nem (the husband eats chả, the wife eats nem), in which they are used as metaphors for an illicit female mistress and an illicit male lover, respectively. The metaphorical connotation of chả and nem here suggests there is some sort of commonality between the two, despite them often being placed in oppositional spaces.

Chè and Bánh

Food used as metaphors can be found in a lot of Vietnamese literature and folk sayings. Translations of Hồ Xuân Hương’s most famous Nôm poem, ‘Bánh Trôi Nước,’ for example, reveal different names used for Vietnam’s beloved sweet sticky rice dumplings.

Bánh Trôi Nước in 1914’s woodblock edition.

Once again, different names for the dish and the different regional variations emerge. Bánh trôi nước doesn’t exist in Saigon. Rather, the dessert that the poem seems to be describing resembles chè trôi nước, a dish consisting of glutinous rice balls with mung bean filling, coconut milk and sugar syrup simmered in ginger.

Bánh might be the most all-encompassing word used in Vietnamese food. It can refer to savory or sweet treats of different sizes and shapes. Bánh phở is a rice noodle, bánh cuốn is a flat rice noodle sheet with fillings, bánh bao is a bun, bánh giò and bánh ú are triangle-shaped rice dumpling, bánh mì is a baguette, bánh đa can either be a noodle or a rice cracker depending on regional dialect, bánh tráng is the catch-all term for wrappers and crackers, bánh ngọt is an umbrella term for sweets made from wheat flour, bánh tôm is shrimp fried in batter, bánh xèo is a thin crepe, bánh đậu xanh is made from mung bean paste, bánh gan and bánh flan are made with an egg custard base and don’t even have flour as the main ingredient.

Chè trôi nước. Photo via YouTube account Vanh Khuyen Le.

Bánh is fascinatingly flexible and often combined with a word that describes a cooking method, an ingredient, an appearance or a sound. The word originates from 餅 (bǐng) in Mandarin, which is a common term for many Chinese flatbreads, pancakes and objects that have a round, flat appearance. This association with shape extends to Vietnamese, as tires and steering wheels are called bánh xe and bánh lái, respectively.

Bánh in Vietnamese is even more all-encompassing, as it also includes foods that are mainly made from flour, powders and legume-based pastes in various shapes. The term also has a similar pronunciation in different languages, such as Lao’s pǣng, which means flour or powder, and Thai’s bpɛ̂ɛng, which also refers to flour or starch, with the addition of ground meat. Khmer’s bañ has two meanings; one shares the same proto-Mon-Khmer root with Vietnamese’s bắn, which is to shoot; the second means cake or pastry. In countries with a language tradition closer to Chinese, like South Korea and Japanese, byeong and mochi are the readings for the hangul and kanji version of the character.

Similar to bánh, chè is also a common term used for some beloved soupy desserts. In northern provinces, chè standing on its own also refers to tea, which is more typically called trà in the south. While it is common knowledge that tea etymologies are similar across countries, how Vietnamese chè took on another cluster of meanings is a mystery. Perhaps it’s because both the dessert and beverage are liquids. Or, perhaps it has roots in an entirely different language, such as Khmer.

As if the matter isn’t already complicated enough, two Hanoian snacks defy common associations for chè: chè lam and chè kho. Chè lam is made with sticky rice flour and molasses with peanuts, while chè kho is made of ground mung beans that are steamed, sautéed and shaped into a round loaf. A similar version of chè kho in central and southern regions is called bánh đậu xanh tươi.

Chè lam. Photo via Eva.

Chè kho. Photo via Lao Động Thủ Đô.

Hồ Xuân Hương’s poem provides a different overlapping of categories. In it, she describes herself, and women in general, as sharing the fate of the sweet sticky rice dumpling. It floats and sinks within nước non, which refers both to water and country, and is at the mercy of the hands of those who shape it, yet still keeps a lòng son, (literally, red heart; figuratively, loyal heart).

When people in the south read the poem, many assume that Hồ Xuân Hương is referring to the sticky rice ball floating in syrup in a bowl of chè trôi nước. Imagining she is actually describing a different, northern dish allows for an interpretation that reveals an even greater brilliance.

It is more likely that the poet is referring to bánh trôi, a slightly different dessert. In the 1914 woodcut version of the poem, the Nôm title is translated to bánh trôi, without the nước. This dish involves several small sticky rice dumpling eaten with sesame seeds without sugar syrup. The filling doesn’t contain mung beans like chè trôi nước, but instead a cube of đường phên (a type of reddish-brown rock sugar made of sugar cane molasses). Some sources suggest that lòng son is a play on words because the dumpling fillings share a color with an actual heart.

Bánh trôi dumplings are boiled, and thus the floating and sinking that Hồ Xuân Hương mentions could refer to the up-and-down movement of them during the cooking process. In the 1914 version, she uses the character 㵢 for trôi, which means gliding and drifting, or sôi (boiling).

Another version of the poem published in Quế Sơn Thi Tập gives the poem the name ‘Lưu Thủy Bính,’ a synonym for bánh trôi. In Technique du People Annam the entry for bánh trôi also uses this name for the dish: 流水餅 (pinyin: liú shuǐ bǐng; Vietnamese: lưu thủy bính). Lưu means flow, stream, and together lưu thủy means flowing water.

Bánh trôi entry in the book. Note that the first and last characters are different because they are Nôm writing variations liú and bǐng.

If one considers this definition involving flowing water, one can see a parallel in terms of movement with a practice performed during the Đền Hát Môn festival, which commemorates the Trưng sisters in Phú Thọ, Hanoi. It was here that the sisters jumped to into a river, committing suicide after being defeated. Because the sisters were reported to have ordered rounds of bánh trôi before going into battle, it is prepared on the occasion and placed in 49 lotus flowers, which are released into the river. Is the poem also referencing the sisters?

Perhaps the metaphorical use of bánh trôi in Hồ Xuân Hương’s poem also applies to the slippery relationship between language and food. It’s constantly renewing, changing, slipping, taking on new lives and colors with and against the currents of culture and history.

This article was originally published in 2019.

Originally from Cambodia, made popular by Chinese vendors and enjoyed by local diners, hủ tiếu Nam Vang captures the essence of Vietnamese history in one hearty bowl of noodles.

Madame Vừng shouts my name — to my slight embarrassment and the other patrons’ shock — when she spots me around the corner. She mans a cart selling an assortment of delicious hủ tiếu dishes, including hủ tiếu Nam Vang, in the alley leading to my house. Is there a better way to fuel a writing session on hủ tiếu than by diving into a bowl of the mouthwatering subject itself?

I order my usual portion and sit on a plastic stool, watching her. A rotund woman in her late fifties with laugh lines around her eyes, Madame Vừng is người Hoa (Vietnamese of Chinese descent) and proud of it. While Saigon's modern-day version of hủ tiếu undoubtedly bears some Chinese influence, the origin story of hủ tiếu Nam Vang begins with our western neighbors.

Hủ tiếu Nam Vang is actually a Cambodian dish; Nam Vang means Phnom Penh in Vietnamese. With local cuisine a veritable feast of different culinary influences, it’s a tall order to pinpoint the exact breeding ground of any dish you might come across on the streets of Saigon. And even if you can, there’s no guarantee that the recipe has remained the same after decades of adaptation by chefs all over the country.

A local rendition of hủ tiếu in District 3. Photos by Lee Starnes.

The ultimate origin of hủ tiếu Nam Vang lies in the heart of Phnom Penh’s Old Market, where Cambodians from all walks of life sit down at open-air stalls and order for themselves a steaming bowl of kuy teav. In Khmer, kuy teav refers to both a variety of chewy rice noodles and a noodle dish made from pork broth and garnished with fried shallots, spring onions and bean sprouts.

The rustic version typically only features minced pork and fish balls, but chefs in Phnom Penh have their own twist, elevating the dish by adding liver, blood pudding and other innards. In the 1960s, the recipe for this rather fancy version of kuy teav followed Cambodian immigrants to southern Vietnam to become the hủ tiếu Nam Vang that’s widely enjoyed by Saigoneers today.

Besides sharing the Indochinese peninsula, Cambodia and Vietnam have more common cultural threads than meet the eye. Vietnam and Thailand are both home to sizable Cambodian diaspora; when they arrived, these immigrants brought along with them to southern Vietnam certain aspects of Khmer life, including parts of the language as well as culinary creations such as kuy teav Phnom Penh.

At a glance, hủ tiếu Nam Vang looks decidedly Chinese, with seveal of its ingredients pointing to Chinese influence: from the use of chewy hủ tiếu noodles to the name Nam Vang — which tends to be mistaken for “Nam Giang” when spoken with southern dialect. The reality is that if you pay a visit to any common hủ tiếu Nam Vang vendor in the city, you will likely come across a chef người Hoa, like Madame Vừng, cooking up a storm.

Chinese-style hủ tiếu in District 1. Photos by Lee Starnes.

In fact, to seek out a bowl of hủ tiếu Nam Vang cooked and seasoned by a Cambodian in Saigon, you would have to make a trek to either Liến Húa on Võ Văn Tần or Ty Lum on Thành Thái. The former is run by a Cambodian woman with a 40-year history of selling the dish in Saigon, while the latter boasts the expertise of an ex-chef for the Khmer royal family.

Whether the chef is Chinese, Cambodian or Vietnamese, Saigon’s vendors seem to be in agreement on what constitutes a standard bowl of hủ tiếu Nam Vang: chewy rice noodles, topped with minced pork, shrimp or squid and embellished with a healthy sprinkle of spring onions, bean sprouts and tần ô (crown daisy).

It’s impossible to compare today’s version of hủ tiếu Nam Vang with what older Saigoneers might have enjoyed back in the 1960s. However, one thing we can be sure of is that the dish has taken a different form than its predecessor, kuy teav Phnom Penh, which tends to be prepared sans seafood due to the country’s limited coastline.

Hủ tiếu Mỹ Tho in District 1. Photos by Lee Starnes.

There’s no doubt that Vietnamese have a penchant for hủ tiếu of all kinds. Even though the Nam Vang version wins out in terms of popularity, you can pretty much discover a new adaptation with every locality as you cruise down the highway from Saigon to Cà Mau, Vietnam's southernmost province. There is hủ tiếu Gò Công, hủ tiếu Sa Đéc, hủ tiếu Châu Đốc, hủ tiếu Mỹ Tho and dozens of lesser known versions. But at the end of the day, the most important nuances lie in the broth, which differs depend on the province and the cook.

Tracing the history of a street food dish in Saigon is no easy feat; the city attracts people from so many different provinces and countries that it's nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact history of a meal. Even with a dish like hủ tiếu Nam Vang, whose distribution stays mainly in southern Vietnam, we could be here all day just working out the differences between kuy teav and hủ tiếu.

This article was originally published in 2016.

The first time I tried to visit Aoya Ramen was on a Monday. The pavement where the stall should be was empty, without any trace of noodles or noren. I learned quickly that they’re closed on Mondays. The second time, my joy in discovering that the cart was open for business was quickly dashed by the long queue of hungry diners already in line. The third time, learning from the previous crowd, I arrived later at 8:30pm, just to find out that they were out of stock for the day.

