Food Culture - Saigoneer

Bored of Mundance Date Spots? Try Tân Sơn Nhất's Romantic Star Cafe.

2025-04-01T13:00:00+07:00

I know a little place.

Saigon’s cafe scene is so developed that finding and embracing cafes constitutes a hobby, if not a full-blown personality for certain residents. For some, the pastime is all about the drinks. Bean sourcing and roasting; preparation techniques and technologies; and pouring and presentation methods can all be meticulously assessed. Others care about the vibes and aesthetics, with particular attention paid to Instagram photo potential. Within this cafe culture world, bringing a date to the perfect coffee shop for stupendous drinks can be an unrivaled aphrodisiac.

No beverage better proves this than the cà phê truyền thống sold at the Star Cafe inside Tân Sơn Nhất’s Domestic Departure Terminal. Squeaking luggage trolly wheels; one-half of conversations shouted into cellphones; cranky kids crying to parents stressed by travel plans; and a pungent blend of body odor, perfume and distant jet fuel collects like soap scum and tangled hair around a clogged shower drain: the atmosphere in the domestic terminal is the ideal setting for a romantic date. Star Cafe even provides for the social media-minded as plenty of bystanders are present to snap the perfect photo for you to upload and inspire jealousy about your whereabouts while providing a valuable keepsake of the day you met the person you’ll one day marry.

But you cannot sit without purchasing something, of course. And we all know the adage “You get what you pay for.” The astronomical prices (US$6.50 for a large regular Vietnamese coffee) must mean that you’re getting something of exceptional quality. The fact that it's only listed in foreign currency lends a dose of international exoticism to the experience. The drink, coupled with the price of the tickets needed to get through security constitutes spending so extravagant your date will have no choice but to be impressed. And the coffee itself, tasting like the crass feedback emitted on a karaoke machine when two microphones are brought too close together, invites trauma bonding.

Photo via Tripadvisor

But if you’re not convinced, remember McBeth speaking to the night sky: “Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.” If you want to make your deep desires known, surely you must bring them to the Star Cafe. You don’t even need to board the plane you bought the ticket for.

Editor's note: Happy April Fools' Day! This article is part of Saigoneer's 2025 April Fools' Day celebration. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the writer’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

The 50 Shades of Cháo on the Palette of Vietnam's Regional Cuisines

2025-03-25T16:42:15+07:00

Cháo, or congee in English, is a diverse genre of Vietnamese dishes in both executions and flavor profiles — from humble versions like pandan congee, red bean congee to more substantial and complex meals like offal congee, chicken congee and catfish congee. Each dish is a different variation, but they all share a reputation for being nourishing and a richness of regional culinary characteristics.

Once upon a bowl of cháo

During the shortages of wartime decades, our ancestors made cháo as an economical way to stretch a meal. It was often eaten with a sprinkle of salt or readily available plants in the yard, like jackfruit, rice paddy herb, morning glory, banana blossom, pea shoot, or bamboo shoot. According to historical accounts from Văn minh vật chất của người Việt (The Material Civilization of the Vietnamese People): “During famines, Vietnamese would start reducing the number of meals, first from three to two, and then to one meal a day, trying to retain lunches while switching from cooking rice to congee. It takes less rice to cook congee than rice, just about a quarter the amount, but the body can absorb nearly everything, and this also helps prevent dehydration very effectively.” After a day in the field, they often sipped on watered down congee, as it’s better for the stomach while replenishing energy.

The theory of yin-yang balance that Vietnam follows stipulates that the human body is a “mini-universe” where elements of yin and yang are equal and harmonious. If either of the two overwhelms the other, illnesses will appear. As a soft, light, and oil-less food type, cháo is considered an easily digestible meal that one can freely pair with other ingredients to rebalance the missing yin or yang in the body. Doctor Ngô Quang Hải from the Vietnam Acupuncture Association explained: “If the illness arose from too much yin, one needs to eat yang-rich food, and vice versa. For instance, if you have a cold (yin), you should eat yang food types like congee with ginger or tía tô leaves. If you have a heatstroke (yang), you should eat congee with spring onion (yin).”

Cháo is a dish that promotes the yin-yang balance.

Exploring the many cháo of Vietnam

Albeit simple, cháo can be a banner dish for any region in the country. From north to south, congee shapeshifts depending on the local produce and palates, resulting in myriads of varieties. In the north, Hải Phòng has cháo khoái; Bắc Ninh serves up cháo thái Đình Tổ, a congee novelty that’s eaten using chopsticks; the H’Mông community in Hà Giang eats cháo ấu tẩu, prepared using a potentially poisonous tuber; and of course, Hanoi’s thick cháo sườn is a treat as well.

I, unfortunately, haven’t had a chance to fly to the north to try out all these unique delicacies, but as someone whose family has roots in the northern region, I fell in love with the version of cháo sườn sold by the mobile vendors of Phạm Văn Hai Market — one of Saigon’s many enclaves of northern immigrants from 1954. Unlike standard congee, which is cooked using rice grains, cháo sườn is often made with rice flour, producing a glutinous texture, accompanied by fork-tender chunks of rib cartilage, crispy shallot, chopped coriander and spring onion, and deep-fried quẩy. Cháo sườn is a favorite snack of us kids as it’s easy to eat, so one full bowl in the afternoon might help us avoid dinner.

Cháo sườn on chilly days.

In the central region, Nghệ An has eel congee; Tam Kỳ is famous for chicken congee; Bình Định pairs pork offal congee with sheets of bánh hỏi; Quảng Nam adds black beans to beef offal congee; and congee with củ nén, a type of allium, is a staple of the “Quảng realm.” Despite the differences, they share a similarity in bánh tráng mè nướng, a sesame cracker, as an accouterment. During a visit in Quảng Nam, I was shown the correct way to eat their congee: snap off a morsel of bánh tráng nướng, drop it in the bowl, wait for it to soften, and then eat it to enjoy the slightly chewy texture.

Eel congee in Nghệ An.

In Saigon, I’ve always found street cháo stalls to be weirdly inviting. No fuss or flair, just a big umbrella and a dozen of low plastic stools — everyone is eager to sit down for a feast. A classic Saigon-style bowl of cháo often features three elements: toasted rice, fried dồi, and a handful of beansprouts at the bottom. The toasted rice helps add a nutty flavor to the congee. The raw beansprouts are immediately blanched by the hot congee while still retaining their refreshing crunch. Before diners dive in, a squeeze of lime and a tiny dollop of crushed chili pepper are must-haves in the bowl of dipping fish sauce. At this point, the bowl of cháo lòng is complete with every facet of saltiness, sweetness, sourness and spiciness. Slurp on hot congee, bite into a hunk of chewy offal and remember this feeling forever.

A bowl of cháo lòng.

Head to the Mekong Delta, one is bound to encounter cháo ám, a specialty from Trà Vinh. The origins behind the name might come from how the dish is usually a test of a new daughter-in-law’s cooking prowess. On the first day after she enters the husband’s family, she would cook a pot of catfish congee for the family and relatives. This level of pressure is why preparing a tasty cháo áo is constantly on the mind of young brides — the word “ám” is short for “ám ảnh” (haunted).

Cháo ám is made with freshly caught catfish from the field. To enrich the broth with more layers of umami, Trà Vinh adds roasted dry shallot, dry squid, and dry shrimp. Going alongside the congee is a plate of various herbs, including but not limited to banana blossom, crown daisy, and cải trời. Still, the most commonly used greens are rau đắng (knotgrass) and beansprouts. The subtle bitter notes of knotgrass are perfectly tempered by the nuttiness of the congee, the sweetness of the fish, the kick of black pepper, the aroma of alliums, and the crispy richness of fried shallot.

Cháo ám is Trà Vinh’s famous congee.

Teochew is amongst four big branches of Chợ Lớn, Saigon’s Hoa community, alongside Hakka, Guangdong, and Fujian. One of the most distinctive dishes of Teochew culture is cơm cháo, or rice-congee. The dish is served as a rather peculiar platter: a pot of white rice is placed next to a steaming hot pot of congee. The carbohydrates are eaten with bitesize chunks of braised offal and pickled cabbages, the same tart ingredient that Vietnamese usually used to braise with leftover feast meats like roast pork and duck. The sourness from the cabbage increases the shelf life of the dish while making the rich animal proteins more palatable.

Though cháo lòng might be a popular dish across Vietnam, the Teochew version of cháo lòng is perhaps a slightly different cousin in the family of congees. The congee is on the white side as the broth and rice are simmered together with pork bones, squids, and straw mushrooms. Pork offal, including heart, kidney, intestines, and liver, is boiled in a different pot. When served, they are eaten separately with a dipping sauce that comprises soy sauce and red vinegar. The congee is lightly aromatic and tastes of ginger, pepper, and green onion, accompanied by crown daisy. On top, slices of offal and century egg present an inviting pick-your-favorite-protein-feast.

Cơm cháo Triều Châu.

Eating cháo is perhaps the best way to slow down and focus on the flavors of life. Congee is always served steaming hot, so impatient slurpers are almost guaranteed to burn their mouth. It’s best enjoyed at a languid pace to savor all the delicious elements of cháo. On days when the temperature turns cold, what’s better than sipping through your most favorite cháo?

How Cá Cắt Khúc Becomes My Personal Touchstone of Vietnamese Cuisine

2025-02-26T19:00:00+07:00

It was 13 years ago when Christine Ha auditioned for and eventually won the third season of MasterChef US. Then a grad student from Texas, Christine’s victory was a watershed moment in the history of reality TV in the US and even globally. She’s visually impaired, a daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, and has a palate that even established chefs would envy. Back then, everything about Christine’s MasterChef run left an indelible mark on me, a budding food enthusiast from Vietnam, but as I grew older and embarked on my own cooking journey, there’s something about her audition that has always tugged on my heartstrings.

She auditioned for MasterChef with cá kho tộ, a rustic, homely dish where a fatty fish is braised in a claypot with fish sauce and simple spices, often eaten with steamed white rice and blanched vegetables. I have no shame about introducing cá kho tộ to a western audience because to me cá kho tộ is one perfect example of a simple but balanced meal, in which a salty, rich, umami-laden sauce is smartly tempered by plain carb and fibrous sides. Everything about Christine’s cá kho tộ screams Vietnam, from the choice of catfish to the use of the claypot, but nothing does it better than the way she cuts the fish: crosswise.

Christine Ha's original audition in 2012.

This cut is often called cá cắt khúc in Vietnamese or fish steak in English, producing rhomboid fish slices that retain a segment of the spine and a handful of ribs. Fillets, however, are the result of lengthwise cuts that carefully separate the fish flesh from the backbone. One thing I learned about cooking from western media is how much importance is placed on deboning. On MasterChef itself, there are challenges where contestants are required to segment an entire salmon by themselves, producing Instagram-ready squares of fish fillets whose every sliver of bone is picked clean by the chef. The cá cắt khúc–fillet dichotomy might seem trivial, but to me, it speaks volumes about the way Asian cooking traditions at large and Vietnamese cuisine in particular distinguish themselves from the gastronomical conventions of the west.

Fish fillets, freed of bones and skin, are primed to be grilled, pan-seared, battered and deep-fried, or baked; therefore, it’s perfect for meatier, leaner fish types that populate the northern seas like cod, halibut, seabass or red snapper. Cá cắt khúc, meanwhile, epitomizes the economical and resourceful way Vietnam approaches cooking. Bones always mean more flavor, so leaving the bones in fish steaks is an ideal way to amplify the tastiness of the braise and keep the fish from drying out. The freshwater fish species — from cá lóc, Christine’s pick for her dish, to cá dứa and cá rô đồng — that often end up in cá kho tộ have flaky flesh and rather petite bodies, so the act of filleting can risk mangling the fish and leaving behind specks of fish meat — a wasteful crime that would alarm any Asian cook, who tend to greatly value using every part of the ingredients. And the concept behind cá kho tộ in itself is a way for Vietnamese families from less privileged backgrounds to stretch a small amount of protein to an entire meal for the family. During the braising process, the fish fat seeps into the liquid, making it more hearty, while the high salt content from soy or fish sauce promotes more consumption of carbs so the family will get full faster with less protein.

