Viet World Kitchen

Rapping about Pho Culture: Q&A with Alexei of Seattle’s Townfolk

 

If you haven’t already, click and watch the music video. It was made by Iranian-American music producer Alexei (@sabzi) and his collaborators for TOWNFOLK, their experimental art endeavor being funded through Kickstarter. I got wind of it via an email and then my niece Paulina, a college senior, wrote me about it on Facebook. 

The video is a smart and culturally spot-on survey of Vietnamese pho culture, particularly that of South Seattle when Alexei (a.k.a. Sabzi and Saba) lives. He's captured it all in a rap video, which has a certain Beck element of humor.

Aside from the music and video, Alexei and his pals went the extra step of getting the language right. Their Kickstarter page has Vietnamese and video is subtitled in Vietnamese! Either someone has amazing language skills or he/she got an older person to translate and type it up with all the diacritic marks in place. I was mightily impressed with the polished and thoughtful effort.

I passed TOWNFOLK’s Kickstarter link around via Twitter and Facebook but wanted to know the back story. How and why did Alexei do the video? That’s the reason for this email Q&A with Alexei: (Note: his are presented as is/as were received)

Instant Pho Spice Cubes: How good are they?

A while back, I posted about instant pho kits and someone commented on how he loved a quick bowl made from the contents of the little boxes of pho bouillon sold at Vietnamese markets. I’d seen them but never went near them. They are typically stocked at the cash register or shelved in the spice aisle. Each box measures about 2 1/2 inches by 3/4 inch thick and there are many kinds to cover the most popular Viet dishes.

I took the plunge and got a box of “vien gia vi” (literally seasoning cube in Vietnamese). There are 4 cubes to a box and each one makes 2 servings. That’s a lot of flavor packed into each. Was the product good? Is it a viable pho shortcut?

Instant Pho Fixes? A tasting of Trader Joe’s, Pacific Foods and Happy Pho

One of the above bowls of pho was homemade and the other two were made from instant pho products. Guess which was which? I’ve written about packaged pho that I keep around for super quick pho fixes. They’re from Vietnam (see the Vifon sample in the photo below) and contain MSG. Nevertheless, they are quite serviceable when you want a bowl in say, 3 to 5 minutes. Not bad for about 50 cents at an Asian market.

Since that post, several other convenience pho products have become available. Pacific Foods, maker of boxed broths and soups, sent me their new chicken pho soup base. Trader Joe’s recently announced a frozen beef pho so I added that to my must-try list. I also found the Happy Pho kit in a box at Whole Foods.

It was too tempting. I had to check them all out – side by side with homemade chicken pho, which I made earlier this week. I already knew that the homemade would be better but my question was this:  Are there good instant or quick-an-easy pho products sold at mainstream markets that come close to the real thing? 

Reivented Pho Roundup in DC: For real, just faux, or cool?

This morning, Hong and Kim, the Vietnamese-Americans behind the terrific Ravenous Couple blog, alerted me to an interesting article in the Washington Post on upscale renditions of pho by non-Viet chefs. Staff journalist Tim Carman struts his pho knowledge in his thoughtful analysis of the chefs' efforts to present revamped version of the Vietnamese classic. Among the highlights of "Pho or faux? Area Chefs put their own spin on the Vietnamese noodle soup":

• Chef Nick Sharpe of the new Ba Bay restaurant makes a rendition that includes cuminy rice paddy herb (rau om) as a garnish. His first attempts didn't impress the Vietnamese Americans who own Ba Bay. But he subsequently sous vides rib eye, sears, and thinly slices it for each bowl. He doesn't serve pho with a garnish plate, which Carman sees as being unusual but that's how it pho is traditionally served. There is no fish sauce or charring of the aromatics in Bay Bay's pho recipe, which is part of the article.
• Esteemed and Beard award chef Michel Richard pulled his sablefish pho from the menu at Michel, a restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner.
• Chef Haidar Karoum at Proof makes a pho terrine instead of a noodle soup. His veal-based terrine outsells the familiar pate de campagne (country pate) at the restaurant.
• Justin Bittner at Bar Pilar does a more or less regular pho based on a recipe from Secrets of the Red Lantern, a book by Pauline and Luke Nguyen based on their restaurant in Sydney. His beef broth includes daikon and sometimes chicken too.

What was also interesting about the Washington Post article were the comments that people wrote. Many of them directed readers to pho shops in the Viet hub at the Eden Center in Falls Church, Virginia. Others asked:

• Why do people have to tinker with something that's already perfect?
• What's wrong with revinventing a classic?
  

What are your thoughts? If you've experienced some of these new DC renditions, let us know your reactions. Or, if you have a tip of a favorite pho joint in DC or Virginia, weigh in.

I personally look forward to visiting DC and checking it out!

Related posts:

• Faux Pho: What is it and does it matter?
• Videos that fight the faux pho phenomena
• History and evolution of pho
• Beef pho recipe
• Chicken pho recipe

Hoisin Sauce for Pho vs. for Cooking

Asian food products never fail to keep me guessing. Not long ago, I was in desperate need of hoisin sauce for Vietnamese tuong, the dipping sauce that I use for salad rolls (goi cuon). My preferred brands of hoisin are Lee Kum Kee and Koon Chun, the former being easier to find in regular supermarkets than the latter. I don’t have an Asian market in my town, so I went to my well-stocked local health food market, Staff of Life. I discovered that they had squirt bottles of hoisin sauce that were labeled in Vietnamese as “tuong an pho” – meaning bean sauce for eating with pho.

For years, if I wanted a little hoisin sauce for dipping my pho meat balls (bo vien), I’d simply dilute some of my regular jarred hoisin sauce. I always use the jarred stuff and figured that pho restaurants did the same. I’m not one to squirt hoisin sauce into my pho bowl because in my mind, that’s sacrilege. Given that, my personal knowledge of the hoisin sauce used for pho is limited.

I took the squirt bottle of Lee Kum Kee hoisin sauce home and used it for my spicy garlic tuong dipping sauce. It didn’t quite taste right, was somewhat flat and strangely tart. On that day, I thought I was off my game.

But I recently bought a new jar of Lee Kum Kee hoisin sauce and realized that the contents of the jar and those of the squirt bottle are NOT the same.  Who can tell from the labeling at the top of this post? In either English or Vietnamese?