Viet World Kitchen

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?

Vietnamese Noodles 101: Banh Pho Flat Rice Noodles

For decades I thought that the flat rice noodles that went into pho noodle soup and stir-fries were only available in dried form. That’s how we bought them in the United States. About 15 years ago, those “banh pho” rice noodles (named such in Vietnamese because they go into pho noodle soup) started being sold fresh in Cryovac packages at Asian markets. My mom still bought the dried kind. Then one day, I asked her about fresh versus dried banh pho rice noodles and she responded, “They were always fresh in Vietnam. We had no dried banh pho when we lived there.”

Wait, had I been living a faux pho life all these years? No, child, the dried ones available here are good and convenient to keep on hand when you have a neighborhood noodle vendor around the corner.  Duh, like pho. Indeed, go to Vietnam today and you’ll find freshly made noodles sold at markets and used at noodle joints. In the U.S., fresh noodles aren’t as readily available, but there are dried noodles that cook up wonderfully.

Our conversation earlier this week on defining faux pho spurred me to continue my (occasional) series of posts of Vietnamese noodles. Also, a couple of days ago, I noticed a young woman struggle with trying to find banh pho noodles at an Asian market. She got flat noodles but they were made of mung bean starch. I hope this guide will help you buy and use this ubiquitous Vietnamese noodle.

Faux Pho: What is it and does it matter?

Let me head this off at the pass – the word faux goes so well with pho. Faux is French for fake and putting faux near food is a nice way to denote inauthentic, wrong, not genuine food. Mon Dieu, there’s also the ‘shame on you’ French term faux pas. I’ve been simmering on the notion of faux pho (which has a whole host of wordplays that you probably already know) ever since I did a public radio interview with the Kojo Nnamdi show on the vibrant pho scene in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. One of the guests said that a local, critically acclaimed chef had prepared a faux pho.

Though I chuckled along with the other participants on the interview, in my mind I was thinking: What exactly is faux pho? There’s a whole industrial category of faux food that is used for displays; check out Fake-foods.com. In Asia, the Japanese excel at manufacturing fake plastic food. But I’m talking about the edible stuff that people are describing as faux pho. We're not talking window display here.

Sriracha Taste Off: Thailand vs. America vs. Vietnam

Last May, American food historian John T. Edge wrote an article for the New York Times on the Rooster brand of Sriracha chile sauce made by Huy Fong Foods, a company owned by David Tran, a Chinese Vietnamese immigrant. Sriracha lovers across America did a Pace Picante kind of double take when they realized that the hot chili sauce was manufactured in a Rosemead, California, not some exotic locale in tropical Vietnam. John T’s analysis of Sriracha’s wide ranging success and cross-cultural uses made me wonder: Is Sriracha destined to be the uber Asian chile sauce?

Pim of ChezPim.com, born and raised in Thailand, led a lengthy Twitter discussion to clarify that despite Rooster brand’s Sriracha being THE go-to condiment for Vietnamese pho noodle soup, Sriracha is of Thai origin and not Vietnamese whatsover; Sri Racha is a seaside town in Central Thailand and the namesake chile sauce got its start there. John  T.’s piece told the complex tale of an immigrant hot sauce in America, but he didn’t delve deeply into Sriracha itself. That wasn’t the point of his story. However, Pim’s Twitter discussion and my subsequent conversation with her about Sriracha led me to wonder about what other kinds of Sriracha sauces are out there in the American market. So I set about over the past 8 weeks to collect, taste, and make Sriracha hot sauce. This post is one of two on Sriracha.

Spotlight on Vietnamese Herbs – LA Times article

Summer's hot-weather is peak time for growing and eating Vietnamese herbs. In fact, above is  my friend Alec Mitchell's Vietnamese herb 'garden' that he set up on his condo balcony in Culver City. He started the herbs with an indoor Aerogarden unit and planted the seedlings in recycled terracotta pots.