At that point, it was getting pretty obvious to me that the universe must be conspiring against me. Is this one of those character development episodes one often sees in television dramas, where the main character learns the hard way that “if you love something, set it free; if it comes back, it was meant to be”? This is utter hogwash, by the way. So, of course, I pushed on with a fourth attempt, because the meaning behind getting to sample this ramen, for me, has morphed from a casual visit to a new interesting eatery to defying the twist of fate to prove that I am in charge of my own destiny, determinism be damned.

Arriving before the opening time is the best way to ensure you'll have a seat right away.

On my fourth attempt, I made sure every piece of the puzzle was in place by arriving 15 minutes before opening time on a non-Monday evening. A light drizzle was humming above, peppering streets with rhythmic drops of late summer rain. In the blueish tint of dusk, the golden sheen of lighting and twirls of steam from Aoya Ramen appeared like a haven to lost travelers.

There's undeniable beauty in a little chaos.

On the pavement of Ngô Thời Nhiệm, the humble cart sat, surrounded by eight stools; inside, a young chef was busy prepping the toppings for another night of serving ramen to curious Saigoneers. On one side of the cart, a piece of scaffolding was covered in a tapestry of random, but surprisingly harmonious, stickers. Everything was enveloped in the warmth of a yellow fluorescent light and two lanterns. I have driven through this neighborhood outside of the eatery’s opening hour; the stretch of sidewalk where Aoya Ramen calls home is in front of a rickety parking lot. On the opposite side is the backside of the Hồ Xuân Hương Stadium, so save for the distance grunts of basketballers, this block of Ngô Thời Nhiệm is devoid of street vendors, local residents, or any other common characters that would give life to the Saigon street scene that we know and love.

Rain on your hat and back is a common feature here even though Aoya Ramen has canopies.

Now with the presence of this humble ramen cart, I can’t help but think of that precise moment in Spirited Away when the evening comes and the dark, abandoned theme park is suddenly teeming with colorful lights, a frenzy of activities, and throngs of frog-faced patrons heading to the bathhouse. I guess I am a frog-faced patron in this live-action, eager to bask in the cordial atmosphere of street eats, rub shoulders (literally) with my fellow food lovers, and shove my face into Aoya Ramen’s enticing bowl of shoyu ramen.

A team of young friends run the show here.

There’s only one item on the menu here — though even that is a rhetorical expression, because there isn’t an actual menu. The Aoya special is a bowl of ramen (VND100,000) with shoyu broth, garnished with a piece of chasu pork belly, a bundle of wakame seaweed, strips of bamboo shoots, half an ajitama ramen egg, a sprinkle of diced leek, and a slice of narutomaki fishcake. Everybody will eat the same portion across the board, though you can choose to wash it down with iced green tea or a beer-of-the-day.

A chicken broth serves as the base, and when orders are made, the chef adds the shoyu tare in each bowl and layers on the toppings.

I will go ahead and admit that even though Aoya’s ramen is not the best ramen in town, it certainly cracks the top 5 in my personal list. Still, for me, it is the platonic ideal of a bowl of ramen, from the olfactory, gustatory, and visual senses. Even from afar, your nostrils are already filled with the umami and fatty notes from the broth, a hearty concoction that promises savoriness with every slurp. Then, the actual bowl arrives on the table, and everybody lets out a chorus of oohs and aahs, mesmerized by the plump egg, glossy noodles, and that whimsical pink swirl of the fishcake in the center.

Itadakimasu!

You carefully lift a spoonful of broth to your lips. It’s rounded, rich, and salty. It seeps into every nook and cranny of the toppings, marrying every element together. The noodles, which could at times be a neglected feature at some restaurants, have a nice bite and balanced texture, not too eggy or doughy. It’s one of the rare instances when I like the ramen noodles even more than the toppings, even though the chasu is juicy and the ajitama has a perfect soy coating and jammy yolk. Ramen is not an easy puzzle to crack in Saigon financially, where nearly every other restaurant prices their creations at VND150,000 and above, so at VND100,000, Aoya’s shoyu ramen is a sterling attempt at providing a good quality meal at a reasonable price point.

Yatai like Aoya Ramen represents a slice of Japanese street culture.

Aoya Ramen identifies as a yatai (屋台), which can be translated simply as “food cart,” traditionally a type of mobile restaurant that serves simple, hot dishes on the street like ramen, yakitori (chicken skewers), okonomiyaki (savory pancakes), and oden (hotpot). Carts often go dormant during the day and open in the evening to cater to workers stopping by for a quick bite or drink after work. Each cart is small and able to serve no more than 10 patrons on tiny, squished-up seats, but it is this cozy arrangement that also makes up the appeal of yatai, as few things can be as conducive to friend-making as huddling together in the cold slurping hot soup.

Rubbing shoulders with your fellow diners is a great way to make friends.

Street food cart is a genre of eatery that Vietnamese might find all too familiar but is actually on the decline in Japan. Yatai as we know it today appeared in Japan as early as the 17^th century, and as the country entered industrialization, it became a symbol of upward mobility for working-class people seeking to make a living in big cities. In preparation for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, municipal authorities cracked down on street food, cleansing local roads of yatai. Fukuoka, thankfully, is amongst the few cities in Japan today with an existing population of historic yatai, because of a yatai trade association established in 1950.

Until the next bowl.

If any nation knows how to open, find, and celebrate street vendors, it’s Vietnam, so it’s natural and frankly quite delightful that such a distinctively Japanese food feature can adapt and be accepted so willingly in Saigon. Every time I get to feast on a good meal, like the shoyu ramen at Aoya, my mind sometimes wanders to Chihiro’s parents. They couldn’t escape the lure of the cursed food at the theme park and were transformed into insatiable pigs who spend the entire movie at the banquet. This ramen, in my personal opinion, might be a meal worth being turned into a pig for.

Aoya Ramen is open from 6pm to whenever they run out of noodles, from Tuesday to Sunday.

To sum up:

Taste: 5/5
Price: 4/5
Atmosphere: 5/5
Friendliness: 5/5
Location: 4/5

Khôi loves noodles, is a raging millennial and will write for food.

Hometown treats encapsulate within them the flavors of memories, reminding us of a land we haven’t visited for a long time. I open the jar of coconut candies from my mother and my hometown, and immediately breathe in a familiar scent reminiscent of our kitchen back then. I thought to myself: so this is the feeling of yearning people often talk about when referring to home. 

To me — and perhaps many other “former children” hailing from Vietnam’s capital of coconut, who grew up under the shade of coconut fronds — coconut candies, or kẹo dừa, are not just a piece of home, but also the life force of a craft village and an icon of Bến Tre Province. Even after decades, that rustic treat is still the same, just as decadent, fragrant, and extremely likely to stick to your teeth, so much so that you’ll remember it forever after trying it once. Only after I delved deeper into this traditional craft, one that once seemed all-too-familiar to me, did I fully grasp how much it contributes to the pride of my hometown.

Kẹo dừa is the symbol of Bến Tre. Photo via Dân Trí.

Across the Rạch Miễu Bridge into the plantation

Kẹo dừa first made an appearance in Vietnamese historical texts at least several centuries ago. In Xiêm La Quốc Lộ Trình Tập Lục (A Chronicle of National Routes in Siam), an excerpt reads: “[In 1810 CE], a delegation assigned by Emperor Gia Long reached Bangkok. The group was divided into two groups, one headed to the palace to pay respect to the passing of the king, bringing with them funeral offerings comprising 100 rolls of Guangzhou silk, 100 rolls of white Tonkin textile, 5 boxes of beeswax, 5 boxes of sugar, 10 boxes of coconut candies, 10 boxes of rock sugar [...]” Therefore, one could surmise that a type of sweet made of coconut has existed in the country since the 18^th–19^th century.

Nonetheless, to trace the roots of coconut candies as we know today, we have to travel downstream to visit Bến Tre, the province that’s nicknamed “Three islands of green coconuts.” Thanks to the fertile alluvium from four distributaries of the Mekong River — including the Tiền, Ba Lai, Cổ Chiên, and Hàm Luông rivers — the land here is very suitable for the proliferation and spread of coconut via local waterways. For the longest time, this endemic tree has made its way into local culture here, becoming the inspiration for the sweet candy that perfumes our childhoods.

Coconuts are interwoven with life in the delta. Photo via VOV.

According to local stories passed down after generations, kẹo dừa is a Bến Tre delicacy that was created nearly a century ago in 1930 by Nguyễn Thị Ngọc, a woman who lived in Mỏ Cày Township. This was why the confection was first known as kẹo Mỏ Cày (Mỏ Cày candy). The recipe to make this sticky sweet was passed around the region, and over time, it even entered local pop culture in the form of folk songs and poetry. Residents of Bến Tre might have heard these melodies before:

“Bến Tre nước ngọt sông dài / Bến Tre, the land of welcoming waters and long rivers
Nơi chợ Mỏ Cày có kẹo nổi danh / Home of Mỏ Cày Market and its famed candy
Kẹo Mỏ Cày vừa thơm vừa béo / Mỏ Cày candy smells amazing and tastes rich
Gái Mỏ Cày vừa khéo lại vừa ngoan. / Mỏ Cày ladies are both talented and well-mannered.”

Around the 1970s, Nguyễn Thị Vinh founded the Thanh Long coconut candy manufacturing facility, the first of its kind in Bến Tre Township. At first, the Thanh Long company collected local coconuts to make candy using very rudimentary methods and basic equipment. As time went by, the candy became more well-known and profitable, so Vinh upgraded her production with machines to match the increase in demand.

In 1989, Nguyễn Thị Vinh migrated to Australia to be with her family, leaving the coconut candy production to his brother, Sáu Tảo. His management provided the push the family brand needed to become the province’s most well-known kẹo dừa. The business model that the family operated became a blueprint for many other enterprises across the Mekong Delta to follow to get the coconut candy industry to the level it is today.

Munching on coconut candy and sipping hot tea are part of an elegant pastime. Photo via Instagram user @duythanhxk.

From a time-honored taste to brand-new flavors

The coconut candy craft has been around for approximately a hundred years. My grandma used to tell me that even when she was a little girl, she was taught how to make this unctuous treat, the very thing that has grown up alongside generations of Bến Tre inhabitants. Those were the days: whenever Tết was inching closer on the calendar, villagers started reminding one another to pick coconuts, dry firewood, and purchase sugar. Wood-burning stoves started firing day and night and whenever my mom caramelized her kẹo dừa, the irresistible aroma of sugary coconut hovered in the air, making us salivate in anticipation.

Every kid in town couldn’t wait to get their fingers on those rectangular lozenges of coconut candy to fold in paper. We used to compete on who could fold the best candies in the fastest time. Such was the delight of homemade kẹo dừa, not merely a familiar Tết snack, but a tangible proof of our family culture and the talent of Bến Tre women of the time.

Our moms and sisters all knew how to make traditional kẹo dừa. Photo via YouTube channel Hương Vị Đồng Quê.

