Viet World Kitchen

Rick Stein’s BBC Vietnam Travel Show

If you’re planning a trip to Vietnam, check out Rick Stein’s Vietnam segment available on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. He does the highlights in Vietnam in the north (Hanoi, Ha Long Bay) and south (Saigon and Mekong Delta) so it’s a nice introduction to or perhaps as review of traveling in the country.

Who is Rick Stein? He’s a British chef and author of works like Rick Stein's Complete Seafood, one of my go-to reference works whenever I need step-by-step guidance on dealing with ingredients from the sea. Stein is not Anthony Bourdain in biting wit and sarcasm and definitely not addicted to the bizarre like Andrew Zimmern. Stein is gentle in his approach to Vietnam and tries to bridge the turbulent Vietnam War years to the modern Vietnam today, which is calmer and more modern times. That’s what his BBC audience is interested in. There may be yawner moments if the Vietnam War doesn’t touch you, but Stein also has snippets of food preparation, processing, and everyday life that is quite interesting. I was about to discount the show at the opening footage of the war and rice paddies but Stein pulled me in quickly.

On YouTube, you’ll find the show in 6 clips (the last one is kind of a throw away). I’ve provided a drill-down below so you can jump in when you want. Many thanks to bloggers Graham Holiday of Noodlepie and Cathy Danh of Gastronomyblog (she debuts in part3) for pointing me to this Vietnam segment of Stein’s Far East Odyssey. 

Part 1: Mekong River, fishing farms (Vietnamese aquaculture) on the river
Overview of Vietnam with a focus on the mighty Mekong. Stein pronounces Mekong as “Meekong” which I block out. “Maykong” please. He visits fisheries on the Mekong river. He cooks a fish dish based in his kitchen. He relates the Vietnam War to Vietnam today with old film footage, and references to Vietnam War movies The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. The first segment clip is at the beginning of this post.

Sacramento – Hub for Great Vietnamese Food

There are about 450,000 Vietnamese people in California – the largest population of all the fifty states. Most people know of Little Saigon in Orange County and the maybe-soon-to-be Little Saigon in San Jose. Our eyes are drawn along the coastline but there’s a burgeoning Vietnamese-American population in Sacramento, the state capital.

You may think that Sacramento (or Sacto as the locals call it) is an unlikely place for Vietnamese people. But hey, that’s where the Vietnamese nail salon businesses first got started after actress Tippi Hedren, who regularly visited the refugees there, decided that Viet people had the knack for nails. On a weekly basis, Hedron flew in her nail person to teach Vietnamese refugees how to get started in the profession. (Read details in the LA Times article on the history of Vietnamese nail salons.)

But that’s not what drew me to Sacramento a while ago. I’m fascinated by suburban enclaves of Asians because that’s where you can experience the most unexpected things – and some of the most wonderful foods too! Immigrants don't all settled in urban ghettos these days. As it turns out, Asian are more likely to be suburban than other ethnic groups. Who doesn’t want good schools, larger homes, and room to do whatever you please?

In Sacramento, the hub of the Vietnamese community lies along a two-mile stretch of Stockton Boulevard, located on the outskirts of the city. It’s downright sleepy, as is most of Sacramento, but an economic revitalization and building boom is underway. At the top of the quiet corridor, near Fruitridge, the 1960s-era Asian kitsch is a little worn down at the Chinatown Plaza, but inside the cavernous King Palace restaurant on a Saturday, it was a cacophonous scene of happy families tucking into freshly prepared dim sum. Nearby, my husband and I found a Vietnamese radio station, Lao community center, and casino. On side streets was a Fijian market, and a brand new Vietnamese temple, Christian church and Islamic center.

S acramento is one of the more integrated places in the nation, according to Time magazine a number of years ago, and I was experiencing it. In fact, on Stockton, there’s a Taco Bell and a Wienerschnitzel. A KFC sits next door to the tidy and splendid Vinh Phat market, where produce is beautifully fresh. The long beans, eggplant, and water spinach made my knees weak. Tons of vegetables being sold most likely came from nearby farms, many of which are cultivated by Southeast Asians.

Given the multiethnic mix of businesses and patrons, I never expected good food but there was surprisingly well-crafted pho noodle soup at Pho Bac Hoa Viet. The bowls are humongous and can easily two people. According to Hewn and Hammered, Sacramento’s pho offerings rocks.

Beef pho is such a big deal and there’s so much competition for good bowls that people have gotten creative. Yes, there are crawfish places. But I met a young man who was focusing on high-quality chicken. His restaurant, which was kind of like a nightclub in that funny Viet way like you’d encounter it in Vietnam, had an amazing menu of chicken dishes – pho, rice dishes, and chao rice soup. He even had bun thang, a noodle soup from Hanoi, which he sadly said people don’t know about so he had to give it up. Topping it off was that he made his own fine banh hoi noodles. The restaurant is upstairs toward the side of the Chinatown Plaza.

Even more remarkable was the super fresh Vietnamese baguette at New Paris Bakery and Café in the Pacific Rim Plaza, which cost $2 for 6 baby loaves. We ordered a couple of banh mi sandwiches for the drive westward back home and the bread was perfectly light and crisp. I would have like more mayo but the bread was so fresh and good, like in Vietnam. The bread actually froze well, which I’ve never experienced before in Vietnamese baguette.