I am admittedly quite terrified of cá cắt khúc, due to a childhood incident involving a stuck fish bone in my throat, but I firmly believe that one must always go with slices of perfectly chopped fish in cá kho tộ. Of course, fish steaks exist in western cuisines too, especially in the case of salmon; and supermarkets in Saigon now carry a range of filleted fish for the convenience of busy homemakers. Today, representations of Vietnamese cuisine are not that rare on international media anymore and even TikTokers are making bánh tráng nướng at home, but you will never forget your firsts. I will never forget that special feeling, seeing Christine Ha’s cá cắt khúc for the first time on television — bubbling inside a claypot, coated in a layer of saucy, salty fish sauce caramel that appears like from a dream.

Fried Floating Rice with Dried Cá Chốt and Lotus Tells a Complete Vietnamese Narrative

2025-02-16T14:21:00+07:00

Chef Peter Cường Franklin shared a powerful narrative to introduce the dish he prepared for Saigoneer. Rice symbolizes the nation’s most important carbohydrate and its agrarian culture; cá chốt represents the ubiquity of local seafood and vital waterways; and lotus provides a metaphor for Vietnamese resilience because it grows in the mud and produces a beautiful, useful flower.

Peter’s dish was made with these ingredients from the Mekong Delta, which allowed him to reflect on the value and condition of the region. “We have flooding and we have different kinds of weather conditions that are affecting the farming and thus the livelihoods of the people in that region … We have 100 million people, we have to feed these people. So, the Mekong Delta is very important.”

The WWF's nature-based solutions projects include providing farmers with fish fingerlings and guidance on how to grow them without industrial feed and chemicals. The fish which, include cá chốt, can be dried, seasoned, and sold to people like Peter to enjoy throughout the country. Moreover, farmers receive support to plant floating rice, an ancient variety native to the region that grows naturally during the flood season and thus requires no blocking of floodwaters. By allowing water to flow naturally from upstream, sediments can collect and improve soil fertility while combating erosion. Groundwater reserves are also able to be replenished.

Photo courtesy WWF.

This rice provided Peter with an enjoyable challenge. He explained: “For home cooking, it is actually a very healthy grain of rice ... it still has all the flavor and texture outside. It requires more work, more effort, but I think it could be something to add to the arsenal of home cooking. People can create something that's new, that's different for the family. Because we eat rice, it's the same rice all the time. So, it's nice to have something that has a different flavor, and different texture, and requires a bit more work and effort. To some extent, it's a bit of fun, too.”

Peter seemed to have fun while frying the cooked floating rice with some vegetables and spices and added the dried cá chốt that had been lightly fried along with some boiled lotus seed for subtle sweetness. While bringing silverware for us to try he summed up the value of the meal nicely: “When we make a dish like this, we're actually showing people what and how the Vietnamese eat, and what we eat, and the resources available ingredients that are available to us to make a meal for our family.”

A Light Bánh Cuốn Quảng Đông to Break Your Fast the Chợ Lớn Way

2025-02-13T15:00:00+07:00

Meeting up for a Chinese-style breakfast often means gathering around stacked baskets of dim sum or diving into hearty bowls of wonton noodles. But if you're looking for something lighter, a serving of cheung fun might offer the perfect balance.

Cheung fun (腸粉), often likened to Vietnamese bánh cuốn, is made from thin sheets of steamed rice batter wrapped around various fillings like shrimp, minced pork, or vegetables. The name cheung fun loosely translates to “intestine noodles,” a nod to its coiled shape rather than its ingredients, which contain no actual offal.

The dish originated in Guangdong and has since spread globally through Chinese diaspora communities, adapting to local palates wherever it landed. In Vietnam, it’s commonly known as bánh cuốn Quảng Đông and is a staple of breakfast tables in Chợ Lớn, Saigon’s historic Chinatown. If you happen to wander through early in the day, you might come across Ngọc’s small cheung fun stall tucked into a hẻm in Phùng Hưng Market.

Ngọc, a Teochew descent, runs the stall with her husband, whose family hails from Guandong.

“This dish is now popular in many places like Singapore and Hong Kong. Each region has its own way of making it — some use one type of filling, others another, depending on their own take,” Ngọc explains. “My brother learned the original recipe and taught me, and I adjusted the seasoning to better suit local tastes. In China, the flavors are much milder, so I had to make some changes..”

If bánh cuốn is made on a stretched cloth and lifted with wooden sticks, cheung fun requires a multi-tiered steamer — one level for greens, one for fillings, and two for the rice sheets.

Ngọc’s batter starts with fresh rice soaked overnight and ground daily. Before pouring the batter, she brushes each tray with a thin layer of oil to prevent sticking and give the sheets a smooth, glossy finish. Each tray receives a ladle of batter, spread into a thin layer that cooks in just two minutes over rising steam. She lifts and rolls each sheet, slicing them into neat sections before plating.

Classic cheung fun comes with fillings like minced pork, shrimp, or egg, with the mildly seasoned rice sheet acting as a backdrop for the fresh ingredients to shine. At Ngọc’s stall, the dish is served with steamed bok choy and additional fillings like scallops and imitation crab. “I also make my own sauce, adding a bit of sa tế to match local tastes while keeping it true to tradition,” she explains.

The first bite is all about balance — soft rice sheets, a flavorful filling, a touch of sesame oil, and just enough heat to wake up the palate. It’s a Chinese breakfast that doesn’t demand a feast, yet leaves you perfectly content to take on the day.

Bánh Cuốn Quảng Đông

189/1 Phùng Hưng, Ward 14, D5, HCMC

Cua Cà Mau Consommé Evokes Nostalgic Summer Beach Holidays

2025-02-08T08:33:00+07:00

Seafood reminds chef Nghiêm Minh Đức of childhood vacations to northern beaches with his family. But since moving to Saigon, he has been exposed to southern products including cua Cà Mau’s which inspire him to experiment with new dishes.

its crabs, which populate the mangrove estuaries where the river system meets the sea. This fragile ecosystem and the people who depend on it are at risk because of rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion; the prevalence of dangerous agricultural chemicals and pesticides; disrupted water cycles; and deforestation. The WWF’s Nature-based Solutions (NbS) projects are addressing some of these issues while improving the socio-economy and resilience of local communities through sustainable livelihoods.

In Cà Mau, farmers raise crabs and shrimp according to a nature-based solutions (NbS) model, wherein shrimp and crabs live and feed naturally in native mangrove forests without any chemicals or industrial feed. This NbS approach not only improves livelihoods for local communities but also encourages them to protect the mangrove ecosystem, keeping it green, clean, and reducing the risk of deforestation.

Photo courtesy WWF-Viet Nam.

“Every time we find new ingredients or create new dishes, we always think about the whole process and the whole cycle. Everything from the farmers, how they plant it, and then how they supply to us, and how we use that, and how we introduce the ingredients to the customer. So it's a full circle.”

Photos courtesy of WWF.

To create his dish, Đức paired noodles made with floating rice with a cold, tomato-based consommé made with crab meat, chamomile tea, and local herbs. While straightforward, the process required patience, such as processing, boiling, then icing the noodles and slowly straining the broth to let the crustacean flavors shine. The result was a bright, refreshing dish perfectly suited for endless summer days.

After tasting a bite and reflecting, Đức explained that he initially wanted to make something original that was inspired by the joy surrounding the beach vacations of his youth. But in the end, he discovered that he had made something similar to another Hanoi dish: bún ốc nguội. This led to Đức’s profound realization about chefs: “We think that we make new things, but actually, we just reimagine and recreate our memories; the old, good and happy memories … the experiences that we had wherever we were born and grew up and stay.”

Tết Tales: The Many Folk Stories Behind Vietnam's Bánh Chưng, Bánh Tét

2025-01-26T08:00:00+07:00

To me, there's nothing that screams Tết as much as sticky rice cake. However one wants to spice up the usual celebration by replacing some dishes with something new each year, sticky rice cakes remain a must-have in Vietnamese households. Try searching for an image of the Lunar New Year and there’s a high chance that you’ll spot the cakes amongst the first ten results.

Vietnam's culinary repertoire features several types of sticky rice cakes. Bánh chưng and bánh giầy are most commonly associated with families from the northern provinces. Bánh chưng refers to a savory square cake made of sticky rice with mung bean paste and pork filling, wrapped in lá dong, an oval-shaped leaf. Bánh giầy is a white sticky bun made from glutinous rice often served with giò chả, a type of Vietnamese sausage.

Then there’s bánh tét, which is mostly eaten in central and southern Vietnam. The savory filling of bánh tét is similar to that of bánh chưng, except it's cylindrical and wrapped in banana leaves. However, there are different versions including a sweet one with banana fillings; bánh tét lá cẩm, with magenta plant-infused sticky rice; bánh tét trà cuôn, which is a spin-off from the original pork filling with salted egg and dried shrimp added for more flavors.

Bánh chưng & bánh giầy

The origins of the sticky rice cakes are equivocal. Although there are no reliable factual accounts of it, the earliest record of bánh chưng bánh giầy can be found in Book 1 of Lĩnh Nam Chích Quái (Extraordinary Stories from Lĩnh Nam), the earliest collection of legends, myths, and folklore dating back to ancient Vietnam in the 14^th century, compiled by an anonymous author during the Trần dynasty. Most of the stories in the collection are an attempt to explain many aspects of Vietnamese life, including the origins of iconic foods like paan or watermelon. The bánh chưng bành giầy story, titled “Chưng bính truyện” is the one with which most people are familiar.

“Chưng bính truyện” tells the story of the sixth Hùng King who wants to pick an heir amongst his 20 sons. To do this, the king hosts a cooking competition among the brothers, sending them on a search for delicious dishes everywhere in the world. Lang Liêu, the king’s eighteenth son, being poor and motherless, couldn’t afford to travel far. Lucky for the prince, one night when Lang Liếu is sleeping, a deity enters his dream and is kind enough to offer Lang Liêu the advice to use sticky rice as the main ingredient to make a square cake (bánh chưng), symbolizing the earth; and a round cake (bánh giầy), symbolizing heaven. According to the deity, there is no exotic delicacy that can compare with rice, as rice feeds and nurtures life. The deity also adds the leaf wrapping to represent a mother's protection. Lang Liêu follows the suggestion and becomes the heir.

Although the story is obviously not a factual account, it’s interesting how symbolic meanings of cosmology, nutritional logic, and a unified sense of national and cultural identity are packed into a single narrative that is widely used as an explanation for a very concrete and mundane item.

Sociologist and anthropologist Nir Avieli breaks down these meanings in his culinary ethnography on the Tết rice cakes in Hoi An. For example, the square and round shape as representations for earth and heaven, to be offered during Tết, a time that is considered by many a rebirth of nature, can be seen as performing a symbolic creation and recreation of the universe.

Avieli continues to ponder the legend's emphasis on rice that reflects the rice-growing agriculture of Vietnam. It can also be understood as a way of infusing geographies and national identity into the cake's meaning. Although Vietnam is not the only country that thrives on rice cultivation, it sure is an identity-defining trait of the country. The cake, according to Avieli, also resembles a spatial organization of the countryside, where rice farms (the sticky rice layer) can be found anywhere with small patches of legumes and other farm animals nearby.

However, given the legend's heavy dose of magical elements, the story raises doubts and debates among some Vietnamese scholars. In his essay “Triết lý bánh chưng bánh giầy” (The philosophy of bánh chưng bánh giầy), historian Trần Quốc Vượng contends that the story of Lang Liêu is more of a “fakelore” rather than an authentic Vietnamese folk story as the idea of using square and round objects as symbols for earth and heaven is an imported cultural conception from China's cosmology.