My mother taught me how to pick the best coconut for candying: it must be dry enough, golden enough, with thick enough meat. This coconut will produce the thickest milk and won’t go rancid easily. To make malt sugar, she chose the best type of sticky rice with fat, uniform grains. The sugar used to flavor the candy is brown sugar, as this hue will produce the unique golden color of the candy when done.

Everybody told me that in the making of kẹo dừa, stirring is the most strenuous task for one’s hand muscles and eyes. It must be done constantly so the sugar doesn’t burn and the color is uniform. Temperature control is equally crucial because candy-making used to be done on firewood stoves, which required experience in fire control and time precision. Once the coconut syrup thickens and darkens, the hot, viscous mixture is spread out on an oiled surface for easy removal. After it’s cooled down, the final task is to slice it into small chunks and wrap the chunks in paper.

Kẹo dừa is hand-cut and hand-shaped. Photo via Instagram user @va.o.ry.

That was the entire process of candy-making from the memories of my youth. Later, I got a chance to learn how big facilities make kẹo dừa too, which involves machines to help with arduous steps like browning the coconut and stirring. Of course, nowadays, many other iterations of kẹo dừa were invented like durian, peanut, pandan, cocoa, strawberry, gấc, etc. The diversification of flavor gives snack eaters new experiences, taking the culinary development of Bến Tre and Vietnam to a higher level.

There are many flavors of coconut candy to choose from today. Photo via VnExpress.

The treat that nourishes the land of the coconut

My grandmother believes that we can only find true-blue authentic kẹo dừa from Bến Tre. It’s the best representation of the coconut fruit, of the creativity of a craft village, and of the meticulousness of the people of the province. One must eat kẹo dừa slowly, so the decadent richness of coconut milk can melt on the tongue.

Mekong inhabitants often reserve an important space on their welcome tray for kẹo dừa before any guest visits. The image of a teapot, a dry coconut, and a small plate of coconut candies is a familiar sight in southern living rooms. Munch on coconut candy and sip hot tea — these are such rustic but inviting rituals.

An old photo showing candy maker Phạm Thị Tỏ, the founder of the Bến Tre coconut candy brand, inside one of the first modern coconut candy plants in the province. Photo via the Bến Tre Coconut Association.

I grew up under the shade of coconut fronds, so much of our lifestyle was intertwined with the coconut, from the roof above to the columns holding our home up to the food we consume. I still remember the many Tết past when I hopped into the kitchen to help my mom create kẹo dừa. We got up when the sun was barely above the horizon to prepare the ingredients. She always made an unbelievable amount of kẹo dừa — at least a few giant pans. She said we must make a lot of tasty candy to give to our relatives and neighbors. Making kẹo dừa with her was how I learned the importance of fostering a bond with my community.

A graphic design project of new packaging for traditional kẹo dừa using pop art. Image via Behance user Lê Hùng.

Protecting coconut trees is no cakewalk. After years away, with every return trip, I notice that my hometown has changed a lot. Prices drop and pests are abundant, so a plethora of farm owners are increasingly frustrated with maintaining the province’s signature plant. Many have switched to new cash crops in hopes of improving their family situation. It goes to show that tales about the coconut don’t always involve nostalgic memories, but also countless concerns.

Still, the people of Bến Tre have never turned their back on coconut, especially in the realm of food. Thanks to the growth of coconut farm tours, this time-honored confection has become a culinary icon of the province, something that anyone who visits can’t help but bring home to give to friends and family. Coconut candy is a shining example of how artisanal products can both instill cultural values and facilitate economic growth, playing a part in improving the livelihood of the people who created them. As long as farmers can afford to keep coconut farms, coconut trees will continue to take root all over the Mekong Delta.

Kẹo dừa is a Bến Tre icon. Photo by Xuân Hương Hồ.

Towering coconut trees and their ample fruits, the Mekong Delta’s hard-working farmers, and the skills of confectioners — every factor plays a part in lifting kẹo dừa up from a humble countryside treat to the region’s delicacy. For me, coconut candy today is no longer just a childhood treat, it’s taken on new meanings as an anchor of wistfulness and appreciation of my hometown’s flavors. It represents my affection for where I was born, an affection that flows within my blood and across generations.

As a kid, my mom would often buy me chè when the weather was too hot to keep me from drinking Coca-Cola. Chè made by Hoa people always got my attention, thanks to its distinctive presentation. Though, to get to it, I would usually drive to Chợ Lớn, which is fine, but it often involves traversing through traffic jams. So when I discovered Chè Sâm Bổ Lượng 399 on a random Google search, a long-established chè shop run by a Hoa family just 7 minutes from my office, I had to check it out.

While the eatery is tucked in alley 399 of Nguyễn Đình Chiểu Street, it remains noticeable due to its Chinese-style food cart poking out of the front door. But unlike typical food stalls in Chợ Lớn that usually serve hủ tiếu mì, this shop displays all kind of simmered beans, fruits, and tuber slices, 

The rustic shopfront of Chè Sâm Bổ Lượng 399.

The store’s menu offers a wide variety of chè options, but for our first taste, I settled with a bowl of chè trứng cút củ năng, one of the shop’s most talked about dishes in Google reviews; and then, a glass of sâm bổ lượng since the shop is named after this sweet treat. Sâm bổ lượng is how we pronounce ching bo leung, a sweet and cold dessert popular in Cantonese and Hainanese cuisine that usually features pearl barley, dried longans, jujubes, lotus roots, and ginkgo nuts (amongst other toppings depending on where you order it) served in a sweet syrup. The owner quickly scooped tons of ingredients to prepare my order, and everything was ready to be served in about two minutes.

Various grains, tubers, and fruits make up sâm bổ lượng.

At first glance, chè trứng cút củ năng looked strikingly similar to the popular Vietnamese snack súp cua, with its viscous broth and quail eggs as toppings. I asked for the dessert to be served hot because I was curious to see how a sweet version of súp cua would turn out. It was a refreshing experience. The sweet soup is not too thick nor watery; a perfect consistency. Tiny slices of water chestnut were sprinkled everywhere, simmering in the soup, giving the dish a warm, pleasant aroma.

Wedding banquet-style súp cua? No, this is a dessert.

This was my first time seeing quail eggs in a sweet dish; they harmonized well with the sweet soup without feeling out of place. Eating the quail eggs with water chestnuts and small pomegranate seeds made the chewing more playful, with the eggs having a slightly creamy texture; the tuber was soft yet crunchy; and the pomegranate seeds were tender. This hot bowl of chè trứng củ năng, with its gentle sweetness, left me feeling purified, as though it was cleansing me from the inside.

For the sâm bổ lượng, I asked for it to be served cold as I typically enjoy it as a thirst-quenching dessert. Sâm bổ lượng is always a sight to look at, thanks to the colorful ingredients. I remember the first time my mom bought me one when I was a child. I was confused as to why there was seaweed in my drink, but she simply told me to close my eyes and start eating. It worked, conjuring up a refreshing feeling that was organic, unlike the fizzy carbonated sodas that most kids love.

A glass of sâm bổ lượng is ready in less than two minutes.

Looking closely at my cup of sâm bổ lượng, I could see grains of pearl barley, lotus seeds and roots, water chestnut, seaweed, longan, and jujube. This combo creates a mixture of flavors and textures in the sâm bổ lượng glass. The pearl barley, lotus seeds and roots were soft and starchy. The water chestnuts, unlike in chè trứng cút củ năng, were cut into large, crunchy chunks rather than small slices. The seaweed and longans were chewy and lightly sweet, while the jujubes offered a sour flavor, giving the dessert a refreshing, cooling quality.

I savored these two dishes in a small, cozy space that resembled a repurposed living room, with tables and chairs arranged for dining.  There weren’t many customers who chose to sit and enjoy their sweet soup at the shop, as most simply stopped by to grab takeaways before continuing on their way.

A refreshing treat for sweltering afternoons.

Seeing that the owner wasn’t too busy, I asked her a little bit about the store. According to her, Sâm Bổ Lượng 399 is her family business, and they have been serving chè for more than half a decade since the 1960s. Back then, the eatery was located in other areas around this alley, but now it has moved here.

The toppings of chè.

The shop's signature sâm bổ lượng is made using a traditional recipe that has been passed down since the shop first opened. Due to their long-standing presence, they garnered quite a following of regular customers, each favoring a different combination of toppings. The owner mentioned one customer who loved boiled quail eggs, but wanted a cold dessert, so they asked to add quail eggs to their sâm bổ lượng order. Surprisingly, these mix-and-match choices still worked, and the ingredients always seem to blend together well within a cup of sâm bổ lượng. 

All in all, Sâm Bổ Lượng 399 provided me with refreshing desserts made from time-tested traditional recipes. With such a diverse menu, this is a place that I’d love to revisit from time to time, to try new types of chè and grow to love its ingredients. And perhaps one day, I might even request an unconventional sâm bổ lượng combo just to see how it turns out.

Chè Sâm Bổ Lượng 399 is open everyday from 3pm to 9pm.

To sum up:

Taste: 5/5
Price: 5/5
Atmosphere: 4/5
Friendliness: 5/5
Location: 5/5 

Some simple delights can capture the flavor of an entire region.

The toddy palm tree flourishes throughout southern Vietnam, yet it’s in An Giang where it’s most deeply intertwined with daily life. The Khmer people of the Seven Mountains region aptly call it a divine gift. This member of the palm family can be found everywhere — dotting the landscape, casting shade over ancient temples, and playing a role in almost every facet of the community.

Its wood is used to craft boats and its fronds are turned into ropes and roofing, but most prized is the sweet sap harvested from its blossoms, skillfully transformed by artisans into the beloved palm sugar that has become a hallmark of An Giang’s cuisine. 

Toddy palm trees and palm sugar tablets. Photos via Mia.vn

With its distinct sweetness and fragrance, this traditional sugar is the key to many local delicacies, most famously bánh bò thốt nốt, a rustic pancake cherished across the region. Food enthusiasts typically recognize bánh bò thốt nốt in its traditional form: large, soft, spongy loaves or morsels with a generous, hearty portion. However, there is a lesser-known version, which stands out for its unique shape.

At husband-wife duo Thanh Nga and Kim Chi’s humble street cart, bánh bò thốt nốt is made directly on a pan, similar to how bánh xèo is prepared, rather than being steamed or baked. The batter is lightly spread across a hot aluminum pan over a charcoal stove, creating a thin layer. The pan is then covered with a clay lid, allowing the heat to distribute evenly until the pancake turns a golden yellow.

Nga, an An Giang native, migrated to Saigon with his family decades ago but carried with him the knowledge of making pan-cooked bánh bò, an art that was passed down from his mother. The recipe is simple, relying on basic ingredients like rice flour, eggs, and yeast, as well as the key components of palm sugar and coconut meat which are sent fresh from his hometown. The elderly couple gets up early every morning to prepare and ferment the batter, while manually grating ripe palm fruits and adding them to the mixture for a rich, nutty flavor.

