Fast Food in Vietnam

I often describe Vietnamese food as the "have it your way"  cuisine because you're free to tweak things according to personal taste. (Think of how you eat pho noodle soup, for example.) But seems like that concept (the signature tag line of Burger King)  is materializing in Vietnam in  scary/corporate/homogeneous ways these days.

When I was in Ho Chi Minh City last January, I was struck by the number of brightly lit KFC, Pizza Hut and Lotteria (a hamburger joint owned by Koreans). Those fast food restaurants did good business and many of the customers were locals. A status symbol of the elite? Yes. But turns out those places offer cleanliness, good service, and well-priced food -- which hip, young Viet urbanites appreciate. There's also free wi-fi, air conditioning, and TV. That's the same business formula that keeps U.S. fast food chains like McDonald's and Burger King in the black.

In the U.S., people say that fast food is cheap and affordable, but I can make better tasting, healthier food at home without all the processed ingredients and mysterious junk. In Vietnam, you can get 'fast food' from street vendors for next to nothing. But people across cultures love formulated special sauces. Predictability is comforting. Colonel Sanders and the Golden Arches (coming soon to Vietnam) are welcoming symbols of civilized modernity. 

What does the onslaught of fast food restaurants say for Vietnam? Does the growing presence of fast food joints in the cities reflect a brighter future? (Has Vietnam 'arrived'?) Or do the restaurants signal a global  food culture that will eventually swallow up the country's distinctive cuisine to create a "have it fewer ways"  kind of food scene? Is all this bunk since people have been eating 'fast food' for decades in the form of instant noodles?

Get a glimpse of Saigon's fast food scene from this article from VietnamNet, and let me know your thoughts.

For more, peruse:

• Noodle Pie's posting on dining at a Saigon Lotteria
• Burger King's global map

Comments

[Alice]

If I could stop McDonald's from going to Vietnam with my bare hands, I would. I hate that fast food and chain restaurants have taken over the majority of the American landscape, and I wouldn't wish the blight of those monstrosities on any other country. These corporate producers of high-fat-cardboard prey on the young and the poor, destroying their health, while they obliterate the small, local eateries where REAL food is served by families who actually care about their product and their customers.

[Kevin]

I don't know if 'fast' is as key to the consumer as 'I don't want to do it myself'. But in a culture where great street food is abundant - why are people settling?!? I just don't get it.

What I do 'get' now is caramel sauce. Thanks to you and your mom for passing down your dishes that use it. I don't know how I've lived without it. :)

[Matthew Amster-Burton]

I've never been to Vietnam, but I've spent some time in Thailand, and there seems to be something of a fast-food equilibrium there: lots of Western fast-food chains, but little indication that they're making inroads on the traditional diet--most Thai teens still eat lunch from street vendors every day, for example.

Of course, I may have been brainwashed from eating too many 7-baht soft-serve cones.

[Robyn]

My problem with the spread of fast food joints in Asia is that it often spells the beginning of the end for street/hawker food, which might be recreated in a restaurant setting but is rarely as tasty. When street food goes a part of a locale's culinary culture goes with it, and that's always sad. I've seen in happen in China and Hong Kong. I think that it will happen, to a lesser degree perhaps, over the next couple of decades in Kuala Lumpur as well.

Matthew makes a good point. The proliferation of fast food restaurants in Bangkok doesn't seem to have been accompanied by the disappearance of street food (though in my estimation the scourge of Starbucks HAS affected the availability on the street of good brewed Thai coffee). Thais are price-conscious and quick to follow trends, but seem to place a premium on deliciousness and 'Thai-ness' as well. Observers have noted the unique (in Asia) ability of Thais to absorb Western or 'modernizing' (if you want to use that word) influences while retaining a strong sense of their own culture. Perhaps it's the case with their culinary culture as well.

The question for Vietnam's street food, I think, is how tightly will Vietnamese hold onto their own culture as the country 'arrives', as you put it? The HCMC govt, at least, seems intent on turning the city into another Shanghai, that is a 'global' rather than strictly 'Vietnamese'or even 'Asian' metropolis. 'Modernization' as the Vietnamese govt defines it does not bode well for the future of street vendors in the country's major cities.

[Andrea Nguyen]

I wonder of fast food restaurants are seen as just another kind of convenient street food? Vietnamese people love and nurture their culture of eating out. When we lived in Vietnam and whenever I return, I'm tickled and delighted and relieved by the fact that you can step outside your doorstep and get practically whatever treat you want.

Of course, you retreat into your home to prepare a meal too. And, as Kevin points out, caramel sauce (nuoc mau) is a stealth ingredient! (Glad you're enjoying that wonderful Vietnamese staple, Kevin.)

Matthew and Robyn make good points. An equilibrium will eventually get put into place. Southeast Asians have vibrant cuisines and lots of pride so they'll only want to eat so many hamburgers and pizzas. They see those Western foods as adding to their repertoire, not so much as supplanting it. On the other hand, if Matthew's eating soft serves for roughly 30 cents a cone, his brain may have suffered a bit of the frozen dessert freeze here and there.

The other thing is that Viet people are HYPER-entrepreneurial so a street vendor may create some sort of Vietnamese riff on Lotteria's bulgogi hamburger and the popularity of such as thing will spread like a wild fire. Look at the Vietnamese meat ball sandwich that's oddly called a xiu mai banh mi?

It'll be interesting to see how street vendors fare in the cities in future. If HCMC were hosting the 2008 Olympics (a la Beijing), you bet that those folks would be forced to change the way they ply their wares. Perhaps street hawkers organize themselves in indoor restaurants like Ngon in HCMC? The rural street food scene, however, will likely continue to flourish.

[Matthew Amster-Burton]

Okay, I want a bulgogi hamburger now.

[Andrea Nguyen]

That does sound good, doesn't it?

Anyone have thoughts on the Saigon-based chain of Pho 24 that's spreading in Asia and looking to come to the U.S.? Here are links to explore:

March 2007 National Public Radio piece on Pho 24:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8993340

Pho 24 official site:
http://www.pho24.com.vn/index.php

[k. pham]

I tend to agree with Alice, fast food to me is truly junk food which has no nutritional value. When you go eat at McDonald or Burger King, you can't stop wondering what goes into that round, rock-hard frozen piece of meat that these high school boys and girls flip over on the big frying steel plate. My version of fast food is to go to the grocery store, get high quality ground SIRLOIN beef, mix it with a bit of chopped garlic and spice flavorings, fry it in butter with onion rings, and press the whole darn thing between two thick slices of crunchy-crust french bread. I'll call this a yummy junk!!

[Huong`]

huh, tell me more the benefit that i can get from fast food. i know that fast food has lots of fat and salt. not yet, the fatty and salty food is not healthy. what r u going to make a list of healthy foods for ur restaurant? thanks!

[Anthony]

When you have a DELICIOUS plate of com ga xoi mo in Cho Lon, why would you go to KFC and pay 4 times the price? But, like air conditioned Tra Sua Tran Chau cafe's- it's trendy and popular with teenagers and those with new money in Vietnam. Street food 'till the end tho!!

[Steve Ayres]

As I have no idea what 'com ga xoi mo' is, and wouldn't even know how to pronounce it, I'm unlikely to order it.

And maybe, trained to a western diet and 'cravings', the idea of a Pizza Hut pizza right now has my mouth watering.

I'm going to walk down Le Thanh Ton right now and hope it's still there!