Bánh tét

As for the central and southern bánh tét counterpart, we are left with fewer legends to discuss, yet its factual origins and history remain a debate among many. Some believe that the cylindrical treat is an invention originating from a military tactic of turning bánh chưng into bánh tét to more easily to carry around as a combat ration. The idea is credited to King Quang Trung (Nguyễn Huệ) in his campaign against the Manchu army in December 1789. However, there are many versions of this story. For example, another narrative suggests that it was one of Quang Trung's soldiers who brought bánh tét from his hometown to Quang Trung to be used as a dish for Tết and victory celebration. Another way to look at bánh tét is through the prevalence of rice-farming anxiety during Tết, which used to be a vulnerable time for crops. Because it can be stored for a long time the cake is, therefore, a practical means of overcoming food spoilage.

The most eye-opening theory for bánh tét origins — one that crushed my former assumption that the sticky rice cakes are exclusive to Vietnamese culture – belongs to Tran Quoc Vuong. He suggests that the dish might be the remnants of the past Champa kingdom and was only exposed to Vietnamese people during Nam tiến, a period when Vietnam expanded its territory southward and occupied Champa.

Indeed, bánh tét, or taipei nung in Chăm language, is an important traditional dish in many Chăm festivals including Kate (Cham Balamon community's new year) and Ramawan (Cham Awal community's new year). In this context, bánh tét now contains different meanings that relate to phồn thực, which is a faith followed by Chăm people that celebrates life and reproduction. Phồn thực worships linga (the phallic icon) and yoni (a symbol for the womb). A common food combination in a Kate festival is bánh tét and sakaya (a type of ginger-based cake that has a dendritic shape), representing the linga and yoni, respectively. As a common Chăm saying goes: peinung ala, sakaya ngaok (bánh tét placed below, sakaya cake placed above).

Of course, we should take all these tales with a grain of salt. Apart from giving us insights into the history of the food itself, they also reveal a history of how people attach meanings to food which attempt to negotiate and maintain a consistent cultural and national identity. They are, in a sense, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves as an expression of identity and senses of belonging via mundane objects.

This article was originally published in 2018.

Tôm Sú Kakiage with Floating Rice Noodles is a Crisp, Cool Dish for Steamy Saigon Afternoons

2025-01-24T06:54:00+07:00

Phở, bún, hủ tiếu, cao lầu and bánh tằm are stand-outs in Vietnam’s impressively diverse portfolio of noodles made with rice. The ones Saigoneer tasked Anaïs Ca Dao van Manen to create a dish with were also made using rice powder, but have different qualities. “The noodle has such a nice bite to it … you can not taste the rice but you can actually taste the different texture of it so it reminded me of soba which made me think, okay, let's do a cold noodle dish.”

The noodles were made using floating rice, which is a centerpiece crop being grown by farmers in the Mekong Delta as part of the CRxN projects deployed by WWF. As part of the non-profit’s efforts to improve the socio-economy and resilience of local communities through sustainable livelihoods while protecting and restoring critical ecosystems, they’re helping farmers return to the rice variety that was once abundant in the area. Able to grow in flooded fields, it grows without the need for devastating chemicals or the manipulation of water cycles which helps the soil rejuvenate.

Noting its similarity to the healthy brown rice her mother loves, Anaïs explained how the noodles made with floating rice remain chewier than typical white noodles. This would make them a great compliment to crispy fried food. She settled on Japanese-style kakiage made with “any vegetables you have in the house,” and tôm sú, or black tiger prawns.

The prawns are also part of WWF’s efforts in the Mekong Delta. Farmers are supported to raise crabs and prawns in the native mangrove forests without any chemicals or industrial feed. This nature-based solution (NbS) model not only improves the local livelihoods, it encourages protecting the health of the vital mangrove ecosystems and combats deforestation.

“For prawns, you have to let the ingredient shine because that's what it's all about, right? It's the flavor of the prawn.” Anaïs said. “So here we're gonna make it shine through two ways, through the stock and through a nice batter.”

Photo courtesy WWF.

The resulting dish delights with its contrasting light crispy fritter and chewy noodles. The fresh herbs, vegetables and shrimp are enhanced by a light sauce boasting salty, umami-laden prawn notes. These fresh flavors and its cooling temperature make it an ideal summer meal that highlights the Mekong Delta’s bounties.

Photo courtesy WWF.

Re-imagining a Streetfood Staple with Sustainable Ingredients: Cơm Tấm Ốc Bươu with Floating Rice

2025-01-23T04:01:00+07:00

Cơm tấm is “all about utilizing, minimizing food waste and, basically, not giving anything away,” explains Chef Trụ Lang of Mùa Sake, as he stands in front of ingredients from the Mekong Delta. “That matches with the ethos of what these crops are trying to do … show a different way of thinking, a different way of agriculture, a different way of using the land, and using the relationship that we have with the land to coexist.”

Trụ is referring, specifically to the ốc bươu, or black apple snails and floating rice (gạo lúa mùa nổi), that he was challenged to cook with to help showcase products produced as part of WWF-Viet Nam’s Nature-based Solutions (NbS) projects. The undertakings aim to improve the socio-economy and resilience of local communities through sustainable livelihoods while protecting and restoring critical ecosystems.

U Minh Thượng National Park in Kiên Giang province. Photos courtesy WWF-Viet Nam.

The core zone of U Minh Thượng National Park in Kiên Giang province is strictly protected, but increasing market demand frequently drives buffer zone farmers to collect apple snails for their livelihood. These farmers now receive support from WWF to raise responsibly collected snails in waterways, using natural and readily available food sources.

Floating rice being grown in Long An. Photo courtesy WWF-Viet Nam.

Meanwhile, the floating rice was once largely abandoned by local farmers despite its natural cultivation coinciding with flood cycles, and thus, not requiring chemically intensive fertilizers and destructive interference with water flows. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) projects support residents in Kiên Giang and Long An in adopting feasible, sustainable methods for cultivating the floating rice which helps return the land and water to health and fertility.

After boiling the ốc bươu, Trụ chops the meat to make a patty with pork, egg, honey and fish sauce. The juicy meat is fried, topped by the requisite egg with a runny yolk, and presented atop a mound of floating rice. The whole grain rice is at first difficult to approach, Trụ admits, as it is tougher, more flavorful, and requires overnight soaking and a longer cooking time. However, in addition to greater nutritional value than conventional rice, its production helps maintain soil fertility without leaching harmful chemicals across the Mekong’s land and waterways. He offers the advice of mixing some of it into your daily white rice to get some of these benefits.

U Minh Thượng National Park. Photo courtesy WWF-Viet Nam.

Complimented by pickles and more fish sauce, the ốc bươu cơm tấm with floating rice is a wonderfully salty, juicy, complex meal that retains all the charm of the more familiar pork chop version. They taste all the more delicious knowing that the ingredients are the result of projects that support local livelihoods while protecting treasured wilderness areas and natural water and soil balance.

Charles Phan's Bánh Mì Is Not Here to Take You Down Memory Lane

2025-01-22T10:00:00+07:00

“Charles Phan had more impact on Vietnamese food than any other chef in the country.” — Michael Bauer, San Francisco Chronicle.

Editor's note (Jan 2025): We’re deeply saddened to learn of Chef Charles Phan’s recent passing. For nearly 30 years, Charles played a pivotal role in introducing and elevating Vietnamese cuisine in the US.

When preparing for my upcoming move, I debated which of my many books would come along with me. One book that immediately went into the box was Charles Phan’s The Slanted Door: Modern Vietnamese Food, a cookbook featuring about a hundred recipes from the iconic San Francisco restaurant The Slanted Door, littered with curled neon pink bookmarks that I hastily made out of post-its and placed on the page of every recipe or story about its formation that caught my imagination.

Today Charles Phan is billed as the “inventor of modern Vietnamese cuisine in America” by Food Network and a recipient of the James Beard Foundation 2004 award for Best Chef: California, often fondly referred to as the “Oscars of the food world” and considered to be the highest honor in the culinary community.

His most well-known restaurant, The Slanted Door — recipient of the James Beard Foundation award for Outstanding Restaurant in 2014 — was, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the first Asian restaurants to create a serious wine list and bar program using organic ingredients. Despite being around for over two decades, and having almost 300 seats in its waterfront Ferry Building location, the restaurant is always packed for lunch and dinner service.

But it wasn’t that long ago that Charles was lucky to even get the opportunity to bus tables at fine-dining establishments.

The Slanted Door’s space. Photos via Instagram page @slanteddoor.

Before bánh mì: coffee, architecture, and menswear

Charles Phan spent his childhood in 1960s Đà Lạt where his mother grew up, and where his father immigrated to; they both are of Chinese descent. Across from the steps leading down to the hilly city’s central market, his parents owned a general store. Behind, a mì xào giòn cart would set up shop, serving crunchy fried wheat noodles with a savory seafood gravy, while another cart would serve up hot, crispy, turmeric-tinged bánh xèo, forming the basis of some of Charles’ fondest food memories.

In 1971, his father bought a coffee farm nearby, only for them to have to abandon it four years later in 1975. “We left the very day of April 30, 1975. I actually saw the very tank that crushed the gate and went through the Presidential Palace,” Charles tells me, thinking back to when he was thirteen. In order to leave Vietnam that day in a cargo ship with 400 other people, “We got there before the sun set and waited by a nearby ship, and at midnight, we slipped in there. They pulled out at two in the morning,” he recounts in a Good Food podcast episode.

The cargo ship ended up getting lost and being picked up by Malaysian patrol boats that took them to Singapore. Charles recognizes how lucky they were for this to be the case, “When you’re at sea it’s very scary — an approaching ship could be pirates or other bad people.” But not everyone felt so grateful towards the Singaporeans. Laughing, Charles recounts to me, “They literally brought us food every day. I remember the first day [when] they just showed up and they didn’t have anything — they brought us fourteen loaves of bread for 400 people. And the Vietnamese were a little pissed off. They expect Singaporeans to come with a feast or something. [So they] threw one loaf back into the ocean, and once the boat left, a guy — half-naked — jumped into the water and grabbed the bread.” I guess some things never change; the Vietnamese will go to great lengths for their bánh mì.

"I guess some things never change: the Vietnamese will go to great lengths for their bánh mì."

From Singapore’s waters, there were seaworthy ships prepared with appropriate navigation and fuel (a luxury not all boats leaving Vietnam had) that enabled refugees to either return to Vietnam, immigrate to Taiwan, or immigrate to America by way of Guam. Charles playfully reminisces, “They made sure to park the ship far away enough so you can’t swim to Singapore. But everyone wanted to go there. [When] people got sick, they got an army escort to go see a doctor in Singapore. I remember there was an eye infection that spread across the whole ship, but I didn't get it. I would try to poke my eye out with salt water to make it red, in hopes that I could go on a field trip [to Singapore]...But I guess I didn't poke it hard enough!”

Charles’ mother pushed for America, so the family of ten — two parents, Charles, his five younger siblings, and an aunt and uncle — ended up on the Micronesian island of Guam as they waited for a sponsor in America. “You had the choice to get on a plane and they’ll take you wherever they drop you, or you get to stay in Guam. At the refugee camp, there were stories of people going to Minnesota with snow and ice, and you know, we’re from the Tropics so we didn’t want to go. My mom opted to stay in Guam. She was always very forward-thinking.”

“Guam was [sic] 400,000 people and you live in big army tents. When there was a monsoon, water was running through your feet. As time goes by, it gets smaller and smaller and they move you to an army barrack,” Charles recounts. “We were the last family. There were ten of us and no one wanted to sponsor us. They’ll sponsor two or four people, but when there’s ten of you, no one wants to adopt that many people in the household.” So, after two years in Guam, his aunt and uncle split off as their own family.