While its exact origin is unknown, bánh bò thốt nốt chảo is believed to share similarities with bánh bò Ha Cô, a delicacy of the Chăm ethnic community in An Giang. Nga explained that thanks to the natural properties of palm sugar, no butter or oil is needed to cook the pastry. The batter forms a crisp outer layer while remaining soft and airy inside, retaining the classic honeycomb structure of a traditional bánh bò.

Each bite offers the creamy richness of coconut and the light sweetness of palmyra sugar, perfectly capturing the heart of An Giang’s natural offerings. Nga lovingly describes it: “It's subtle, it's delicate, and it always carries that familiar scent of palm sugar.”

You know a dish is special when it can spark conversation with a stranger on a bus. Halfway through the scrumptious bánh củ cải (radish cake) from our last-minute trip to the market, I shared the other half with my mom. "You're full?" asked a lady in the bunk next to us, which was then followed by a long discussion. I came home with several handy tips on how to recreate and elevate the already flavorful treat.

If one ever find themselves in Bạc Liêu Province, the name bánh củ cải points to two different things: bánh củ cải Tiều, which was the radish cake I had on the bus, also known as sái thào cúi; and another type of bánh củ cải that resembles a vegetable-forward hybrid between a dumpling and a bánh cuốn dish, referred to as bánh củ cải, bánh củ cải Bạc Liêu or bánh củ cải xếp. To make matters even more complicated, bánh củ cải is also what many people in southern Vietnam with Teochew origins call youtiao, giò chéo quẩy or giò cháo quẩy.

Bánh củ cải Tiều

At 6am, the big Bạc Liêu market, more commonly called chợ lớn by locals, is bustling with people and motorcycles. The usual business might have been escalated by thanh minh, or tomb-sweeping day, as many families are making trips to markets to get flowers, fruits and food for ancestral offerings. The Chinese ancestor memorial tradition is one of Bạc Liêu's largest holidays, due to the large population of Teochew (Han Chinese people native to historical Chaozhou Prefecture) descendants here, of which my family is one.

In the front yard of a gold shop, a stall sells various types of bánh, including bánh bò, bánh bông lan, bánh tổ, bánh xôi vị, etc. As soon as one of the owners bring out a tray full of round bánh củ cải Tiều, motorcycles and people from different directions hurry towards it. Besides having a reputation as the go-to place for bánh củ cải in Bạc Liêu, a crowd gathers because there are only two vendors that sell it in the market, and possibly in the whole city. Most bánh củ cải appearances in Mekong Delta occur within the walls of Teochew homes.

A typical batch of bánh củ cải Tiều is made with a combination of shredded radish and rice flour combined with fillings such as dried shrimp, lạp xưởng, dried shiitake mushroom, peanuts and small shrimp that have been seasoned and sauteed. The mixture is then steamed with added coriander leaves. Some cooks might add chicken broth or other types of stocks to add flavor to the rice flour batter. When ready, bánh củ cải Tiều can be enjoyed immediately, or saved in the fridge to be fried up later. While the cake is often steamed in a round pan and then cut up to slices, it also exists in spherical form, with each cake about the size of a fist.

Making and consuming bánh củ cải Tiều is an important marker of the Teochew identity in Bạc Liêu and other provinces in the lower parts of Mekong Delta, such as Cà Mau and Sóc Trăng. A quick scan through a Facebook group that connects Teochew people in Vietnam demonstrates this point. The keyword bánh củ cải brings up plenty of photos of people showcasing their bánh củ cải creations and micro-entrepreneurs selling homemade bánh củ cải. Minh Cúc, a journalist from a Teochew family, once writes in her book Pà Pá Mình Kiếm Món Gì Ngon Ăn Đi about feeling ashamed when she was young because she didn't know what bánh củ cải was, despite her family background. 

Since Teochew people in Southeast Asia originate from Shantou, Jieyang and Chaozhou cities, which make up the Chaoshan region in China's Guangdong Province, Teochew cuisine shares some similarities with its Cantonese counterpart. The ingredients and recipes for bánh củ cải Tiều are strikingly similar to Cantonese lo bak go. One could also make the connection to the Teochew s taple chai tow kway, or fried radish cake cubes.

Bánh củ cải xếp

Neither Ly or Mai remembers exactly when they started making bánh củ cải xếp, beyond “some long time ago.” Both women also expresse nonchalance towards my praise of what they're making, since according to them, bánh củ cải xếp is just an ordinary treat. However, for people who used to live in Bạc Liêu and fell in love with the dish but now live in other parts of the country, bánh củ cải xếp remains an item of nostalgia, as the dish is nowhere to be found outside of the area.

Mai, who has a Khmer grandmother and a Teochew grandfather, learned how to make bánh củ cải xếp by helping her mom, who also used to sell the dish in a small market. For Mai, making bánh củ cải xếp is just one talent among the various cooking and baking skills and knowledge that female members of her family possess and pass on to younger generations, as long as one is open to learning. Similarly, Ly also learned from her sister. When I ask about the dish's origins, Ly says: “I saw someone in my house make it and then I learned and made it, I don't know the origins.” She then laughs out loud.

While bánh củ cải Tiều is eaten inside the home, bánh củ cải xếp is Bạc Liêu's quintessential street food. Despite carrying the name bánh củ cải, which literally translates to radish cake, the dish doesn't contain radish. Mai tells me that there was a time when people did use radish in the fillings, but many switched to jicama, or củ sắn, for a sweeter flavor. The filling is made with sauteed, grated jicama, pork and shrimp, all wrapped in a flat rice flour noodle sheet akin to bánh cuốn and hủ tiếu, and then served with a generous amount of raw vegetables and sweet fish sauce.

Making the wrappers is an art in and of itself. Mai and Ly are both against using rice flour for the dish and stick to using bột gạo nước, which is milled rice. According to Mai, rice flour isn't fresh enough and will make the batter sour. To make the batter, rice has to be soaked first, before it is milled. Every day, Ly and Mai wake up at sunrise to grind rice into a liquid and use all of it within the same day. The right ratio of rice and water is crucial for the batter texture. The freshness of the milled rice will also produce a better flavor. Because of this involved process, many bánh củ cải vendors are only open for a brief window from opening time until they run out of bánh củ cải.

The origins of the dish are unclear. One writer, however, associates bánh củ cải xếp to many quang gánh by Khmer vendors: “The Khmer made the wrappers for bánh củ cải using only rice flour, with minimal fat from oil and lard and thus it is very light ... The most crucial element that dictates whether the Khmer-style bánh củ cải is delicious or not lies in the milling and how you steam it. If the wrappers come out thin and chewy, its maker is dexterous.”

This article was originally published in 2019.

Hợp Tác Xã Thịt Xiên is more than just a bánh mì eatery, it’s a place to rekindle your childhood nostalgia and take in the ambiance of the street.

For me, amongst the countless number of bánh mì thịt xiên nướng joints in Hanoi, one really stands out. Lê Hoàng Đức set up Hợp Tác Xã Thịt Xiên — or the meat skewer co-op — in 2011 when he was just 21. After quitting his regular job, Đức pursued his dream of starting his own business and settled on a small, homemade food operation. It began as a humble stall in alley 66 off Chùa Láng Street, with only a few plastic stools.

This skewer place is one of the longest-running snack vendors in Hanoi.

“It was a hard time back then,” he told me. “We didn’t have enough customers to cover our expenses. We had to push through all the obstacles and try to keep the business running. Although one good thing [was] that we didn’t have to pay rent since we were only open on the street.”

Wishing to keep the price reasonable, Đức charged VND7,000 VND for xiên thịt (pork meat skewers) and VND3,000 for bánh mì, while trà đá was free. Not only was the price cheap, but the skewers were also a cut above the rest and, thanks to word-of-mouth reviews, more and more customers found their way to the stall.

Hợp Tác Xã's aesthetics fall in line with youth culture.

“There were times when we sold 1,000 skewers and served more than 400 customers in less than an hour, and there was a line of people waiting for their turn,” Đức said.

After six years of serving 50 kilograms of meat every day, together with the support of food lovers, he finally realized his dream of upgrading his stall from the alley to a proper house.

Cheeky (literally) gimmicks remain a core attribute of the decoration.

“I named it Hợp Tác Xã Thịt Xiên as I remembered my uncle telling me stories about those co-operatives back in the day; how everyone worked together really well to keep the place running. It’s the same here. I’ve had people working with me for years now. We are like a family,” Đức said.

Although it’s now a proper restaurant, the decor remains modest, albeit a little gimmicky. In an attempt to keep the street food experience vibe, the team brought elements of the “pavement” inside the restaurant: plastic and wooden stools, the “Ngõ 66” sign, a rustic brick wall, barbed wire and one of the capital’s famous electricity posts covered in black wires.

Bánh mì thịt xiên is still one of the menu's best-selling item.

Góc Tự Giác is a new addition featuring some all-time favorite childhood snacks. What’s cool about this corner is that there is no staff around, so it’s a self-checkout system if you want to buy something from the baskets.

The most important thing that makes Hợp Tác Xã stand out, however, is the quality of its grilled meat. With crispy bread and succulent meat, their bánh mì thịt xiên is still the best-selling dish on the menu. You can choose to have one, two or three skewers. The recipe might sound simple, and it is, but the real secret is the marinade. The ratio between fish sauce, oyster sauce and honey has to be perfect so the skewers come out juicy, fragrant and scrumptious.

An inviting smokeyness gives the skewers an addicting edge.

On top of that, you get to choose which sauce you want on top: coconut sauce, tamarind sauce, or classic spicy mayo. They’ve also added a few more items to the menu, like nộm thịt xiên (green papaya salad with skewers) and peach tea, kumquat tea or soy milk.

“During eight years in the business, we were on the street for more than five years. I feel blessed because I had that stepping stone and support from people who’ve been coming back,” Đức said. “Being on the street for that long was the main reason why I wanted to bring that atmosphere to the restaurant when I opened it, in the hope of creating that same aesthetic people love.”

You can find Hợp Tác Xã Thịt Xiên at 55 Chùa Láng. They open from 11am to 1pm, and again from 4pm to 7pm.

This article was originally published in 2019 on Urbanist Hanoi. 

To sum up:

Taste: 5/5
Price: 5/5
Atmosphere: 5/5
Friendliness: 5/5
Location: 3/5

At night, Gia Nguyễn is a drag queen. In the day time, all he does is eat noodles.

It started with tamarind, and ended with crab.

Gazing up from central Saigon sidewalks, one will notice thick canopies consisting of small pinnated leaves: an arrangement that calls to mind the spikes splayed on stegosaurus tails. Tamarind trees are native to Africa but have been part of the city’s urban makeup since the French brought centrally planned streets arranged in a neat grid pattern to Indochina. Being pallid vampires, they required constant shade. Tamarind trees were selected as the ideal trees to provide it, because their roots wouldn’t destroy the concrete and they blocked significant sunshine. 

Some people collect the fallen tamarind fruits and occasional street vendors sell them for eating fresh or in simple cooking, unlike peanuts and carrots which have made their way into a variety of dishes despite not being native. Still, tamarind hasn’t been widely embraced outside of đá me and the occasional dipping sauce. Why not? This question led us to list as many tamarind-centric dishes as we could, which in turn brought us to Thúy 94 Cũ.

