The rest has to be eaten....
Here's an article published by Mekong Review in 2016, when people worried about the future of street food in Saigon, which five years on disappeared in a way we couldn't have fathomed back then...
**Quick preamble: Today, October 1, 2021, Saigon has tentatively, and only partially, reopened after many months of a hard lockdown, which worked its way up to a 24/7 stay-at-home order. I have at times, while making yet another tuna sandwich, found myself not only craving all kinds of Vietnamese food, but also, more than that, just being amongst it all once again. As we wait to survey an altered cityscape, and see what has, and hasn’t, reemerged, I figured it was an apt moment to post this old paean to a way of eating that for many visitors/ ‘guest residents’ also becomes a way of life.
‘Roast duck blues’ by Morgan Ommer
I CAN’T SAY what makes us fall in love with Vietnamese food. That one life-affirming, nourishing bowl of pho in particular, or even just a chilled, ripe mango, plucked fresh from a fridge after a night’s carousing.
It drugs you. That ‘everything’ — colours, flavours, textures, sounds, situations, just gets under your skin. In spite of the Hanoi humidity, or scorching Saigon sun, you don’t care your shirt is straightaway a sodden rag because you’re slurping down what might be the greatest noodle soup of its kind in the universe, or devouring a table- load of tasty morsels, all washed down with whatever local brew is to hand.
However, or whenever, it happens, just as Thomas Fowler in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American foretold (okay, sure, he wasn’t actually referring to the food), there comes a point for us when we realise nothing can ever be the same again. Where were you, when you felt ‘it’ — this… awakening? Perhaps, you only realised you’d been ‘altered’ on a return trip home, when you found yourself getting claustrophobic in a restaurant of the most generic, international kind – staff in head-to- toe black clobber, music set to ambient house, menus, wine lists, napkins, conventions, formality… – and you couldn’t help feeling insulted by a life-long friend proclaiming, nose in menu, “I’m having the lamb chops, what are you having?”
In this instant, you saw the restaurant for what it was: a business, an investment, a cold, calculated move to tap a market, and you longed for the fuss-free family-run eateries of Hanoi, Saigon, Danang, Nha Trang, and your favourite fractious materfamilias, dressed in her best “I’m not leaving the house today” clothes. She who doesn’t care about compliments, or Trip Advisor. She who knows what they cook is delicious. I mean, come on, everyone in the whole city knows that.
Because, it’s not just the food, or even the context, that makes us love Vietnamese food. It’s the informality of it, the commensal spirit of the place. Even if you
are on your own, you’re never alone; it’s knowing the ‘owners’ are never not there. They welcome you, cook for you, serve you, and consistently, day in, day out, year after year, they nail it. Sure, be my guest, go check out the new Italian place, or trendy Japanese fusion joint, if you like. But don’t tell me it drugs you.
“It’s still pretty true in Hanoi that the grimier the place, and the more refuse underfoot, the better the food,” says Australian Mark Lowerson, the co-founder of Hanoi Street Food Tours. “The uncomplicated nature of street food — one vendor, one dish — and the level of mastery and expertise they have over their ingredients and techniques, make those kind of food experiences the best in the city. Occasionally I make a pact with myself to give a ‘slick’ or ‘cool’ restaurant a try, but invariably I come away disappointed, having had a mediocre meal at best.”
Lowerson first travelled to the Vietnamese capital in 2001, curious to eat street food, but not knowing ‘how’. “I stood in front of one stall by Dong Xuan Market, behind a full bench of local customers, watching proceedings for a few minutes,” says Lowerson. “I realised everyone was eating the same thing and there were no menus. It seemed that, if you sat down, you’d be served her dish.”