Photo via Wikipedia.

So on July 7, 1977, two years and two months after leaving Vietnam, Charles and his family flew Pan-Am to San Francisco. “We had friends in San Francisco and they said they rented two beautiful apartments — turned out they got us two studios in the Tenderloin for ten people,” laughed Charles, referring to apartments that didn't even have a door separating the bedroom from the common area, in a neighborhood that had 40% of the city's drug overdoses and a quarter of its homicides in the 1970s. The notorious neighborhood became Charles’ first impression of San Francisco: “Coming from a small town [in Vietnam], and Guam was pitch dark, the Tenderloin was very colorful — lights, prostitutes. It was just mind-boggling when I first got here.”

As a sign of what was to come in his career, “My dad got a job, somehow, in Chinatown as a janitor in a restaurant, and I started working in the restaurant a year later, bussing tables when I was 16. That’s how I got into the restaurant business.” Charles worked at a range of food and beverage joints from British pubs to nightclubs. “Back then [at predominately white restaurants], it was rare that they even had me [a Vietnamese person] as a busser,” he recalls. “Everyone asked me, ‘Where are you from? Why are you here? Are you supposed to be here?’ like I came from Mars.”

At the end of high school, Charles found himself with acceptance letters from a couple of art schools (due to his skills in pottery), as well as Berkeley. Well, I’m sure you can guess which school his father pushed him to choose. After studying architecture at Berkeley for three years (he dropped out as a protest to steep tuition hikes), he went home and ran his mom’s sewing shop, creating a men’s clothing line, named Fin du Siècle, along the way.

“I got emotional the minute I landed at Tân Sơn Nhất. It had just rained, and the street smell, the dirt, the smoke — it was just like I had remembered. There’s nothing romantic about it, but it got me emotional.”

Funny enough, it was his clothing, not his culinary experience, that brought him back to Vietnam after seventeen years away. In 1992, he returned to the motherland to help with sourcing for a local sewing shop. “I got emotional the minute I landed at Tân Sơn Nhất. Leaving the taxi to go into the city — the smell. It had just rained, and the street smell...the dirt...the smoke... It was just like I had remembered. There’s nothing romantic about it, but it got me emotional.”

Once that job ended, Charles went back to California where he worked at a software company for two years before it folded. It was at this time that he started to look at new career options.

The fish heads can’t hurt you

“I’m very entrepreneurial, just like my father and mother. And part of me was really annoyed in Berkeley that people just didn’t take Asian designers seriously. They thought that I should have been in the engineering or math department,” Charles continues. “So I had this idea in my head for 10 years. I wanted to show [that] Vietnamese restaurants could have great designs. We already have great food, so I don’t need to reinvent that.”

Slanted Door in the Mission District on Opening Day. Photo courtesy of The Slanted Door.

Originally envisioned as a bánh xèo shop, The Slanted Door opened with a six-item menu in 1995 in the Mission District. At that time, the Mission was a predominantly working-class Hispanic neighborhood, though today it is a gentrified neighborhood with artisanal ice cream shops and commissioned street art to serve as a backdrop for your Instagram photos. Charles kept the menu simple: phở, bún, and the like. “But,” Charles adds, “because I came from fine dining, I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t do phở or bún at night, I focused on other entrées. Who eats phở at night anyways?”

Like many other immigrant chefs, Charles worked to find a balance in his menu. “It’s a constant question, as a chef, where your voice is. For years I struggled... Will people buy this? Is this too white? Is this too Vietnamese?” He recalls of his early years: “It was hard [then] because you don’t know. I remember selling four whole fish, and two of them came back. People didn’t want to pay for it. They got upset; they cried; they saw the head. I think Vietnamese and Chinese kids are trained to be adventurous, but here [in America], it’s the opposite.”

"I remember selling four whole fish, and two of them came back. People didn’t want to pay for it. They got upset; they cried; they saw the head. I think Vietnamese and Chinese kids are trained to be adventurous, but here, it’s the opposite."

But he must have eventually gotten it right because in less than a decade, he received the James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef: California in 2004 and within another decade, The Slanted Door was named the nation’s most Outstanding Restaurant by the James Beard Foundation.

“I was floored when we won. I thought, ‘This’d better not be a joke because I’ll be very upset.’ I came home, and the internet crashed. Our site got so crushed. And that’s when I found out that I have a very cheap [Internet] hosting company,” Charles reminisces. To understand the significance of the award, you have to remember that it was 2014, and Asian food didn’t enjoy the same interest and recognition it does today.

Charles and The Slanted Door’s first dishwasher, Daniel. Photo courtesy of The Slanted Door.

“That was just unheard of [then]. It’s always been very Euro-centric with these awards. And now it’s good that people aren’t treating these foods like some cheap hole-in-the-wall place — which we all love. Now people are a little bit more adventurous. Now no one returns a fish because it has a head. You don’t realize how far we’ve come in terms of food and what we expect of food.”

Where are the pickles?

Today, Charles isn’t afraid of cooking the dishes he wants and editing them to his liking. Since opening The Slanted Door, the chef and restaurateur has opened up many different concepts, including his newest venture: Chuck’s Takeaway.

This takeaway bánh mì shop features classic combinations like pâté and chả with mayonnaise, cucumbers, jalepeño, and a crush of herbs in his stuffed C.P.’s No. 3, as well as more location-inspired sandwiches like Jo Jo’s Bollito which swaps out the baguette with a toasted bun and is filled with tender braised beef belly smothered in tangy, spicy salsa verde.

The CP No. 3 from Chuck’s Takeaway.

And in a Charles twist, he serves his pickled seasonal vegetables (think more Romanesco broccoli, Fresno chiles, and radishes, and less shredded carrots and daikon) on the side, not in the sandwich — a move a pickle hater like me is very happy to hear.

“There’s a small segment of people who are mad about it. They ask, ‘Where are the pickles?’,” he tells me. “People don’t say that to chefs who are doing a new type of food, but when it’s traditional dishes, if people have certain memories with traditional dishes, they just react and don’t think straight. I’m not here to take you on a trip down memory lane.”

"They ask: 'Where are the pickles?' People don’t say that to chefs who are doing a new type of food. When it’s traditional dishes, they just react and don’t think straight. I’m not here to take you on a trip down memory lane."

At US$16, the sandwich is bound to get some haters, as seen in Yelp reviews. One reviewer writes "I wouldn't call this an everyday lunch spot bc $$$," while on the other hand, another reviewer comments, "I will admit that the baguette is really nice and soft (probably the best baguette I've had), [...] I really wish it had the traditional pickled daikon and carrots." Charles reflects: “This latest round with Chuck’s has been amazing — it’s the best praise we’ve had from Vietnamese people. The tides have really turned.”

Jo Jo’s Bollito from Chuck’s Takeaway.

When you learn about the effort Charles puts into his sandwiches, the price makes sense. He spent years perfecting his bánh mì baguettes. He tracked down a guy in Vietnam and paid to learn from him. After that, he had to change the baguette recipe to meet his standard of bread conditioner and achieve the perfect, yet almost impossible to combine, texture: crunchy and light on the outside with density and a chewy pull on the inside, mimicking a good sourdough. He elaborates: “Ten to fifteen years ago, the food was expected to be a certain price. And yes my food is expensive, and I make no qualms about it. I’ve got to take care of myself, my farmers, my staff, buy sustainable ingredients and make my own pâté, chả... I actually make less money this way since it’s not super efficient since I have to make everything small-batch.”

Charles 4.0

Currently, Charles is working on renovating the San Francisco Ferry Building location of The Slanted Door and its takeaway offshoot Out the Door, as well as opening up a new concept, Moonset, a small shop which will focus on his love of noodles.

“I have to think of the next version of me: Charles 4.0. I should retire, but it’s more scary now because it’s not just my name I’m protecting, but it’s everyone’s job. I know I have to change to stay successful.”

When asked about his version of the future, Charles answered: “I hope with my cooking, if anything, that the next generation will carry the baton that I’m carrying, promoting culture and heritage, taking care of the farmers, making beautiful food. Passing down these things are [sic] important because food is not just about flavor. It’s history, a way of thinking...”

Photo via sfgate.com.

“I was just in Seattle and I saw more Vietnamese chefs starting to put Vietnamese food in a different context. Some do it with a tweezer, and more power to them. I would never cook with a tweezer, but that doesn’t mean there’s a real right or wrong [way]. The fact that you’re paying homage to a culture you love, that’s your own, and you’re exploring it. I think that’s a beautiful thing.”

To Charles, the promotion of Vietnamese food, in any way, shape, or form, is deserving of support: “You’re actually putting this culture on a pedestal, and you’re trying to broadcast this way of thinking, way of eating, the way of Vietnamese people, and I think that’s wonderful. Whatever medium you want to use is fine, you’re still preaching the Vietnamese gospel, and I’m all for that.”

"Whatever medium you want to use is fine, you’re still preaching the Vietnamese gospel, and I’m all for that."

Graphic by Hannah Hoàng, Phan Nhi and Hương Đỗ.

From Sticky Rice and Sugar, Bánh Tổ Binds Me With Tết and My Hoa Vietnamese Roots

2025-01-19T23:00:00+07:00

This Tết, you’re invited to my grandma’s house for a true-blue Tết meal of Hoa Vietnamese, comprising char siu, khâu nhục (braised pork belly), cured duck meat, etc. Then, you can think of the best well-wishing for my grandparents, after which they will give you a red envelope. In my experience, the cleverer and more sincere the wish, the thicker the envelope would be. Before you leave, she would pack up a bánh tổ for you to take home, and store in your fridge to tie you over for the rest of the Tết holiday, as she believes that the core values of Tết are connections and generosity.

Bánh tổ is a traditional confectionery of the Hoa ethnic minority, often consumed during ceremonial occasions, especially Tết and Tết Đoan Ngọ, which celebrates the midyear mark. In Sino-Vietnamese, it’s called niên cao (niángāo), a homonym of “a greater year.” Symbolizing the hopes of self-improvement in a new year, bánh tổ is believed to be an auspicious snack if eaten during special occasions. According to historical sources, it was brought by Chinese merchants into Hội An (Quảng Nam) in the 16th–17th century; residents used bánh tổ as an ancestral offering, so it was given the name “bánh tổ.” Over time, bánh tổ has become an indispensable element of Tết in Central Vietnam.

Bánh tổ is an indispensable element of Tết of Hoa Vietnamese families.

Hoa Vietnamese follow the belief that offerings to Ông Táo (the Kitchen God) must include items that are “sticky” and “sweet” to bribe him into ignoring the household’s faults during the year in his annual report to the Jade Emperor in heaven. Thus, bánh tổ is not just a common feature of usual ancestral feasts, but also those put together for the annual Kitchen God day as a delicious bribe. This distinguishes the Hoa offering platter from the Kinh version, which often consists of sticky rice, poached chicken, sweets, areca nuts, betel leaves, and liquor.

The main ingredients of bánh tổ are glutinous rice powder, sugar, and, sometimes, red beans as the filling — much simpler than other Hoa Tết treats like bánh thuẫn, bánh phát tài or bánh xếp. To make bánh tổ, the powder is mixed with sugar syrup and steamed in a cylindrical mold with banana leaf beneath. It’s a simple enough process that many Hoa families traditionally make them at home for special occasions.

Bánh tổ has a bright shade of golden orange and comes in various sizes. Prices start from VND80,000 per kilogram.

For my family, nothing compares to the joy of shopping before Tết to prepare for the upcoming holiday. Wandering through Chợ Lớn to marvel at the merchandise is much more fun than visiting relatives or gathering at family meals. I can’t put my finger on why I enjoy trips with my mom and grandma to the market during the last days of the lunar calendar, even though the price gouging is apparent and streets are ever-congested. I’ve always thought that this is the best time of the year to be in Saigon; when everyone looks forward to time with family and an impending Tết.