Far from unknown, Thúy 94 Cũ has been popular for years, and was recently featured in the Vietnam version of the Michelin Guide. Saigoneer even reviewed it back in 2016 for our long-running Hẻm Gems series. Still, most people know it as a great place for miến xào cua thanks to the ample servings of plump, fresh crab meat. That dish is terrific, of course, but we suggest you go to honor the splendors of tamarind via Thúy 94 Cũ's cua rang me.

Thúy explained the secret behind the dish whose recipe she devised herself over years of simple trial and error. Unlike rival shops that add starch or other thickening agents to the sauce, she boils down large tamarinds sourced from different suppliers without their seeds. Taken on its own, the sauce is a distilled slap of sugary-sweet tamarind. But when lavished over soft crustacean flesh, it exists as a sultry undertone. 

Cua rang me and its shrimp-focused alternative tôm rang me made with the same sauce is a great dish to understand why this restaurant is so popular, so much so that it has invited an imitator at its original namesake address next door. This saucy, tamarind-rich dish is a rare opportunity for me enthusiasts to indulge their preferences, and a prime example of the strange historical happenstances that underpine some of our favorite dishes.  

Another Trung Thu season is just around the corner, and bakeries across Vietnam are busy at work churning out thousands of mooncakes to be given out as gifts or relish at home with family and friends. One meticulous local baker, however, had a different idea.

Thùy Dương, a 29-year-old baking instructor living in Hanoi, practically became a mini celebrity overnight after she posted a set of photos detailing her latest mooncake project in a Facebook forum for cooking enthusiasts. Titled “Hồi ức” (Nostalgia), the project is a 30-kilogram diorama of a northern-style country house that’s made from mooncake entirely by hand.

Born and raised in rural Tuyên Quang, a peripheral province in northeastern Vietnam, Dương holds the visuals of her hometown close to her heart, especially local traditional homestead and its typical elements. “The roof, brick yard, moss-strewn walls, and the palm tree in front of the house — they’ve become memories that I won’t ever forget,” she writes in the post description. “No matter how difficult that past was, I still want to remember it, and I will use my efforts to preserve it.”

The project stands out thanks to its impressive realism.

“Hồi ức” is an impressive feat in many aspects of the craft. As every element is shaped and baked by hand, it took Dương and her team many days just to lay the bricks or cut out each leaf individually from wafer paper. She estimated that she made up to a thousand pieces of roof tiles for the rooms. Bigger components have a mung bean core, much that that of normal mooncakes, and are covered in dough and baked.

Apart from the structure, the project is also striking in its attention to detail. The diorama features tiny objects and even trees often spotted in traditional homes: a well at the back of the house for everyday water needs, a jackfruit tree provides shade and fruits, a banana tree with its crimson flower, various clay receptacle to store rainwater, salt, or pickled cabbage. Even the fallen leaves on the roof are included for a touch of reality.

Overall, Dương’s eye for texture gives the mooncake diorama a hyper-realistic quality that can pass for clay or sculpture. From the patches of moss that coat the roof tiles to the cracks on the clay pots, each detail is painted on using small brushes and food colorings.

Dương shared with local media that she graduated from university in 2017 with a degree in banking. After a few years working for a local bank, she quit her job in 2019 to pursue baking fulltime. Last year, she also finished a mooncake project producing pastries inspired by traditional motifs from Đông Hồ folk paintings, like a rooster, a dragon, and a carp.

[Photos courtesy of Thùy Dương via Dân Trí and Thanh Niên]

If I have to use one word to describe the food philosophy of Saigoneers, it would be maximalist. Those who have had the gluttonous joy of hunkering down on a plastic chair on the sidewalk and demolishing a giant tumbler of full-topping bubble tea will know what I’m talking about.

In the eyes and mouths of Saigoneers, just a bowl of noodles or plate of rice simply doesn’t cut it, so phần đặc biệt — the most expensive permutation of toppings at any given local eatery — exists as a reminder that the people of Saigon loves to let their palates dance. A cơm tấm đặc biệt comes with a pork chop, a crispy ốp la, a bundle of shredded pork skin, a hunk of chả trứng, and pickled vegetables. So what’s in a cao lầu đặc biệt? This week’s Hẻm Gems feature heads to Cô Ba Ân, a relatively new eatery in Saigon that brings this Hội An specialty to Saigoneers.

Cô Ba Ân is decorated in a way that evokes traditional Hội An houses.

Cao lầu is the ancient town’s most celebrated delicacy, a noodle dish that’s paradoxically both simple and complex. Its simplicity lies in the number of elements: cao lầu noodles, thịt xíu, a dark sauce, fresh herbs, and crackers on top for a touch of crunch. The complexity, however, comes from how each of those components used to only come from a specific part of Hội An and nowhere else, carrying the unique tastes, techniques, and local qualities of the historic trading port.

The new hẻm where the restaurant calls home.

Today, it is not as challenging to find cao lầu outside of Hội An, for decades of migration have placed Quảng Nam natives everywhere in the country, bringing with them the secrets of their hometown’s unique noodle dish. I’ve had the privilege of trying cao lầu from Mì Quảng Trí Hội An, a humble eatery in Tân Bình operated by a family with roots from Hội An. Here, a bowl of cao lầu is faithful to its original existence in the number of elements, though it comes as no surprise that it’s logistically impossible to source every ingredient from Central Vietnam.

The simple interior.

Cô Ba Ân’s cao lầu, however, represents a delightful intersection between Hội An cuisine and Saigon’s tendency to feast. I discovered this humble restaurant completely by chance thanks to Google Maps: one day a few months ago, I was browsing the app to look for a place near the Saigoneer office to get takeout to bring home for dinner when the orange pin of Cô Ba Ân popped up. There was no way I would pass up one of my favorite noodle dishes, especially that close to me, so I had to make my way there for a quick slurping, and the rest is history.

Interestingly, I got to know the restaurant while it was on the cusp of a major change in location. From a tiny nook with a handful of tables and limited parking space, the version of Cô Ba Ân that readers see in this Hẻm Gems feature is a vast improvement: better seats, air-conditioning, and, of course, kick-ass cao lầu.

A bowl of cao lầu comes with thịt xíu, grilled pork, a roll of ram, and crackers.

According to Ân, one of the titular “Ân” in the name, the place was founded in 2019 as a way for her mom to make some additional income. During the next three years of operation, it shuffled through a few locations and remained nameless. Luckily, 2022 turned out to be a successful year, so they gave it the name “Cô Ba Ân,” for two reasons: Ân and her mother are both the third sibling of their parents, and Ân has another sister also named Ân. The trio decided to select the name to honor the significance of the number three in their lives.

A portion of cao lầu đặc biệt at Cô Ba Ân is no small feat. On a bed of golden brown cao lầu noodles sit slices of thịt xíu, chunks of grilled pork, crispy fried crackers and shallots, fresh veggies, and a roll of ram. This pile of goodies is accompanied by a small bowl of caramel-colored soy-based broth that gives off a pleasant wisp of five-spice. Before diving into the mix, I would highly recommend adding a generous dollop of the house-made chili jam provided on the table.

Ready to dig in!

There are a number of ways the cao lầu here might differ from what one’s used to in Central Vietnam. The grilled pork, roll of ram, and fried shallots don’t exist in the original iteration, and the soy broth is a smidgen sweeter; but to me, all of these additions have fortunately improved upon the classic, even though the generous amount of food makes for a significant meal that might leave you (me) dozing off in the middle of meetings. The grilled pork, using a fatty cut and glossy marinade, is my favorite part of the bowl, surprisingly even more than the traditional slices of xá xíu, for it manages to stay moist and moreish throughout.

A dollop of sa tế ớt adds some heat and sweetness.

Like many other regional food places in Saigon, Cô Ba Ân was born from a migrant family’s desire to eat the food of their hometown, but can’t find it in the city. “As Central Vietnam natives who live away from home, all three of us always hope to share our hometown’s special dishes to everyone,” Ân tells me in an email. “Specifically, I really love cao lầu, but it’s not very common in Saigon. Coincidentally, one time my dad said he missed it a lot, and bought cao lầu noodles in Saigon so my mom could make it. That was the story of how we got into the restaurant business.”

Cô Ba Ân refers to the “mother and daughters” team behind the counter.

The biggest challenge the eatery faces, according to Ân, is sourcing and processing cao lầu noodles, which the family imports in dry bundles from Hội An. “Soaking the noodles takes up most of our time every day, that’s why we open quite late,” she explains. “To arrive at strands of noodles that are tender enough for serving, we had to experiment with several different ways.” That very distinctive chew of cao lầu is my most favorite thing about this special noodle from Hội An. It’s big like udon but there isn’t that doughy aftertaste, and the minimal addition of the soy-based broth helps keep the texture from getting soggy. Apart from the imported noodles, Cô Ba Ân makes nearly everything else in-house, from the sparkling soy sauce to the sa tế ớt, something that’s so addictive, “others even bought the sa tế ớt to eat with bánh tráng trộn,” Ân says with pride.

The space for dining has recently expanded, but Cô Ba Ân gets much of its popularity from food delivery apps.

More is more. Such is the guiding philosophy I personally follow every time I visit a new eatery. I order their phần đặc biệt, sample every topping, and decide for myself what I will keep for later visits — if there will be any. I have enjoyed nearly everything Cô Ba Ân puts in front of me, with the exception of the fried roll, which I don’t think adds much to the cao lầu discourse. Whether this version of cao lầu is authentic is outside of my expertise, for I’m neither from Central Vietnam nor have I tried a cao lầu in Hội An. As a maximalist eater, however, I can proclaim with resounding authority that Cô Ba Ân’s cao lầu is a stellar representative of my culture.

Cô Ba Ân is open from 10:30am to 2pm and 4:30pm to 8:30pm.

To sum up:

Taste: 5/5
Price: 4/5
Atmosphere: 5/5
Friendliness: 5/5
Location: 4/5

Khôi loves noodles, is a raging millennial and will write for food.

Rarely have I gone into a meal with such anticipation.

Through a combination of bad weather and conflicting schedules, my dinner at District 10’s finest duck noodle spot was postponed several times before it actually happened. In the interim, we dispatched our film crew to create the food envy-inducing video below and our photographer, Brandon, made a visit or two on his own to capture the photogenic noodles.

But while everyone else was getting in on the braised duck goodness buried down an alley off Nguyễn Tri Phương, I was only hearing about it.

“You’ve gotta check out this duck spot,” Brandon told me. The photos of his trip — the ones you see here — later surfaced in our work exchanges, taunting me. By the time yesterday afternoon rolled around, I was ravenous and excited. It felt exclusive, like I was going to meet a celebrity. This underscores my relationship to food: put me in front of Sơn Tùng, Taylor Swift or any army of K-pop singers and I couldn't care less; tell me we’re going to eat a mean bowl of duck noodles and I get the jitters.