So he sat. Minutes later he was served pho tiu, a southern Vietnamese dish with Chinese heritage — fresh rice noodles, bean sprouts, lean thinly sliced
pork shoulder, garlic vinegar, thickened pork broth, sweetened nuoc mam, crunchy deep fried shallots, a handful of coriander and mint, all topped with crushed peanuts. “I added some chilli sauce, mixed it all up like the other patrons were doing, took a mouthful, did a little bit of a good food moan, and that was it. I was converted.” Lowerson still brings clients to this stall. “That one little experience opened up a whole world of pleasure to me and ultimately changed my life.”
For many years, the biggest ‘celebrity’ evangelist for Vietnamese cuisine has been Anthony Bourdain, who also claims Vietnam changed his life. At one stage, he even threatened to move to a village near Hoi An, one of many, many food meccas in Vietnam. He never did but he was able to live out this fantasy, somewhat, by publishing the writer, and erstwhile Vietnam expat, Graham Holliday’s memoir, Eating Viet Nam, under his line of books with Ecco, an imprint of Harper Collins.
Holliday is a man after Bourdain’s heart. While living in Vietnam, his recipe-free blog, Noodlepie, championed the kind of restaurants where everyone sits on low,
blue plastic chairs, eats with well-used chopsticks, and nobody cares about grimy walls, or litter-strewn floors, because the food is just too bloody good. It may or may not have been the point of the blog, but it had the power to make you feel like an utter dolt for having just eaten another chicken tikka sandwich for lunch, when you could have been ‘out there’, eating out of a bowl filled with egg noodles, char siu, wonton and dumplings ... my van than in Hanoi, mi hoanh thanh in Saigon ... or gobbling barbecued pork-patties and pork belly dunked in a sweet dipping sauce served with cold rice noodles and a hedgerow of aromatic herbs, bun cha, a dish as addictive as nicotine.
Through Eating Viet Nam, a food-focused paean to two times and two places (turn of the century Hanoi, early twenty-first century Ho Chi Minh City), Holliday is also understandably preoccupied by ‘the future’, and there is undoubtedly a creeping fear for many of us that development, growing affluence, internationalisation, town planning measures (based on the dreaded ‘Singapore model’, or a desire to ‘clean the streets’), are all one day going to destroy this way of eating as we still know it. And truth be told, that may come to pass. Some day.
Indeed, if we were to send a fictional Fowler to report on Ho Chi Minh City today, and ask him to look into the present state and possible future of Vietnamese street food, he might come away with a fairly grim view, especially if he wandered out of Graham Greene’s favourite hotels, the Majestic or Continental, and strolled along the pedestrianised Nguyen Hue Boulevard, where eating and drinking in public has recently been banned. They’re all there now, those symbols of impending homogenised doom: the Golden Arches, the Starbucks’ mermaid, a host of other fast food outlets, and ‘fancy’ could-be-anywhere-in-the-world-restaurants. Walking toward Ben Thanh Market, perhaps, Fowler would find a newly created courtyard promising ‘authentic street food’, where punters eat off paper plates with disposable chopsticks, and the likes of Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift can be heard screeching through the speakers.
But if Phuong, or anyone, can coax Fowler away to the fringes of District 1, or beyond, where the restaurants have no names, no waiting lists, and no menus, where much of the city is still a riot of old school, al fresco, informal dining, what would strike him? The smell: that’d be the first thing that hits him, promising everything in exchange for his soul. The heat? He’d just have to ignore it. His shirt, yes, straightaway a rag. Soon, he would hardly remember his name, or what it was he came to escape, because he has just been served a bowl of bun thit nuong cha gio, succulent chunks of grilled pork and slices of crab spring roll served on top a bed of cold noodles, fresh herbs, bean sprouts, all doused with a sweetened, chilli-laced fish sauce dip that is just-so, and after one glorious mind-blowing, life-changing mouthful, we would be able to forgive him for not caring what the future may bring. Sure, you can come to Vietnam and learn a lot in the first few minutes, but at some point you will realise the immediate future and the rest has to be eaten. ☐
The rest has to be eaten....
This reminded me of a wonderful chicken noodle place I enjoy called Góc Phố Không Tên.The no name street corner place.