Fresh herbs (rau thom) are an elemental part of the cuisine so don’t miss out on them. They offer an amazing array of nuanced flavor and soft, leafy texture unlike common western herbs such as basil and parsley. For information on why fresh herbs matter in Vietnamese cooking, the awesome array of herbs, and how to source and grow them, check out this article I wrote for the Los Angeles Times Food Section that was published today:

• Fresh Herbs at the Center of Vietnamese Cuisine, LA Times Food Section, July 15, 2009

It’s a piece I’ve wanted to see in print for years! For more, check the Vietnamese Herb Primer and Gardening section on this site. Also, peruse pages 17-20 in Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.

L.A.'s Pho Town: Terrific Noodle Soup but Competition Hurts Business

One should be so lucky as to live surrounded by pho shops. If you live in the eastern part of Los Angeles County, east of Monterey Park, on the edge of the San Gabriel Valley, in the sleepy working-class town of El Monte -- you'd think that Vietnamese pho restaurants had popped up like mushrooms. We had a discussion earlier after Jonathan Gold's LA Weekly article on those pho shops. I spoke with LA Times reporter Hector Becerra a few months ago about the traditions of pho and the hyper-entrepreneurial spirit and competition that's inherent in Vietnamese business owners.

Then I went to taste for myself. In one hour, I power tasted four (4) bowls of pho in South El Monte. They're all on Garvey Avenue. Drive east on the 10 freeway and exit on Rosemead in El Monte, take a right and then turn left at Garvey. The street is peppered with 10 pho shops for about a 3-mile-stretch. In the main, the basic pho was quite well crafted. I'd gladly eat on this street any time. Things that stood out included:

Pho 24 Event at Asia Society in New York

If you've been to Vietnam lately, you're likely to know of Pho 24 -- the growing chain of Mc Donald's-cum-Starbucks pho noodle soup shops. They're in the major cities in Vietnam, as well as other cities in Southeast Asia. The soup is pricier than at mom-and-pop places but it's good. There's air conditioning and the dining area is kept very clean. Pho 24 isn't for the working man or woman but rather for the upwardly mobile. Maybe Pho 24 is coming to the United States?

I wish I could go to this event at Asia Society in New York next Friday but alas, I'm here in Northern California.

What: Southeast Asian Entrepreneurship: Creating a Global Brand
CEO Forum with Ly Qui Trung of Pho 24

When: Friday, March 20, 12-2pm (includes luncheon)

Where: Asia Society and Museum, 725 park Avenue at 70th, NYC

Event flier: Pho 24 CEO forum

If you attend, do let us know what you learned!

Jonathan Gold's Pho Restaurant Roundup - El Monte, CA

For a very long time I've thought that the Viet food in Los Angeles was lacking. There are places like Golden Deli (my sister is a regular) and Mr. Baguette for banh mi sandwiches.  But pho noodle soup restaurants -- which in recent years have spread to Koreatown, hipster Silverlake and even to sterile West Los Angeles -- has never been great in Los Angeles. Dull broth, over cooked noodles make you want to squirt a mess of Sriracha or lime juice into the bowl to cover up the various culinary transgressions. But the days of bad pho may be numbered.

Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer-prize-winning food journalist of the LA Weekly (I date myself by asking if any of you recall Gold's fantastic "Counter Intelligence" column in the LA Times?), just wrote about a bevy of new pho joints in El Monte. For those of you who don't know where that is, it's on the outskirts of the Asian epicenter of the San Gabriel Valley, which is east of downtown Los Angeles. Vietnamese business people always know to set up shop and compete where rents are low and diners are hungry. It's not chic nor pretty, it's El Monte.

If you live in Los Angeles, head east on the 10 freeway to Garvey Avenue after you read this piece:

• Pho Town: Noodle Stories From South El Monte (LA Weekly, 12/11/08)

Also, check out Anne Fishbein's slideshow of pho bowls. Note the metal bowl that some of the pho is served in. That's new . . . What gives?