The sign out front of Nguyễn Tri Phương’s hẻm 481 looks depressing, but it doesn’t take long to see how misleading this signage is. Just a few feet down the alley, a standard steel street cart is lit by fluorescents. Behind it, waiters pile heaps of braised duck into plastic tubs. The golden brown thighs look sexy on their own, but pair them with equally generous tubs of mì — real, genuine egg noodles, not the instant version you see so casually substituted into many a local meal — plus a killer broth, and you’re in heaven.

These flavorful noodles, served from 3pm to 10pm everyday, come with several different parts of the duck — breast, thigh, neck, phao câu — but what you want to spring for is the house specialty: mì đùi vịt góc tư. The dish features a trifecta of well-made, mouthwatering components: rich, flavorful broth, a generous serving of golden-brown braised duck and a tuft of al dente egg noodles.

In my experience, duck can be a divisive protein; people either love it or hate it. The general complaint among the haters is its texture and consistency, too tough and chewy for some. But this duck manages to attain that perfect, fall-off-the-bone quality that eludes lesser cooks, and combined with the other main ingredients, plus a few spring onions and the odd táo tàu (jujube), it’ll have you ordering seconds.

Beyond the bowl — I only looked up for a few brief moments during my meal, so caught up in the euphoria of duck noodles was I — 481’s dining area occupies one side of the alley. Outside, waiters serve customers beneath a string of heavy-duty fluorescent lights, while a single table indoors is used for inclement weather and larger parties. Across the alley and around the corner, another house also handles overflow from the main cart. Last but not least, the Chinese music streaming from a stereo somewhere inside the alley is a nice finishing touch.

On the whole, 481’s duck noodle cart does not come with the bustling, frenetic energy infused into most evening street food joints but this, too, is part of its charm. Sometimes, after a long wait, a lengthy pilgrimage from District 1 and a solid week of anticipation, you just want to enjoy your meal in peace.

Mì Vịt Tiềm Thượng Hải is open from 4pm to 9pm.

This article was originally published in 2016.

To sum up:

Taste: 5/5
Price: 4/5
Atmosphere: 5/5
Friendliness: 4/5
Location: 3/5

Dana is 70% caffeine, 50% fish sauce and hasn't taken a math class since 2004.

When book lovers open a café, we are blessed with book cafes; when animal lovers open a café, we are given a myriad of animal cafes; what happens when florists open a café? This is the case of Mơ Đi Hội, the physical manifestation of passions for plants and beverages.

Mơ Đi Hội is on the fourth floor of a small apartment building on Nguyễn Trãi.

Having seen a couple of videos online about the café nestled deep in an old apartment on Nguyễn Trãi Street, I was determined to visit. It seemed like something straight out of Japanese band Lamp’s Soyokaze Apartment Room 201 album. The videos depicted a small and cozy café, with an eclectic collection of plants and creatively decorated drinks. When I arrived at the address, the entrance was rather nondescript: a small door frame that led to a slightly bigger flight of stairs behind a couple of old ladies selling bánh mì. The colorful signs plastered on old, decrepit walls directed me to the small space up on the fourth floor of the building. Upon stepping inside, I was welcomed by the smell of fresh plants and flowers.

Stepping through the door, visitors are greeted with a smorgasbord of plants.

As florists, the founders of Mơ Đi Hội were deeply inspired by their love of nature when they opened the café. Each corner of the place is draped in plants, offering a completely different environment from the labyrinthine apartment complex and the chaos of Vietnamese roads outside. The cafe offers various seating options, from sofas by the windows, and seats at the dining table to floor seats on the loft accessible by a ladder. I recommend the floor seats in the room on the right of the entrance, where you’ll find a gorgeous view of the Huyện Sỹ Church. Surrounded by carefully curated plants, I looked through the window that showcased a juxtaposition of the urban chaos and the calm atmosphere of the cafe.

The floor seats offer the best views of the surrounding neighborhood.

Inspired by Nguyễn Huệ apartments, the founders of Mơ Đi Hội were on the lookout for a lively location for their cafe. From the walls tinted with marks of time to the multiple lived-in apartment units and the plethora of other cafes and stores, Mơ Đi Hội’s home location indeed showcases Saigon's liveliness. The founders also intended the location to provide guests with the everyday life of Saigoneers. “It was in these old apartment buildings that Mơ was able to explore authentic qualities in Saigonese people,” says the café through their website.

When florists dream of opening a cafe.

It was through the florists’ dreams to open a flower shop that started their vision to open a café. Mơ Đi Hội not only serves as a quaint escape from the fast-paced city but also as a place for the founders to water and grow their artistic expressions. Sơn Trần, one of the founders, writes on their website: “I always wish to have a private space, where I can immerse myself in nature, enjoy the harmony with trees, flowers and leaves, and from there, recreate my spirit and convey beauty to everyone in everyday life.” Mơ đi Hội acts not only as a manifestation of the founders’ artistic spirit but also as a vessel to connect people with nature. This artistic spirit is not only found in the decorations of the cafe, but also in the way the drinks are brewed and decorated. Even the takeaway cups were nicely adorned with a tiny bouquet of flowers.

For Mơ, the café acts as a vessel to “build a spirit of bringing nature into the city, using anywhere that still has the life of nature attached to daily life.” At the same time, Mơ wants to “revive forgotten spaces such as old apartments, garden houses or unfinished construction projects to allow the life of flowers, leaves, grass and trees and limit the construction and demolition of works over time,” an employee shares with me in Vietnamese via Zoom.

Mơ Đi Hội's seating arrangements are all unique, thanks to a spontaneous sense of interior design.

As for the food and beverages, Mơ Đi Hội prides itself on its locally sourced ingredients and emphasis on Vietnamese flavors. The menu highlights Vietnamese dishes, from the classic bánh mì ốp la to the more underrated options like cơm nhà, chicken feet and various proteins marinated with mắm. This dedication towards highlighting Vietnam also shows in their drinks as classic Vietnamese ingredients and flavors are used with anything from red hibiscus, ginger or xí muội. The names of these concoctions all take inspiration from Vietnam and its historical figures: from Công trường Lam Sơn to Alexandre Yersin and Alexandre De Rhodes.

Sipping a drink with the view of the Huyện Sĩ Church in the close distance.

I ordered their best-selling drink, trà hoa nở (blooming tea). At first, it seemed like a classic milk tea served in many other cafes and street stalls around Saigon, but nicely adorned with a flower and its petals. However, upon tasting it, their aromatic oolong tea blend shone in the drink, whereas the teas in casual milk tea are usually almost undetectable due to the use of milk powder, sugar syrup and other ingredients. Instead of using milk powder and classic tapioca balls in the drink, Mơ Đi Hội substitutes it with soy milk and homemade grass jelly, which subdue an otherwise very sweet drink. The drink is then topped off with an airy salt foam, usually found in salt coffee, which brings out the sweetness and creaminess of the drink.

If you are ever in the area, take some time to explore this old apartment building. Remember to stop by Mơ Đi Hội to find out how a few florists transform their passions for nature into intricately made drinks and dishes.

Mơ Đi Hội is open from 8am to 10pm every day.

To sum up:

Taste: 5/5
Price: 3/5 — prices on the more expensive side, especially for signature drinks and mocktails. VND55,000–60,000 for a classic cà phê đen or cà phê sữa; VND75,000–85,000 for signature drinks.
Atmosphere: 4.5/5
Friendliness: 4/5
Location: 3.5/5

Delivering premium origin coffee and fine art from artists across Vietnam in a tiny room that dates back to French colonial times, smack dab in the middle of District 1, The Ghé Coffee balances the finer things in life and the comfortably mundane.

On a beautiful morning in Saigon that's sun-drenched, raucous, glorious, I was on an errand run with my dad, venturing into the thick of District 1 where all the action goes down. The heat sweltered and the tarmac roads groaned, and we were beat, drenched in sweat. We needed a quiet refuge, and quickly. Rummaging through Google Maps, I came across The Ghé Coffee. Like coming across an oasis in the middle of a trek across the desert, I was equally grateful and suspicious. Upon entering the alleyway, it was hard to miss the three signs, centimeters away from each other, all pointing in the same direction. With every step up the fairy-lighted stairs, my suspicions faded and anticipations grew; suddenly it did not feel like District 1 anymore.

Upon arrival, the aromatic scent of coffee soothes the nerves. Soft lighting from the sun reaches through the balcony and jutting circular window, the cafe’s only. Vibrant artworks of various styles but in a common theme, Vietnam, hang on the walls. Gentle music plays in the background, like wooden wind chimes, resounding a light calm throughout the space. The pleasant sensory experience distracts from time, from your day’s plans, from how small the space really is, even from sitting down or ordering. When I eventually snapped out of the trance and walked to the barista’s counter to order, I was guided to take a seat instead — not a common routine for cafes in Saigon. I chose to sit right by their only window. I was then handed a menu boasting a well-curated assortment of coffee-based drinks, non-coffee drinks, and savory and sweet finger foods and snacks. 

As I later learned, The Ghé Coffee’s ingredients are high quality, especially the robusta and arabica coffee beans from Lâm Đồng. In my cold brew: sourness and floral notes dominated, and a subtle sweetness peeked through as if to say hello. In my dad’s cà phê sữa Ghé, the bitterness characteristic of robusta appeared only faintly, taking an assisting role to the fresh floral notes, and a delectable sweet creaminess. Illuminating me to the secret of their “must try” drink, a helpful Ghé staff member said that the bitterness is so faint because a robusta-arabica blend is used and it is extracted through an espresso machine in a very specific way, as opposed to the traditional 100% robusta and through phin filter extraction. Also, in addition to the condensed milk, cheese foam is used to impart a creamy texture. Fear not the special twist, as the concoction truly works. All this to say that The Ghé Coffee is dedicated to detail and depth, which wonderfully extends to their spatial layout.

From the large paintings on the walls to the little ceramic coasters, every detail seems chosen with care. Above a corner in the cafe hangs ‘Lovers’ by Vũ Đình Tuấn, a pair of artworks from the same collection depicting two arched bodies facing towards each other, made with floral velveteen cloth calling to mind olden Vietnamese blankets. “Aside from being two of my favorites, they are also the signature artworks for The Ghé Coffee,” co-owner Tuệ Minh explained about the artwork when we talk during a later visit with the Saigoneer team. “They inspire recollection of a simpler Vietnamese childhood.” This attention-commanding pair so aptly represents the cafe’s elevated homey pre-modern Vietnamese energy that it came as no surprise when Tuệ Minh told me that she never removes them on her routine art rotations.

Outside, on the cafe’s balcony, plants claim their space and stray cats loiter. The eclectic decorations include a Đông Hồ folk woodcut painting, green-and-blue glazed ceramic pigs, and a resin fish bowl. A close-up view of a dangerously heavy, entangled electric pole, a Vietnamese signature sight, is on display. Something about the aureate light, beautiful decoration, genteel music, refreshing drinks, and fragrant snacks seem to get conversations going. So much so that before I realized it, I was having a heart-to-heart with my dad, for the first time in a long time. Apparently, sipping on coffee and spilling all the tea was the vibe of the day. 