All through the year, I’ve gotten used to seeing my family working and saving tirelessly so they can afford to spend a bit more during this time to decorate and renovate our home to prepare for a new year. If splurging on half a kilogram more of pork can be a tough decision on any other day, during Tết, this spending is a no-brainer: “Not just for our family, but we also prepare enough to feed our relatives and neighbors too,” my grandma often says. Paying nearly VND100,000 just for a pastry like bánh tổ on a normal day would probably yield some passionate disapproval from her, but if it’s for Tết, she could happily spend VND500,000 just to have enough to share with her grandkids, relatives and even those living next door.

A stall with all sorts of Tết treats at the corner of Phùng Hưng and Nguyễn Trãi streets.

The flavor profile of bánh tổ evokes a sense of prosperity and richness, from the moreish sweetness of the sugar to the glutinous and sticky texture of the rice, creating something both rustic and enticing as each bite dissolves in your mouth. The primordial version of bánh tổ is just brown, but in order to zhuzh it up for Tết, bánh makers in Chợ Lớn add in turmeric powder to create that appealing shade of yellow.

More often than not, freshly bought bánh tổ can already be sliced and eaten straight away, though it can be kept for a month. After a while, bánh tổ is often thinly sliced, dipped in an egg mixture, and fried on the stove. This way of transforming leftovers reminds me of bánh chưng or bánh tét, both traditional altar offerings that can be the savior during the early days of the holiday when grocery vendors and supermarkets are not open yet. In those moments, the traditional rice cakes become “fridge-cleaning” dishes for the entire family, commonly consumed with pickles to balance out the greasiness of the frying.

From the middle of the last month of the lunar calendar, Saigoneers have already started shopping for Tết.

With each Tết past, away from my grandparents, I can feel a distance forming between me and my roots. Bánh tổ is perhaps the remaining link connecting me with my Hoa traditions. It’s not just a familiar taste, but also an embodiment of the spirits of generosity and bonding in a community, so that everyone can be as closely “sticking” together like bánh tổ.

A Shelf-Stable History of Why Vietnam Loves Mì Gói

2025-01-07T11:00:00+07:00

Instant noodles are more or less a religion. They have widely spread to many lands, where they are adapted to suit the culture and people there. Most importantly, they offer us salvation in some of the darkest times.

This article was originally published in 2021.

These are the thoughts that ran through my mind while slurping up a bowl of instant noodles. Saigon is now beginning its third month of social distancing, and households aren't even allowed to go outside for groceries. Even when we could, my mother, whom our family entrusts with this task, often returns home exclaiming: “There is almost nothing left. Even instant noodles are out of stock.”

Flash back a bit in time to when the pandemic situation in Saigon was just beginning to become complicated and unpredictable. Nervous and confused, many people, like me, rushed to grocery stores to prepare for the uncertainties ahead. As if connected by an invisible force, everybody in the store at that moment was at the instant noodle section, staring blankly at the limited choices they could make, calculating both variety and quality against price, and then quickly putting several packets into their baskets.

In a checkout queue that felt like forever, everyone was trying to stock up on noodles. Each person was armed with Hảo Hảo, Omachi, Miliket, and more, all hugging the packets as if they were afraid that somebody might accidentally take them.

If you have experienced this yourself, you probably wouldn’t be surprised about the surge of instant noodle consumption in Vietnam since the outbreak of COVID-19. According to statistics from the World Instant Noodles Association, Vietnamese people consumed more than 7 billion packets of noodles in 2020, 67% more than during the same period in 2019.

Similar trends are seen in other Asian-Pacific countries such as China, South Korea and Japan, where the instant noodle industry has continuously observed record-breaking profits, sometimes even passing technology companies and car manufacturers in taking the lead in the stock market.

Even before the pandemic, Asian communities as a whole, and Vietnamese people in particular, already had an unshakable love for instant noodles. In Vietnam, a delicious bowl of noodles is considered a complete meal. To satisfy the craving for noodles, we incorporate various ingredients to create "masterpieces" such as mussel noodles, snail noodles, and stir-fried beef noodles. Though this product is present in western countries too, only in Asian cuisines do instant noodles play such an important role.

From a scientific perspective, it is not difficult to understand why we love eating noodles so much. The main ingredients in each bowl are starch, fat, and monosodium glutamate (MSG) — a combination methodically crafted to stimulate human appetite. Each packet is often not large enough to make us full, enticing us to reach for another.

Or, perhaps we eat instant noodles because the habit is so deeply ingrained into the Vietnamese lifestyle. As children, one of everyone’s favorite snacks was a colorful packet of noodles, small enough to fit in the palm of our hands. We would tear open the packet, pour it into our mouth, and listen to the sounds of noodles crunching in our mouths. Passing the noodle packets under the table during class was how we tightened our childhood friendships.

As we grew older, instant noodles became our savior during those sleepless nights trying to study for exams, chasing after endless deadlines, or those drunken nights when we almost forgot our way home. At convenience stores, shelves of instant noodles and the hot water counter are also strategically located near the entrance, making it a much-desired stop for those hungry stomachs out in the busy streets.

But above all, we eat instant noodles because it is a necessity. For many people, the consumption of noodles does not come from a love for the taste, but from the urgency of life. In the midst of the rapidly developing economy in Vietnam, many people have to make a living through informal, non-contracted jobs, with low and unstable wages. Meanwhile, the average price of a box of multiple packets of noodles fluctuates around VND100,000, roughly 1/30th of the minimum wage. For them, though instant noodles aren't an ideal source of nutrition, they are by far the cheapest way to satisfy hunger.

Instant noodles were invented in Japan in 1958, after World War II. At the time, Japan was in the process of an economic recovery and plagued by famine. The popular dish at the time was noodles, though they were not widely produced due to a lack of factories and storage options. Realizing the demand of the people, an entrepreneur named Momofuku Ando sought to invent a kind of noodle that could be stored for a long time and consumed instantly.

Google Doodle for Momofuku Ando on his 105^th birthday.

In his autobiography, Momofuku writes: “I happened to be passing by this area and saw a 20-30 meters long line of people queuing in front of a dimly lit ramen shop, from which clouds of steam were rising from. People were underdressed for the weather and were shivering under the cold. [...] Their faces lit up as they slurped the bowl of ramen.”

The first packets of instant noodles were sold for JPY35 (VND7,200), carrying Momofuku’s aspiration to bring affordable sources of nutrition to the people. “The world will be at peace when everybody is well-fed,” he affirmed.

Fast forward to 2021, the world is again reeling from war, natural disasters, and social inequality. Millions of people face poverty and food shortages due to the pandemic. In the midst of that bleak picture, instant noodles are not the magical products that Momofuku hoped for, but they remain an important lifeline. During the time of a tsunami in Japan, earthquake in Taiwan, or floods in central Vietnam, instant noodles were ever-present.

Hence, it is not surprising that when a global pandemic broke out, instant noodles were readily waiting for us in the corner of the cupboard. Just put the noodles in a bowl, add in the seasoning packet, pour over some boiling water, let it sit for five minutes, and we have a complete meal. Though it can’t compare to the sophistication of phở or the flavors of bún bò, amidst the uncertainties we are experiencing, the rich flavor from MSG is an adequate comfort for your empty stomach.

Instant noodles are more than just a basic, convenient product, they are a representation of many common values that Vietnamese people and Asian communities share. They stand for persistence during painful histories, from post-war famine to the devastating pandemic. They represent culinary creativity stemming from the most trivial ingredients, which is evident in Saigon’s phá lấu, or Korea’s military hotpot. Most of all, it is a sense of security, family, and home.

When a Korean eats Shin Ramyun, an Indonesian eats Indomie and a Vietnamese eats Hảo Hảo, we are all savoring different flavors, yet feeling the same warmth and comfort. And maybe that is the invisible string that leads us back to the instant noodle shelves at grocery stores in the good days, the bad days, and the many days afterwards.

Illustrations by Patty Yang and Phương Phan.
Graphics by Phan Nhi and Jessie Tran.

How to Know You're in Mỹ Tho? The Sugarcane Juice Has Roasted Peanuts.

2024-12-31T14:00:00+07:00

In Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, when the protagonist tastes a piece of tea-dipped madeleine, the flavor combination immediately transports him back to the childhood memories he’s buried deep inside. This involuntary experience is often called the “Proust Effect,” referring to shards of memory that reappear randomly thanks to olfactory and gustatory triggers; something that other senses can’t achieve.

“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.”
In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust.

At times, I find myself feeling envious of a friend who has an incredibly detailed memory of her formative years, as my recollection of events happening before the age of six is often murky to the point that I’ve wondered if those days were figments of my imagination.

My childhood (left) was defined by my grandfather's backyard and a nước mía cart opposite of it.

Still, one thing that I remember as clearly about my childhood and that I’m very proud to introduce to my friends is the peanut sugarcane juice from my father’s home province of Tiền Giang. I can recall its flavors with vivid details, much more than I can any story from childhood.

Sugarcane has long been a key cash crop in Vietnam’s sugar industry, bringing about many economic benefits as it can be utilized “from root to tip.” Ever since the very first sugar plants were established by the French in the 1870s, local canes were used as input materials. In Tiền Giang, for centuries, sugarcane has been a trusted companion to farmers. Not merely an agricultural product, sugarcane can be a refreshing afternoon snack in the form of peeled and segmented chunks, while the leftover pulp after juicing is repurposed as fuel or an ingredient for paper-making. Sugarcane juice is one of the most iconic thirst quenchers in Vietnamese history

Sugarcane juice is a staple thirst quencher of Vietnamese.

Before graduating from elementary school, a major chunk of my years was tied to Tiền Giang, to summers filled with the cacophony of cicadas in our backyard, to the fish pond toilet that used to terrify me every evening, and to the flock of shy chickens clucking by my grandfather’s mai tree. Of course, that childhood wouldn’t have felt complete without Mỹ Tho sugarcane juice. It’s simply juice with roasted peanuts, yet it never fails to stir up nostalgia whenever I reminisce about Tiền Giang.

To me, an ideal glass of sugarcane juice is sparkling yellow and stored inside a cloudy plastic glass. On top is a layer of froth, something that nước mía connoisseurs prize as a sign of high-quality juice. Last but most prominently, to complete a glass of true-blue Mỹ Tho sugarcane juice, a handful of unshelled roasted peanuts is sprinkled on top to round out the textures.

A good glass of sugarcane juice must be as frothy as possible.

Whenever I introduce this delicacy to my friends, to appease their skepticism about this rather unfamiliar addition, I often make the comparison to bubble tea: “So instead of milk tea with pearls, we Mỹ Tho folks slurp sugarcane juice while crunching roasted peanuts.” There isn’t a lot of information out there about how this quirky topping came about. Sometimes I wonder if that was because once upon a time, someone accidentally dropped a batch of freshly roasted peanuts into their nearby glass of juice; they simply craved a little bit of crunch in their beverage; or it’s just a way to save time by eating and drinking at the same time.

Mỹ Tho sugarcane juice often has roasted peanuts, jackfruit, and jelly as toppings.

No matter how it came to be, this drink has turned into a culinary icon and a crucial part of the life of Mỹ Tho residents, especially on sweltering days taking a break by Giếng Nước.

Giếng Nước is a large manmade reservoir right in the heart of the city, a witness to the land’s founding story. It was originally a moat just over 1km long, dug on order of Emperor Minh Mạng to protect Định Tường (the home province of Mỹ Tho back then). If Hanoi has lakeside ice tea, Đà Lạt has hot soy milk by the Hòa Bình Theater, Mỹ Tho has peanut sugarcane juice to snack on during the stuffy evenings when locals gather by Giếng Nước to shoot the breeze.

The best sugarcane juice in Mỹ Tho can be found near Giếng Nước. Photo by Hồng Lê via Ấp Bắc.