“If I had to choose, my favorite time to visit the cafe is in the morning,” said Tuệ Minh. “From the balcony, you can appreciate the birds chirping, the buzz of people going to work, the gentle breeze, and there is a local elderly couple that always visit together, relishing a cup of coffee together.” This cinematic snapshot of local Saigon life is full of genuine charm; truly a delightful people-watching experience!

Soft-spoken yet concise, Tuệ Minh originally hails from the north, which might begin to explain the distinct aesthetics of The Ghé Coffee. Mixing French Indochine with elegant, laidback northern interior design, the energy is reminiscent of cafe bệt culture. Somewhere one might like to catch their pace before work, after work, or after school, soaking in the frivolity of life. “Similar to cafe bệt, I try to keep our operational costs down in order to do the same for customers,” Tuệ Minh said, “but at The Ghé Coffee, we don’t compromise on the quality of drinks.” 

With an eye for the premium, yet an appreciation for the rustic, Tuệ Minh seeks to bring normally elitist joys of good coffee and fine art to the everyday visitor. Tuệ Minh revealed that all artworks displayed in the cafe are originals in her own personal collection from various living artists. “When choosing which pieces to display, aside from basic things like value and size, variety is one of my top considerations, as I want to introduce visitors to a wide range of great Vietnamese artists.”

The art does not stop at the walls, however. I learned that the cafe’s very floor is a work of art left by a previous artist tenant. A wash of industrial emerald green reveals several different shades that sheen at the touch of sunlight. The building itself, a remnant of colonial architecture, features unmistakably Saigon-style ventilation holes at the top of the walls. A recent revamp sees the room now filled with friendly, inviting padded terracotta and emerald green industrial-style chairs and low-to-the-ground wooden stools. Thus, the cafe’s small size is less a limitation, and more an opportunity.

When talk with Tuệ Minh turned to the logistics of running a business, she explained that her customer base is roughly 50% foreign and 50% local. “We don’t run any advertisements,” she said explaining the cafe’s organic reach. “Foreigners and tourists find us on Google Maps, and locals find us on social media.” If there is one demographic they do not cater to, however, it would be those who are looking for gimmicky instantaneous photo spots posing as unique selling points. “I am not a fan of the Instagrammable cafe culture,” she said while noting that she also has a reluctance towards opening new branches. She prefers to continue to trial-and-error her way through, giving her all to one location. 

I intend to revisit often: for daddy-daughter dates, studying, meeting friends and acquaintances, and indulging in a momentary refuge from the southern metropolis’ insanity. I especially recommend it for those who are nurturing their inner artist, those who love cats, birds, and ceramics, and locals who need a spot to show visitors a Saigon calm.

The Ghé Coffee opens from 8am to 7pm every day.

To sum up:

To sum up:
Taste: 4/5
Price: 3.5/5 — average VND55,000 / drink
Atmosphere: 5/5
Friendliness: 5/5
Location: 5/5 — Motorbike parking in the alley.

Khuê is Saigonese born and raised but now goes wherever the wind blows, which often means a cinema, beach, park bench or quaint cafe.

The highway eases into sand and gravel the way history descends into myth and legend when traveling towards Long An. A mere 27 kilometers outside of Saigon, the province feels a world away: the difference between a cocktail made with 18-year-old scotch, jackfruit-infused rum, seven types of bitters and brandy-soaked organic cherries and a plastic water bottle of homemade rượu nếp. The latter was the reason we were going there: for information, interviews and anecdotes to complete Saigoneer’s two-part investigation of the history of rice wine.

Google Maps was a horrible guide for our trip. Similarly, unanswered emails, ignored Facebook messages and websites that hadn’t been updated for years meant we were going in fairly blind. We thought we had a general idea of where to find a community still crafting the traditional liquor, but our crew of two staff photographers, one who served as a translator, and a writer, were nervous until we started seeing plastic gasoline jugs prominently displayed on roadsides besides signs boasting rice wine for sale.

Perhaps they were intrigued by the trio who claimed to be journalists; maybe they were surprised that anyone was expressing interest in what they considered a mundane occupation; possibly they just appreciated the company; but, for whatever reason, many of the elderly women milling around their storefronts were eager to invite us inside their homes to talk with us and show us their operations.

The basics of rice wine production is simple. Rice is boiled until soft, then laid out with a layer of fermentation starter containing yeast and various ingredients sprinkled atop for three days; and, finally kept in big plastic tubs for two weeks before it is distilled — a process that removes the impure elements from the final product.

It's all about rice quality. In the small-batch rice wine business, one’s success depends entirely on reputation, so — beyond not cutting the liquor with harmful chemicals — the right type of rice must be expertly paired with the proper yeast starter. Phan Thi Kim Nguyen, pictured above, explained that in addition to generations of knowledge that contribute to recipes, a good rice wine maker must know how to tailor batches to his or her client. That means understanding what fruits or medicinal herbs, spices or animals a buyer will steep in it. In the latter case it must be 80% alcohol by volume, otherwise, the product hovers around 40%.

Long An is a decidedly rural area; familiar scenes of mud-caked farm and construction equipment and spark-bathed motorbike repair operations and all-purpose building shops fill the small downtown that occupies a stretch of the highway-side storefronts and spills into a wet market. Homes and schools rest behind the commercial area and quickly give way to expansive fields. 

After a simple meal of phở at the type of humble spot where a request for beer sends an owner scurrying next door to buy a couple cans, we were off to follow our final rice wine lead of the day.

It’s not easy to secure a Grab driver in Long An; one has to get lucky with a car that has recently dropped off a customer from Saigon. We finally chanced upon one: a Vietnamese descendant of Chinese immigrants who spoke Cantonese and could thus offer his interesting story to our Singaporean photographer. He had recently lost billions of dong in the lumber business and was just working as a ride-share provider to keep his mind off it. He had no problem taking us seemingly into the middle of nowhere and waiting to then take us back to Saigon.

Tucked between rice fields traversed by cows and buffalo was a rather large country-style house that, as we came to learn, was likely built with rice wine money. Rượu Đế Gò Đen, despite what its polished website might suggest, is a very small operation. A multigenerational group of women greeted us at the gate of the home and invited us in to show off their equipment.

A small wood-burning stove fermented the rice wine that was funneled directly into a giant cement basin for collection. Companies from Saigon would occasionally call to collect product which wasn’t paid for by the gallon but rather according to the weight of rice that was used. The woman who explained the process said it was her husband’s company, but they were quarreling and he, therefore, isn’t around to operate it now. It was uncertain if they were planning for him to ever return.

We had caught them at a time when they weren’t making any rice wine (maybe after Tet she said), yet that didn’t stop them from inviting us to try some from their collection. Selecting from a cabinet filled with repurposed bottles of all brand, style and original liquid, we were offered shot glasses of something that went down as smooth as alligator skin and yet had a flavor and charisma that left us longing for more. I asked if she liked to drink rice wine herself and was quickly given a facial expression best described as "does a gecko regrow its tail?"

As we left, we passed near the hẻm that took us to our first stop of the day: the home of a 75-year-old man named Minh. Google had suggested he was one of the premier rice wine producers in the area, a claim to which he admitted. However, long gone were the days of the man that embodied 1970s Saigon cool and cooked up batches of rice wine in his home according to his wife’s family’s recipes: a time period which he proudly showed us a photo of.

Without much regret, he explained that there was no longer money in the trade as a result of competition from producers willing to cut their liquor with dangerous methanol as well as the availability of cheap beer, so he stopped making it. Was he going to take down the prominent rượu nếp sign from the front of his house? Uncertain. Before we could ask, he had ambled off to give his wife a foot massage. It was clear that like many people in Vietnam, rice wine was no longer of any great interest to him.

This article was originally published in 2019.

When the word phá lấu is mentioned, two genres of dishes will appear in the mind of Vietnamese. One is a small bowl of orange broth that sings of coconut milk, another is slices of caramelized offal awash in a translucent shade of brown. Both these forms of preparations speak volumes about the growth of local street food through episodes of history.

For the longest time, phá lấu has been an essential piece in the life of generations of Saigoneers. At Tâm Ký, a Hoa Vietnamese eatery specializing in phá lấu, diners munch on slices of simmered pig’s ear, often enjoyed with bánh mì, pickled bok choy and cucumber. Alumni of Gia Định High School will fondly remember the times when they sat on the sidewalk in front of the school gate to relish the coconut-y decadence of a bowl of mì phá lấu.

Though phá lấu has amassed a cult following, not many are aware of the dish’s rich history, one that stretched across three cultural exchanges.

Going back 2,000 years

The first episode in the timeline of phá lấu was closely interwoven with the migration of Teochew people, người Tiều in Vietnamese, in southern Vietnam. Over centuries, from the original Teochew recipe, phá lấu has undergone a transformation as it integrated elements of Vietnamese culture.

In Teochew, lấu (滷) is used to indicate the red-braise cooking technique, one that features several differences compared to Vietnamese’s kho dishes. To make lấu, chefs incorporate five-spice powder, cooking wine, oil, and soy to preserve the meat. The protein is then cooked after the aromatics are well-marinated. This cooking method is common in Chinese provinces like Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Sichuan and Hunan.

Phá lấu in China.

Delving into the ancient texts of Asia, one will come across a mention of this preparation method in ‘The Summons of the Soul,’ a poem in Chu Ci, a Chinese poetry anthology compiled in the 2^nd century: “Braised chicken, seethed pork livers, highly-seasoned, but not to spoil the taste.” According to Chinese historian Guo Moruo, this chicken could be interpreted as going through the process of lấu. This could serve to prove that this way of braising has existed from at least before the Qin Dynasty, in 200 BCE.

Lấu also made an appearance in Qimin Yaoshu (Essential Techniques for the Welfare of the People), the most completely preserved agricultural text from ancient China. The book archives the folk knowledge in agriculture and animal husbandry of the Chinese working class living along the Yellow River before the 6th century. The text references a cooking recipe involving square-cut pork, chicken, and duck that’s blanched and braised with spring onion, ginger, orange, coriander, garlic, and vinegar.

In later times, Tang-era writer Han Yu wrote a chapter introducing the culinary delicacies of ancient Teochew communities in China. The text heralds the cooking skills of Chaoshan people as being of high proficiency. Teochew cuisine had developed over thousands of years by this point, producing myriads of popular dishes both in and outside of China.

Nonetheless, lấu dishes were still the cornerstone of Teochew banquets and cooking, showcasing how lấu has always been an intricate cooking technique of the people, and not just merely a name for a simple meat dish.

From nature to culture

Claude Lévi-Strauss's cultural triangle. Graphic by Hannah Hoàng.

French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss first brought up the concept of a “culinary triangle” in the 1960s to describe the dynamics between the natural and cultural sides of food, especially meat, preparation. Each corner of the shape corresponds with “raw,” “cooked,” and rotten. Shifting from raw to cooked, the meat is processed using very “natural” methods like grilling on open fire. On the other hand, boiling meat can be seen as a “cultural” form of cooking as it involves a receptacle to hold the liquid.