The version of Mỹ Tho sugarcane juice that defined my younger years was comprised only of juice and peanuts, but the variations of today can contain strawberry, orange, or pineapple. A glass of Mỹ Tho sugarcane juice retains the gentle sweetness of the sap, in addition to a whiff of toasty peanut notes, a nuttiness when one bites into the nuts, and a slight tannic aftertaste of the peanut peels.

Of course, things can’t stay that light and simple considering the creativity and prevalent sweet tooth of Mekong Delta inhabitants: be it the main course or side dish, everything must be candy-sweet. Some nước mía cart add coconut flesh and kumquats to the pressing step to enrich the juice, while others invent a smorgasbord of other toppings behind the basic peanuts — jackfruit, chunks of agar jelly, or even candied chùm ruột berries.

The only place in Saigon that I could find that features the closest taste to my hometown’s sugarcane juice.

Here in Saigon, the closest version to Mỹ Tho sugarcane juice I can find belongs to an assorted juice stand at 388 Lê Văn Lương, Tân Hưng Ward, District 7. Perhaps in a bid to satisfy the Saigon drinker’s propensity for excess, they provided a bunch of different toppings, including durian, water chestnut jelly, jackfruit, and of course, roasted peanuts.

The refreshing sweetness and coolness of the sugarcane juice, alongside that distinctive nuttiness of peanuts, brings me back to those summer days in Tiền Giang, just like how the tea-dipped madeleine transports Marcel Proust’s protagonist to his own childhood, a time he once thought to be forgotten.

[Top image via ZNews]

Nước mía mix Mỹ Tho

388 Lê Văn Lương, Tân Hưng Ward, D7, HCMC

Sấu, Mơ, and Lotus Tea: The Delight of Freezedom Hanoi's Creative Gelato Flavors

2024-12-29T17:38:18+07:00

Apart from a rather ambitious list of Hanoi-specific dishes to sample, my itinerary for the capital includes three personal wishes: ride the Hanoi Metro, visit Sonder Coffee Bar, and try out Freezedom’s ice cream.

The latter two are both quirky indie hangout spots I’ve followed for ages on social media, yearning for their uniquely sounding creations and waiting for one day when a northward flight will take me to their doorstep. Though our tight eating schedule this time prevented me from catching a metro trip, I’ve managed to sample the tasty beverages and gelato flavors in the flesh.

From an online shop, Freezedom has opened a small space for dining in.

As an ice cream enthusiast, I’ve had my fair share of frozen treats in Saigon over the span of my lifetime. Foreign chains have come and gone. Hobbyists set up online shops, dishing out home-churned pints. Some even became successful enough to cross over to brick-and-mortar locations. And a few went big enough to hit supermarket shelves. While I can name quite a handful of specific flavors and gelaterias in town I would gladly get brainfreeze for, few can come close to the sense of wide-eyed fascination that the folks behind Freezedom Hanoi imbued into their frozen brainchildren and put forward into our world.

Ice cream in the cold front of December, why not?

There’s a significant financial risk to running an ice cream parlor, so I understand why most places feel the need to provide safe basics to appeal to the hoi polloi: chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, coffee, etc. I have an innate need for novelty, so my all-time favorite thing at a new ice cream place is that magical moment when I gaze inside the glass display for the first time and be overwhelmed by choices in the best way. It, however, can be disappointing to see that the most exotic thing inside that glass display is… passionfruit.

While Freezedom does offer a slew of classics like cookies & cream, salted caramel, or rum & raisin, what distinguishes them from the rest is their drive to constantly experiment to come up with exciting flavors, many of which seek to lionize Vietnam’s endemic flora and cultural dishes. They’ve crafted sorbets from mangosteen, cóc, Hanoian plum, lotus tea, sấu, persimmon, and jasmine beancurd, just to name a few.

The bulk of flavors on offer here is never the same, as it depends on the seasonality of the ingredients.

As is the nature of such experiments, the texture can vary between flavors — some are better aerated, some are more stable, and some can be a tad icy — but most of the time, the essence of the featured fruit or dish at hand is always well-encapsulated. From my visit, cóc sorbet was a hesitant pick that we didn’t expect much from, but ended up being an instant favorite for its tartness and freshness, both balanced well thanks to a packet of salted plum sea salt as accouterment.

If you follow Freezedom’s social media, you will learn that not all experiments yield edible results, and new flavors often have short runs due to the featured fruit only being in season for a fleeting time, but it is their transient existences that make the wait and urgency exciting. Mangosteen season might be short, but Freezedom’s creative spirit seems evergreen — just something we can always use more of in this constantly churning grind.

Freezedom Hanoi

29B Ngõ 100 Đội Cấn Street, Đội Cấn Ward, Ba Đình District, Hanoi

History in a Tin: The Colonial Past of Vietnam Through Popular Canned Food

2024-12-27T10:00:00+07:00

Whether it is fish placed neatly inside rectangular tins or uniform meat slabs stored in cylindrical cans with colorful packages, eating canned food is a strange experience. Unlike sitting in street food stalls or eating at home — where one can witness the food being made — the homogenizing, sanitized, mass-produced packages one mindlessly grabs from a supermarket counter obscure the labor that goes into the meal, as well as its origins.

Writing and narratives surrounding Vietnamese food often focus on foodstuffs deemed unique and representative of the culture, such as phở, spring rolls or bánh bèo, and hence their status of being unique to the culture serves as a culinary attraction in the eyes of foreigners and taps into a consumeristic desire to eat an imagined “other.”

Writer Elaine Castillo notes in the essay “Colonialism in a Can,” published by Taste, a similar impulse to include items such as purple yams, sticky rice and adobo in Filipino cuisine:

If you write an article about Filipino food, you’re almost obliged to mention things like banana leaves, purple yams, sticky rice, all of which are products I do eat weekly—I have no desire to minimize their importance in Filipino cuisine or their profound meaning in the lives of Filipinx eaters like me. But I also know that often the emphasis on those ingredients means imposing a particular view of Filipino cuisine whose primary purpose is to bring non-Filipino diners news from afar, fairytales from a far-off and fragrant place. But why not ask about canned sardines?

Castillo continues by arguing that following the traces of canned sardines can reveal the history of American imperialism in the Philippines, one aspect that is “less romantic” and “hits a little closer to home.” Canned sardines in tomato sauce also exist in Vietnam — they lounge in bánh mì carts and piled upon each other in kitchen cabinets, together with Maggi soy sauce, luncheon meat, corned beef and canned pate. Their presence expected and their origins rarely questioned, they seem to magically exist through conveyor belts that brought them into our lives.

Canned sardines and the slippage of whiteness

Walk by any bánh mì cart on a Saigon street and one should find stacks of red cylindrical cans of small fish in tomato sauce.

The most well-known brand of canned sardines (or mackerels) for a typical Saigonese might be Three Lady Cooks, a Thai brand belonging to the Royal Foods company. These cans are most commonly known as cá hộp Ba Cô Gái in Vietnamese. In the country, Three Lady Cooks was distributed through Thai Corp International, a company that entered the market in the late 1980s. However, canned sardines' arrival in Vietnam traces back to when the country was still a French colony.

While the inventor credited with the birth of canning technology in the early 1800s is a Frenchman, the technology didn't thrive in France, and canned food hadn't caught on among the French public by the time the country entered World War I. In the colonies, however, the attitude surrounding canned food was entirely different.

In her book Appetites and Aspirations, Erica J. Peters notes that canned and preserved food was the primary diet of French colonists in Vietnam. The French refused to eat local produce, showing their disdain for rice, fish sauce and street food. Contrary to stereotypical rationale such as health fear and sanitation, the French consumption of canned goods relied on the premise that these items constituted an invented “Frenchness,” while locally produced food symbolized the realm of the colonized subject.

This was not only true in Indochina, but also other European colonies in Africa, where European-imported canned foods and bottled alcoholic drinks were seen as a symbol of whiteness, while local produce was considered “non-white,” as Diana Miryong Natermann points out in her book. Hence, in the effort to “otherize” themselves from the locals, the French turned to expensive canned vegetables and meat.

Canned sardines were popular among French people. In France, tinned pilchards caught on earlier than other types of canned foods. The food was popular among working-class people, who kept tins of canned sardines for when they didn't have time to cook. According to a 1956 Commercial Fisheries Review entry for Vietnam, canned sardines were imported from France and its possessions during the colonial period through a preferential trade system, with the main consumers being French colonists. The most popular type of canned sardines were packed in tomato sauce, which was also the cheapest at the time.

A bánh mì cart with sardines cans stacked on top of each other. Photo via Bao Moi.

These canned goods also reached the Vietnamese middle- and upper-class. Peters mentions there was a rise in European goods consumption among Vietnamese at the turn of the 20^th century. This can be further proven by the proliferation of newspaper ads promoting canned goods and bottled wine in Vietnamese. While France had a sardine-canning industry in place, if one goes through the plethora of Vietnamese online blog entries and newspaper articles expressing nostalgia for canned sardines of the past, they might find Vietnamese writers raving about tins of Sumaco sardines from Morocco. These tins originally belonged to Conserval, a sardine company from Safi, one of Morocco’s most famous sardine ports.

While refusing to eat the produce that colonized land offered, the French colonists seemed to not mind their sardines being harvested and canned from Safi or Agadir, the two famous sardine ports of Morocco, a country that became a French colony in 1912. When the French colonized Morocco, industries such as canning vegetables and sardines developed.

After the French army left Vietnam, canned sardine imports in the country dropped heavily. Meanwhile, a local industry was emerging, starting with one small plant that produced 8,000 cans of sardines daily.

Vietnam was also early in adopting canning technology. According to a newspaper article published on Tia Sáng in 1954, Vietnam was the only country in Asia to attend a conference on canning technology in Poland that year. In 1958, with help from the Soviet Union, the country’s first canned fish factory was constructed in Hai Phong Province. The company still exists today, and has expanded its production to all types of canned goods under the name Ha Long Canfoco.

The body politics of sweetened condensed milk

You can tell whether someone was brought up poor or rich based on which type of milk they were fed as an infant. Rich children grew up drinking milk powder from Guigoz cans. The rest of the population used sweetened condensed milk diluted in hot water.

The ubiquity of sweetened condensed milk in Saigon often led me to assume that it exists everywhere else in the world. We use sweetened condensed milk for coffee, baked goods, smoothies, flan, assorted smashed fruits, bơ dầm (smashed avocado), bread dips and yogurt. Its uniform 380-gram can is used as a unit of measurement when making Vietnamese yogurt and measuring rice (the wisdom goes: four cans equals a kilogram of rice). Its popularity is so great that sữa bò (literally translated to cow’s milk) is colloquially understood as sweetened condensed milk, and whenever one says lon gạo (a can of rice), the “can” is often understood as the sweetened condensed milk can.

To trace the arrival of these cans of condensed milk, perhaps one needs to also mention the erasure of fresh milk in Vietnam. Historian Natasha Pairaudeau found in her research that a fresh milk trade existed in Vietnam during French colonialism. This trade was driven by Tamil livestock herders and milkmen, as there was demand for milk and dairy products from the French in the colony. These Tamils, who arrived in Vietnam in the late 19^th century, started selling goat milk, and later imported cattle from southern India to offer the French the option of cow milk, Peters says in Power Struggles and Social Positioning: Culinary Appropriation and Anxiety in Colonial Vietnam.

Tamil carters. Photo reproduced via Natasha Pairaudeau's article.

Pairaudeau notes that by the 1880s, there were no less than 26 Tamil milkmen in Saigon, delivering milk door-to-door. However, by the turn of the 20^th century, most of these milkmen barely made ends meet and most were wiped out, to be replaced by the monopoly Nestle had formed.

The reason for this erasure, according to Peters, is the blatant xenophobic advertising rhetoric from the French colonizers. In the early 1900s, France sought new customers for surplus food, including canned milk and wine. This led to a series of advertisements for La Petite Fermiere condensed milk in the Vietnamese newspaper Lục Tỉnh Nhân Văn. One ad shows a dark-skinned Tamil milkman and a light-skinned Vietnamese servant saying to the man that the freshly delivered milk smells like “hairy-goat.” Stores in Saigon also advertised the freshness and pasteurization as positive attributes, with a strong emphasis on the milk brand's French origins, tapping into notions of modernity and awareness of sanitization and hygiene.

This rhetoric quickly changed into a different myth, which implored Vietnamese consumers to buy powdered and condensed milk to feed their infants. La Petite Fermiere's second ad features a Vietnamese mom complimenting another mom’s child on their weight and health. Nestle, the Anglo-Swiss brand, extolled the same rhetoric in their ads printed in Vietnamese papers such as Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, Ngày Nay and Công Luận Báo and soon became dominant in the market.

One example of note is an advertisement which said that in a baby contest held in Saigon, 79 out of 99 participants were fed Nestle products, and 12 out of 15 awards went to babies which drank either their condensed milk or milk powder. The ads also mention that only 10 babies were fed with mother's milk, subtly hinting at the industrial product's superiority. The aspirations of superior, powerful, bourgeois bodies were thus sold back to the Vietnamese populations.

The aforementioned advertisement, published in Trung Hòa Nhật Báo. Photo via National Library of Vietnam.

Along with Nestle, there are other sweet condensed milk brands, such as Mont-Blanc and Vache. These brands didn't run as many ads as Nestle, so it's unclear exactly when and how sweetened condensed milk came to be used in items not related to infants. A look at Ông Thọ, currently the most well-known condensed milk brand, might provide a partial answer, as Ông Thọ sweetened condensed milk holds no association with babies.

The Ông Thọ brand arrived in Vietnam under the name “Longevity” after the French colonial era and during the American War. The milk was produced by Foremost Dairies, an American company. During the war, the company served as the primary milk supplier for the US military in Vietnam, along with Meadow Gold Dairies. Starting from 1964, the Foremost factory in Vietnam produced 300,000 cases of sweetened condensed milk per year by importing nonfat dry milk from the United States. Each case contained 48 tins. By 1969, production increased from 35,000 cases to 75,000 cases per month.

In a file titled “Milk in South Vietnam” retrieved from the Virtual Vietnam Archive, an unknown source claims that after 1967, milk became a vital product for the military when doctors found themselves treating many vets with gastronomic and colon inflammatory disease due to the lack of the enzyme produced by the intestine to digest milk. While Foremost Dairies later went out of business in the US, its plant in Vietnam was still in operation in the 1960s.

After 1975, the economy was nationalized and collectivized, making Vinamilk the owner of the three largest milk factories in the country, including the Foremost Dairies plant. The other two were the Nestle milk powder factory and the factory belonging to Cosuvina, which holds the trademark for the famous sữa đặc Kim Cương (Diamond sweetened condensed milk brand) and brands such as Cậu Bé Hà Lan (Dutch Boy), which bears an uncanny resemblance to Dutch Lady, the new name of Foremost Dairies Vietnam. Vinamilk also took over the production of Ông Thọ sweetened condensed milk.

Bretel canned butter and nostalgia

Traversing the isles of European import markets or gourmet markets in Vietnam, one might stumble upon red cans of butter that go by the name Bretel and come with a hefty price tag.

A simple search for Bretel butter in both Vietnamese and English will open a wealth of blog posts, forums, online community chatter and posts written by overseas Vietnamese, mostly talking about how they have searched high and low for the Bretel butter can that they enjoyed in the past. Andrea Nguyen wrote about the cult favorite in one post, and it appears in Kim Thuy’s book Ru, when a character offers high praise for the taste of Bretel butter. Thinker Phan Huy Duong, in Một Hành Trình Tư Duy 2, mentions a café in Hanoi where one can enjoy the drink with a toothpick of Bretel butter and a tiny teaspoon of cognac. The Bretel canned butter is also my grandfather’s favorite butter to eat with bread.

There is so little information in English about the butter that it’s hard to believe it used to be the largest butter factory in the world. Vietnamese penning online posts asking for help finding Bretel canned butter were often met with either a clueless reaction from a foreigner or a similar request from other Vietnamese. For older Vietnamese, Bretel canned butter is a time capsule on its own.

The butter in question originally came from Maison Bretel Freres, a butter company established in 1871 by two brothers, Eugene Bretel and Adolphe Bretel. The butter was made in the Manche area of Normandy, France. The type of butter they sold was beurre d’Isigny, which refers to an origin-registered butter made from cow’s milk in areas surrounding Isigny-du-Mer.

In Bradstreet's Weekly: A Business Digest, Volume 19, a person who visited the Bretel factory recounted what they saw there. Butter was purchased from dairy farmers in the area before being graded and processed. The butter was shaped into a rectangular block, rolled on a slab and packaged in boxes. Often called Normandy roll butter, Bretel's blocks of butter were once a favorite in Great Britain.

There was another type of butter that Bretel also made, notes the witness, which was packaged in tins and reserved for shipping to “hot countries.” Salt was always added to these canned butter.

An advertisement for Bretel, featuring the canned butter. Photo via Didier-Beurre.

In Vietnam during the colonial period, like many types of canned food, canned butter was also a popular commodity on the table of French colonizers. Peters notes that fine French restaurants in Vietnam would use canned butter and whip it with mineral water to make it fresh, as butter only existed in canned form at the time. In her research on French women living in Indochina, Marie-Paule Ha notes that interviewees frequently mentioned Nestle milk and Bretel butter as common staples. Across Vietnamese newspapers that published recipes in the 1920s and 1930s, like Phụ Nữ Tân Văn, there were many recipes that called for butter, a sign that canned butter had also entered the lexicon of the Vietnamese public.

Maison Bretel Freres was also a popular brand that won many awards at world expositions at the time. Its cans, similar to the Nestle sweetened condensed milk cans, were used as a unit of measurement in the rice trade, as noted in a 1906 French economic report.

Vũ Hồng Liên, in Rice and Baguettes, remarks that Bretel took a while to penetrate the market in Vietnam, “but once the butter arrived in the country, it never left." Indeed, while Maison Bretel Freres no longer exists, and the concept of canned butter has faded into obscurity, tins of Bretel butter continue to be sold at Vietnamese markets in both Vietnam and other countries, offering a nostalgic commodity for a generation.

The cans today feature the initials “N.V.T,” short for Ngo Van The, who was listed as the person who filed for Bretel’s International Trademark registration in 1964. The, born in 1944, was also listed as the president of Bretel, which does business in wholesale trade.

Canned foods serve as a good reminder that the food we eat, and hence our bodies, are inextricably linked to the political-economic system that conditions one's life and communities and the uncomfortable history behind them. The stories of canned food also weave a common thread between people who are on the receiving end of imperialism and global capitalism — the Moroccan laborers on the ports of Safi, the poor Tamil migrants that were pushed to poverty by European colonizers, working-class French people and Vietnamese living in the country and overseas all share a page in history, a taste of the presence and a path to the future.

This article was originally published in 2020.

From Abroad to My Favorite Bún Riêu: A Brief History of Trứng Vịt Lộn

2024-12-09T13:00:00+07:00

I pride myself on being a child of Hanoi, but only after nearly 20 years, did I realize that trứng vịt lộn is not exactly an authentic topping in Hanoi-style bún riêu.

With 2024 coming to an end, many apps are urging me to reflect on my year and Top 10 this and Top 10 that. If I were to make a list of the most surprising discoveries I've made this year, finding out that traditional “authentic” bún riêu doesn’t include trứng vịt lộn would definitely comes out on top. Turns out, my regular bún riêu order, one I’m always chanting like a mantra of a Hanoian craving — “riêu sụn giò tóp mỡ trứng vịt lộn, bỏ cùng nước” (bún riêu with pork cartilage, giò, with fried pork fat and balut egg) — is a modernized, non-traditional version of bún riêu. The diversity of toppings today is a far cry compared to the original simplicity of Hanoian bún riêu, which is a simple noodle dish that only highlights riêu cua (crab paste), an easy-to-find ingredient in the subsidy period in the early 1980s. Since then, I have always wondered: how could trứng vịt lộn become such an iconic dish of Hanoian cuisine?

Illlustration by Ngọc Tạ.

From a rustic beginning

Trứng vịt lộn, or balut, is a fertilized duck embryo that can be enjoyed in numerous ways depending on the region and country. The English term “balut” originates from the Tagalog phrase “balut sa puti,” which means “wrapped in white.” This came from the traditional preparation method where the egg is “wrapped” during incubation. There are many ways the Vietnamese culture has attempted to make sense of its Vietnamese name.

Does vịt lộn lộn? Illustration by Ngọc Tạ.

Trứng vịt — or hột vịt, as it's commonly called in southern Vietnam — can be directly translated to duck eggs, but “lộn” has many interpretations, from official dictionary definitions to folk stories. According to the Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary by Alexandre de Rhodes, “lộn” is a Nôm word of Vietnamese origin, meaning reincarnation. However, according to the writer Minh Lê, a folk tale references “lộn” as “mistake,” as in “This already half-hatched egg is mistakenly cooked!” Another version suggests that “lộn” can mean “mixed” due to duck eggs being incubated by hens, resulting in a mix-up. These myths all partially illustrate the prevalence of trứng vịt lộn in Vietnam folk life. However, its exact origins are somewhat unclear. Still, according to historical texts, the tradition of consuming fertilized eggs is believed to have originated in China and was imported into the Philippines through Chinese traders.

Before electricity, Vietnamese were used to trứng vịt lộn vendors lit up with oil lamps. Photo via Phụ Nữ.

According to an article in the Journal of Ethnic Foods, fertilized duck eggs are a shared delicacy of numerous Asian countries, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. This practice began as a way to extend the shelf life of eggs before refrigeration was available, creating 毛鸡蛋, or “feathered egg,” which still have visible feathers once cooked. The fundamental difference between these regional baluts lies in the incubation duration: in Cambodia, the incubation lasts from 18 to 20 days, while Vietnamese eggs are usually incubated for 19–21 days to ensure the embryo is firm when cooked.

Fertilized duck eggs are a shared delicacy of numerous Asian countries, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. This practice began as a way to extend the shelf life of eggs before refrigeration was available.

In Vietnam, the earliest historical mention of trứng vịt lộn can be traced back to the imperial eras of the Nguyễn Dynasty. In 1822, the Minh Mạng court hosted John Crawfurd, a British ambassador, at a banquet that featured three bowls of balut. If true, this shows that trứng lộn has been eaten in Huế since at least the 1820s, though there are no records indicating whether they were chicken or duck eggs. In his journal, Crawfurd described the balut as “the highlight of every grand feast.”

John Crawfurd’s Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China, a classic reference text of 19^th-century Vietnam. Photo via Biblioasia.

According to writer Nguyễn Gia Việt, trứng vịt lộn was brought to southern Vietnam by the Ma Ní people (Manileños), which refers to Filipino soldiers who served as mercenaries for the French. Then, it was commercialized by the Chinese as the first seller in Saigon's Chợ Lớn. While the exact year is unclear, this was the first place to trade trứng vịt lộn, with Bến Bình Đông being a hub for duck egg incubation. The selection of duck eggs over chicken eggs is due to the former's stronger shell and membrane, with a smoother shell texture. This gives the egg stronger resistance during the demanding incubation process.

In the 1950s, Pateros was the “Balut capital” of the Philippines with around 400,000 ducks dedicated to balut egg production. Photo via History Oasis.

Vietnamese mostly enjoy trứng vịt lộn già, or old balut, which is incubated for 20–21 days. At this time, the embryos are small but most of the parts of the ducklings’ bodies have been developed, giving the otherwise soft albumen a more textured filling. Apart from trứng vịt lộn, trứng cút lộn (fertilized quail egg) is also a well-beloved street food often sold at nhậu restaurants, either stir-fried in tamarind sauce or fried with butter.