According to Lévi-Strauss, treating food by braising and stewing, employing ample liquid is seen as an expression of the development of the culinary arts, epitomizing an “endo-cuisine,” food cooked for domestic use in a closed group, compared to “exo-cuisine,” which is prepared for guests. He also believes that dishes in the endo-cuisine category encompasses elements of femininity. Teochew phá lấu is an example of such.

Cultural exchange right on the sidewalk

Transcending the confines of Teochew cuisine, modern phá lấu is the result of a cultural blend of three major ethnicities in southern Vietnam: Hoa, Kinh, and Khmer.

If Chinese lấu is often prepared with duck and rabbit meat, Vietnamese cooks only use pig and cow intestines. During the early decades of the 20th century, cow innards started gaining popularity as the choice protein for street-side phá lấu because they were much cheaper than that of pigs and ducks.

In Khmer communities, like in Cambodia, there’s also a similar dish to phá lấu, called pak lov (ផាក់ឡូវ), using pig intestines, tongues, and noses. The making of pak lov shares many similarities with how Hoa and Kinh Vietnamese make phá lấu, such as the addition of star anise and cinnamon. Still, the Khmer recipe includes palmyra sugar, an important local species and also Cambodia’s main source of sweetness.

The making of pak lov.

Another question that deserves exploration is why pork became the protein of choice in the preparation of these versions of phá lấu? In consideration with American anthropologist Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism theory, the reason perhaps lies in the region’s economic and environmental landscapes. At the time, ungulates like buffaloes had major roles in the rice-cultivating traditions of Southeast Asian countries, so it was unwise to slaughter them for meat. Meanwhile, the omnivorous pig flourished with the biodiverse food sources of riverine southern Vietnam. This abundance in natural resources meant pigs were as happy as can be, and their thriving translated to an abundance of protein for humans.

Pak lov in Cambodia.

These might be the contributing factors behind the prevalence of pork in phá lấu versions of Vietnamese and Khmer people. Another school of thought believes that the use of pork originated from the Teochew’s practice of offering pork during important occasions. The leftover meat is then braised as phá lấu to preserve it, to be eaten over a span of days.

Just take any sip of phá lấu broth from a bowl sold on Saigon’s pavements, one will immediately register the unmistakable richness of coconut milk. To southern Vietnamese, using coconut milk or coconut water to boost the depth and sweetness of soups is commonplace. Still, coconut is not just a trusted ingredient in Kinh Vietnamese cooking, but also Khmer communities in the south. Perhaps, during the age of exploration, they inevitably met and exchanged cooking tips like the magical touch of coconut milk in food?

Over generations of cooks and eaters, phá lấu has crossed over numerous cultural borders that once limited it to micro-regions in Asia. From an ancient Teochew recipe, during eras of expansive migration and urbanization, “lấu” has turned into a street treat adored by many Vietnamese young and old. And just like that, the staple ingredients and spices of Vietnamese and Khmer people have come together to morph into a distinctive delicacy of Saigon’s street culture.

As the cicadas begin to sing in the tamarind canopies along Pasteur Street after the first monsoon rain, vivid scenes from my formative years flash by in my mind. My cheeks became flushed and my eyes teary, but not from the harsh sun and wind, nor the frustration of losing multiple marble games; it was the sight, or rather, the scent of a papaya salad enveloped in Cô Ri pungent anchovy sauce.

After leaving my hometown in the western part of Quảng Trị, I had a chance to sample similar papaya salads in Laos and later in Saigon, a city teeming with vibrant, diverse cultures. It was by traveling that I realized how my rustic childhood treat contains multitudes, encapsulating the nature, lifestyle, and culinary artistry of the vast Mekong Delta.

The staple treat of a region

Thailand is widely regarded by food enthusiasts as the birthplace of papaya salad. On any busy street, you can hear the rhythmic pounding of mortars and pestles. Papaya salad, or som tum, is registered by the Thai Department of Cultural Promotion as an intangible cultural heritage dish. Google also honored this dish on December 14, 2021, with a special doodle on its homepage.

Google’s homepage honors papaya salad with a doodle. Image via Google.

However, like many beloved dishes worldwide, the exact origin of papaya salad remains unclear. Most historians believe it originated in Laos, as it was a common dish in the Isaan region, which borders Laos in northeastern Thailand. The name “som tum” combines two Thai words meaning “sour-spicy” and “pounded” — the key elements that create its distinctive flavor.

Another version of papaya salad, tam mak hung, is popular in traditional Lao cuisine. The Rough Guide to Laos summarized: “Another quintessential Lao dish is tam mak hung, made from shredded papaya, garlic, chilies, lime juice, padekp and sometimes dried shrimp and crab paste. One variation is tam kûay tani, which substitutes papaya with bananas and eggplants.” Although tam mak hung looks similar to som tum, its essence lies in the use of padekp (Laotian fermented fish sauce) which boasts a much stronger aroma.

Lao's tam mak hung is made from shredded papaya, garlic, chili, lime juice, and padekp. Photo via Thanh Niên.

Meanwhile, Cambodia's bok lo hong utilizes tamarind, galangal, and prohok fish paste, while the usual fish sauce is replaced by salted crab, giving the dish a splendidly salty and umami flavor. Similarly, thin baw thee thoke from Myanmar, is made with shredded papaya, onions, and cilantro mixed with a fragrant tamarind sauce. And in many other locales, creative ingredient pairings have brought about countless interesting twists on the salad.

The offering from Mekong's bountiful nature

The main ingredient of the dish, papaya, originated from the Americas and was brought to Asia by Spanish colonizers. Papaya grows quickly but is highly sensitive to frost, thriving best in tropical climates. It’s no surprise that it is widely distributed in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and beyond.

The tropical monsoon climate features high temperatures year-round. Following the seasonal principle of “nurturing yang in spring and summer, and nurturing yin in autumn and winter,” papaya salad is considered an effective cooling dish due to its refreshing and nutritious qualities. The spiciness of the salad also helps cool the body by inducing sweat.

A plate of papaya salad showcases the colorful and amicable nature of the delta. Photo via Traveloka.

The Mekong River, the tenth largest in terms of discharge volume, not only provides abundant water resources but also supports ample biodiversity. It nurtures and fosters the economic, cultural, social, and ecological values of the region. Here, agriculture flourishes with an abundance of fresh produce: from long beans, tomatoes, and limes to aquaculture crops like shrimps, snakeheads, and red-clawed crabs. A single plate of salad encapsulates the vibrant and intimate riverine environment. In Laos and Thailand, tam mak hung and som tum are often enjoyed with sticky rice, a signature crop of the region’s long-standing agricultural tradition.

Seasoned with local beliefs and customs

The cuisines of Indochinese countries are characterized by a harmonious and distinctive style preserved over centuries. Firstly, it emphasizes a combination of flavors: sourness, sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, and spiciness; secondly, it adheres to the principles of the Five Elements, which include cold, heat, warmth, coolness, and neutrality.

Papaya salad reflects the culinary philosophy of Southeast Asian countries. Photo via Aday Magazine.

Why the focus on flavors? The region rarely features overly complicated recipes or elaborate cooking process, instead prioritizing taste and ingredients. When it comes to the art of seasoning, Cambodians are masters, often using ingredients like clove, cinnamon, star anise, garlic, shallot, lime, and cilantro to create a complex mixture known as kroeng, which is difficult to replicate without a recipe.

Dishes are skillfully prepared to balance the yin-yang elements. For papaya salad, tomatoes and vegetables (yin) are mixed with warming ingredients (yang) like dried shrimp, garlic, and chilies. To harmonize with the cooling (yin) fermented fish sauces, diners can pair the salad with sticky rice or regular rice, warming (yang) foods. The acidity of lime juice also softens the strong salty flavors of the sauces.

Are mortars and pestles what make papaya salad papaya salad? Photos by Alberto Prieto.

Living off the river's resources, locals have long relied primarily on agriculture. They hold a deep reverence for nature, especially through the practice of fertility worship (tín ngưỡng phồn thực). As author Hồ Thị Hồng Lĩnh explains, “People pray for abundant crops to sustain life and for proliferation to ensure survival and growth [...] worship begins with belief; ‘phồn’ means many, and ‘thực’ means flourishing. Thus, fertility worship is the belief in the flourishing of all things.”

The mortar and pestle, traditionally used for pounding, grinding, and crushing, have evolved into symbols of fertility worship, with the pestle representing the male phallus and the mortar the female yoni. The act of pounding embodies copulation and procreation. Nguyễn Quang Long's verse captures this essence: “In summer’s heat, pounding with glee / In winter’s chill, pounding with spree…” From the sunny fields to busy modern streets, just as in my childhood memories, an ever-present rhythmic pounding echoes through the making of sumptuous papaya salad feasts.

And perhaps, its delightful essence can only be captured when prepared the old-fashioned way, with a good old mortar and pestle?

What's in a Vietnamese papaya salad?

In Vietnam, papaya salad recipes vary depending on the geographical region, incorporating seasonal elements from each province.

In the north, beef jerky and pig ear papaya salad is the most common variation. Simple and elegant, this dish consists of shredded papaya mixed with pig ear, beef jerky, and herbs like mint and basil, all thoroughly infused with a tangy sweet-and-sour fish sauce. Meanwhile, the central region focuses more on depths of flavor without being too ostentatious; most dishes here are characterized by their spiciness and saltiness. Papaya salads in this region, though uncomplicated, are in no way lacks in flavor, as locals believe that a dish must be able to vigorously “wakes” your palate to be truly delicious.

The Hanoian version of papaya salad is served with large slices of beef and beef jerky. Photo via aFamily.

Why do they prefer spicy food? A theory from the Hue Cultural Research Center suggests: “Living in an environment full of ‘treacherous terrain and hazardous conditions,’ the hot chili has helped them withstand nature's challenges, fight off the cold, and cope with the various harmful elements prevalent in their new surroundings.”

In the south, papaya salad reflects the seasonal abundance of ingredients. In May, as the summer breeze sweeps across the Hậu River, shrimps are plentiful in canals, ponds, and lakes, so they are prominently featured in the cool and nutty papaya shrimp salad of the Mekong Delta. In the lunar September, when anchovies are caught, the papaya anchovy salad mixed with morning glory emerges. The delta's waterways also facilitate the spread and mix of different cultures, as evidenced by the Khmer-style papaya salad from Tri Tôn (An Giang), or the pairing of papaya salad and phá lấu, a dish of Chinese origin, which is becoming popular in Saigon's street food scene.

Khmer-style papaya salad from Tri Tôn is served with grilled beef and half-hatched egg. Photo via Sài Gòn Tiếp Thị.

Culture-wise, papaya salad highlights a notable feature of the delta's cuisine: its inclusiveness. Home chefs eagerly observe and learn from the culinary traditions of neighboring communities, transforming these influences into varieties that suit the local palate and reflect the distinct flavors of each region.

As time goes by, papaya salad may extend beyond the confines of the Mekong Delta's nature and culture. However, it's that earthly and heavenly combination of salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and bitter taste central to the dish's identity that shall remain, wherever it goes and whatever new form it might take on.