To a familiar daily presence

Trứng vịt lộn has many “faces” as it can be featured in numerous dishes. While any Hanoian child is familiar with the simple boiled egg, served with rau răm, the traditional Saigon way to eat vịt lộn is slightly more refined. The egg is put on a tiny ceramic cup, with the bigger end facing upward; the diner uses a teaspoon to crack a hole just big enough to slowly scoop the insides out to eat — similar to the way the French eat soft-boiled eggs (œufs à la coque). In southwestern provinces, trứng vịt lộn can be boiled in coconut water, infusing the signature sweetness of this distinctly southern flavor. Trứng vịt lộn can also lend itself brilliantly to other dishes, including hotpot, porridge, and soup.

Trứng vịt lộn and porridge and in trứng vịt lộn om bầu. Photo via Kênh 14 and Kenvin Travel.

In my daily life, I encounter trứng vịt lộn quite often: on my way home from work, I can count over 15 trứng vịt lộn spots only from fleeting observation. On any street, from cities to the countryside, right beside the foot of a skyscraper, or deep inside small alleys — you can always find a little vendor selling trứng vịt lộn, with tiny chairs here and there filled with diners wearing all types of outfit. White-collar workers in formal shirts? Grandmas wearing their signature patterned pajamas? Dressed-up ladies preparing for a girl’s night? Little kids still wearing school bags? Trứng vịt lộn is literally everywhere, every time, for everyone.

On any street, from cities to the countryside, right beside the foot of a skyscraper, or deep inside small alleys — you can always find a little vendor selling trứng vịt lộn. Trứng vịt lộn is literally everywhere, every time, for everyone.

Therefore, if you love trứng vịt lộn, it will take only 5 minutes to find the nearest trứng vịt lộn, be it in a supermarket or at a vendor on the street. Boil for around 15 minutes and be creative with how you eat it: dipped in salt, pepper, and lime; with pickles; or with accompanying porridge. In my opinion, trứng vịt lộn contains the essence of Vietnamese cuisine: flexible adaptations, on-the-go convenience, and, of course, booming bursts of flavors packed in little vessels.

The nutritious trứng vịt lộn stew with mugwort and Chinese medicines, the best friend of all sick northern children. Photo via Check in Vietnam.

There are different reasons for eating trứng vịt lộn. For me, it is simply a sudden craving for it, often in the middle of meetings, work, and brain freezes. For my mom and grandmother, it is reserved for when younger members of the family catch a cold, as northerners often treat trứng vịt lộn as a nutritious comfort food. In fact, trứng vịt lộn is often deemed to be too nutritious, so my mom and granny tame this finicky treat by stewing it with ngải cứu (mugwort) and herbal ingredients like wolfberry, jujube, and longan.

According to common folk beliefs, eating trứng vịt lộn is also a way to dispel bad luck as “lộn” can also mean reverse. Just remember to eat an odd number of eggs only, then crush the eggshell after eating. Psychologist Nguyễn Thị Đào Lưu explained that this is due to spiritual reasons. In challenging times, people look for something to rely on, making eating trứng vịt lộn a comforting cultural practice that provides not just nourishment, but also a sense of hope.

And to a symbol of Vietnam's ever-evolving cuisine and identity

Illustration by Ngọc Tạ.

I pride myself as a connoisseur of Hanoian food, having spent my childhood inside the Old Quarter, and then growing up in Đống Đa — which arguably has the second-most vibrant food scene in the city, after Hoàn Kiếm. It has always been the norm for me to have bún riêu with trứng vịt lộn; the colorfully marbled egg elevates an already-perfect dish. Its saltiness blends harmoniously with the crab-infused broth, golden fried tofu, chili vinegar, raw vegetables, and shrimp paste. While some prefer having trứng vịt lộn in a separate bowl, carving out a piece to accompany spoonfuls of bún here and there, I reckon dropping the egg fully in the bowl gives the trứng vịt lộn broth a chance to shine. It brings out the full flavor profile of the egg: umami, gamy, and savory — exactly why Vietnamese all fall in love with it.

The vibrant full-topping bún riêu with trứng vịt lộn. Photo via Dân Trí.

Thus, when I learned that the authentic Hanoian bún riêu doesn’t feature trứng vịt lộn, I was in denial. Sure, there are “minimalistic” spots that do not serve the egg, but I have always assumed that this was merely a matter of topping preferences, similar to fried doughnuts in phở, which my family doesn’t fancy but are staples for many. Upon further reflection, it makes sense that the favorite bún riêu vendor of my dad, a true Hanoian, doesn’t serve trứng vịt lộn. Nestled deep inside a tiny alley that can barely fit my dad’s cruiser bike, the little vendor offers minimal toppings of just tofu and crab. One time, the owner grimaced at my request for trứng vịt lộn, exclaiming that her place, which has been passed down through generations, has never, and will not, serve that topping. It is obvious that the owner certainly did not approve of the modern version of bún riêu with trứng vịt lộn.

Nonetheless, to me, the modern bún riêu remains quintessentially Hanoian. Whether served with vibrant toppings or in its original minimalist style, each bowl still tells stories of Hanoi and its people, albeit, slightly different for each era. It doesn't matter whether it comes with vịt lộn or not, bún riêu is still enjoyed with friends, sharing stories, and keeping the heart of Hanoian culture alive. Hanoi's tradition of enjoying bún riêu during Tết as a refreshment from repetitive Tết dishes was continued even with the new addition of trứng vịt lộn. Sidewalks are lined with numerous vendors, serving people of all generations and even foreign visitors. It perfectly demonstrates how the non-traditional trứng vịt lộn is becoming a part of Hanoi’s gastronomic traditions, continuing and evolving the heritage.

Bún riêu for Tết is modern Hanoian tradition. Photos via Kênh 14.

Trứng vịt lộn, as non-traditional as it is in bún riêu, has become a part of the collective memories of the present generation, or even the older Hanoians who are willing to embrace changes. My dad was introduced to trứng vịt lộn in bún riêu by me, and sometimes — when hunger strikes — he will go for an “energized” bún riêu with trứng vịt lộn. Somehow, trứng vịt lộn not only brought a new flavor profile to a timeless dish but also renewed a culinary experience savored across generations. On my days of wandering around Saigon, I still miss my trứng vịt lộn–bún riêu, my mind filled with homesickness and nostalgia, longing to be back to my beloved city and its streetside vendors.

In Taiwan, a Vietnamese Baker Creates Bánh Mì Thịt From Scratch

2024-11-26T14:00:00+07:00

“We’re going to Taipei on VietJet Air,” an acquaintance said to me. An international flight on Vietnam’s notoriously delayed airline didn’t sound like the best idea ever. But who would expect that I was set to fly to Tainan, a city on the island's southwest coast, just a few hours after the brief conversation with her. The reality was that I found it excruciatingly difficult to reject a cheap flight deal.

Taiwan is famous worldwide for being the birthplace of milk tea. I have never been a fan of the drink, but my to-do list included trying Taiwan’s very first boba milk tea shop. That called for a brief train ride to Taichung, Taiwan’s second-most populous city. This article, however, has nothing to do with Chun Shui Tang, Taiwan’s inaugural trà sữa joint, but a much more distinctively Vietnamese item.

Signs of a bustling Vietnamese community surround Taichung’s recently revitalized and modern train station: numerous phở joints, a street shack serving both bún thịt bò xào and bánh xèo, and, believe it or not, a full-fledged restaurant that specializes in Hanoi's culinary crown jewel — bún đậu mắm tôm.

In an attempt to not be caught in Taiwan’s relentless rainy season, what finally caught my eye was a bakery that touched the culturally Vietnamese part of my soul: Lò Bánh Mì Pasteur. “Lò bánh mì” means bakery in Vietnamese, and its two owners were focused on their craft when I paid them a visit at 8am.

Nương's bakery serves Vietnam's iconic bánh mì thịt, though with a few subtle local adaptations.

Nương, originally from Cần Thơ, in the Mekong Delta, started the business less than a year ago, certainly not without numerous challenges. Taiwan’s strict laws on imported produce meant that almost everything crucial to the making of bánh mì thịt, such as bánh mì, chả, chả bò, pâté and char siu, has to be made from scratch. Most recently, a host of countries, including Taiwan, banned pork products from Vietnam in fear of furthering the spread of African swine fever.

“When I [was] first married in Taiwan, I worked in a Vietnamese restaurant. Naturally, [it was] something that most of us [Vietnamese ladies in Taiwan] could easily adapt to,” she tells Saigoneer. Nương was among one of the first Vietnamese brides who arrived in Taiwan shortly after the devastating Jiji earthquake in 1999.

My first bite into Nương's bánh mì thịt evoked in me a sensation that could only be described as “same same, but different” in comparison with bánh mì in Vietnam. It was delicious, especially the perfect firmness of the Vietnamese ham. In a way, the sandwich was very similar to a typical bánh mì in Saigon, yet quite different. For starters, the pickles had a different tanginess to them, owing to the use of non-Vietnamese vinegar, which is similar to the condiment you might add to your hủ tiếu somewhere in District 5. The unorthodox addition of authentic Vietnamese-style char siu made the combination pleasantly sweet and chewier. But the starkest differences were in its main components.

A brush of vegetable oil on the bánh mì gives them a nice sheen and crispiness.

“Taiwanese flour is so different. It’s sweeter and chewier,” she explains. Her “baguettes” are coated with vegetable oil almost immediately after baking — the secret to their crunchiness after being toasted a second time. Different varieties of bánh mì are made to order when customers appear.

Lò Bánh Mì Pasteur's homemade pâté is several shades darker than those in Vietnam. “The Taiwanese like eating jiànkāng [healthy], [so] we don’t use preservatives. That’s what makes the commercial pâté so pinkish,” she adds.

As Nương's trusted bánh mì assembler, Tuyết swiftly tossed every last essential condiment onto a near-complete sandwich. A brief chat with her made me realize that the presence of Vietnamese restaurants and bakeries in Taichung was worthy of a story of its own.

Tuyết puts the finishing touches on bánh mì thịt.

“The first batch [of brides] were more innocent. We came for a better life. If you were lucky [and met] a good husband, [you had] no problems,” she says. For her, however, it was the opposite, as life in Taichung proved to be more difficult than back in the fatherland. “I was willing to drag my luggage all the way from District 8 to Taiwan, yet I was equally willing to drag it all back home,” she laments, adding that her life was tougher than back home — “khổ hơn Việt Nam em ơi.”

Still, now that Nương's children have grown up, her life has gotten more comfortable, with the exception of a few things. “At the end of the day, what we really miss is Vietnamese food,” she says, as I wash my last bite of bánh mì down with the help of cà phê sữa đá.

We couldn’t help but laugh. That one thing that has made Vietnam my second home? Definitely the food.

Lò Bánh Mì Pasteur is open from 8am to 8pm. Visit the bakery's Facebook page here.

This article was originally published in 2019.

Via Curry Packets, Curry Powder Made Its Way From India Into Vietnamese Homes

2024-11-01T12:00:00+07:00

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

Chè, Bánh, Chả, Nem: The Curious Lives of Vietnam’s Regional Food Names

2024-10-11T10:00:00+07:00

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.

Thân em vừa trắng lại vừa tròn / My body is both white and round
Bảy nổi ba chìm với nước non / In water I now swim, now sink
Rắn nát mặc dầu tay kẻ nặn / The hand that kneads me may be rough
Mà em vẫn giữ tấm lòng son / I still shall keep my true-red heart
— ‘Bánh Trôi Nước’ with English translation by Huỳnh Sanh Thông.

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.

From Kuy Teav to Hủ Tiếu: How a Phnom Penh Classic Became Hủ Tiếu Nam Vang

2024-10-04T10:00:00+07:00

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.

“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.”

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.