Sacramento is a major city that’s a small town in feeling. People are super friendly, easy going and open, perhaps a reflection of the agricultural surroundings. The farming and ranching that goes on nearby no doubt keeps people in touch with their traditional foodways. At the same time, they are looking forward. In fact, diagonal from the shopping center where New Paris Bakery is the Florin Towne Centre, a new huge open air mall that once finished, will be anchored by a Wal-Mart Supercenter. That’s a lot of new customers for pho and banh mi.

For more information on other Asian enclaves in California, see Saveur magazine's June 2008 road trip issue. That fried chicken recipe is delish, by the way!

San Jose Little Saigon Controversy Resolved!

It's over! Hurray! There's a compromise. I won't go into details because posters on this topic at VWK have done a marvelous job. Many thanks to:

• Zach for posting the details in the solving the controversy thread.
• MT for posting a link to the San Jose Mercury News article on the agreement that ended this mess on the Ly Tong hunger striker posting.
• Everyone who participated, whether you read and lurked, or if you jumped into the fray with comments.

We had lots of contentious, but productive debate on the original thread. I'm sure you didn't think you'd get your opinions out on a food blog and I didn't think the blog would evolve in this way. However, I'm glad it has and did. We learned lots about ourselves as individuals and as a community.

Go and cook and share good food with family and friends and mull over this historic chapter in Vietnamese American history. For me at the end of the day it boils down to this: We don't look, cook, and think the same! That's a good thing.

Solving San Jose's Little Saigon Controversy

Well, we've got a raging conversation going on about the City of San Jose's Little Saigon (now called shorthand LS) naming issue. The comment thread is full of great stuff, numbers, gossip, and lots of well-thought out discourse. Okay, there's a little screaming but it's more like a coffee klatch/cocktail party.

It's an impasse, with hunger striker Ly Tong giving up water, and lots of numbers being tossed around.
The City of San Jose is coming up a wee short on leadership in this matter or maybe it's gotten itself between a rock and a hard place. In any event, I'm posing this question to those of you who are invested in what the 1-mile strip of Story Road should be called:

How should the City of San Jose resolve this impasse?

Let's put our brains together and pose feasible solutions!

"Little Saigon" -- Hunger Striker in San Jose

Viet World Kitchen is a food place but I sometimes digress to discuss political issues. Last month, we started a conversation about the "Little Saigon" naming controversy in San Jose, California. It all started when disgruntled Viet-Americans called Madison Nguyen a communist because they didn't like her support of "Saigon Business District" over their preferred "Little Saigon." People took sides, there were generational splits, talk of recalls, and more.

In a nutshell, much has gone awry and the latest developments include the following:

(3/13/08) City of San Jose comes up with a temporary solution and Ly Tong ends his hunger strike. He'd stopped drinking water a little while ago. For more, read the thread below and also the postings at Solving San Jose's Little Saigon Controversy.

(3/4/08) The San Jose Mercury News released some numbers (finally!) saying that last August 2007 the City of San Jose's Redevelopment Agency sent out 1,136 surveys to people living near the stretch of Story Road, asking them what it should be called. Of the surveys sent out, there were 117 responses. Of those responses, 44 surveys were for "Little Saigon." The mayor, who's now being criticized for mishandling this situation, says they should have paused to outreach to people.  The newspaper's editorial board calls for the city to end the "ridiculous" situation and name the area "Little Saigon" -- just so everyone can move on. It's a 1-mile strip of road.

(3/2/08) A protest of 7,500 Viet-Americans gathered in front of City Hall to support "Little Saigon."

In light of all the turmoil that this once small issue has created, Mayor Chuck Reed and Councilwoman Madison Nguyen are going to rescind (pull back) the name "Saigon Business District" on March 4. The City of San Jose will not have a costly city-wide vote on the name, and some kind of process will be devised for coming up with a name. This past week, commentary in the San Jose Mercury News has stated things like the situation has become "surreal" with the hunger strike, that the city has become a "laughing-stock" and that it needs to move on.

Perennial showman Ly Tong decided last Friday to eat his last bowl of noodles and go on a hunger strike until the city agrees to name the business-shopping district "Little Saigon" instead of "Saigon Business District," which was what was decided on by the city council. "I'll continue until I die," he says according to a 2/20/08 article in the San Jose Mercury News.

The City of San Jose is going to put the naming issue up to a city-wide vote (the name affects a couple of blocks in District 7, represented by Councilwoman Madison Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American woman to be elected to office)

The controversy has made national headlines in a 2/16/08 piece in the New York Times.

The wh0le thing has escalated into a mess that will unfortunately damage the San Jose Vietnamese American community for a long time, unless a diplomatic solution can be finessed. For 2008 Tet, San Francisco-based journalist and commentator Andrew Lam penned a terrific and insightful piece on the many unresolved issues in the Vietnamese American community. He carefully aired a little dirty laundry but got people thinking about the realities of Vietnam today, the tight relationship between overseas Vietnamese and the Motherland, and how people may come to grips with  their anger and sense of loss:

New Year, Old Unresolved Passion: Vietnam and its Diaspora (New American Media, 2/7/08)

 

Trends in O.C. Little Saigon Dining

Vietnamese restaurants are reaching out to non-Vietnamese diners who want foods that are accessible as well as to Viet customers who want good quality traditional fare. What does that mean in terms of dining trends?

1) Riffs and modern takes on rice paper rolls, lamb chops with traditional seasonings. Taking something old and marrying it with something new is very Vietnamese. There are only guidelines and few rules in Viet cooking, which is governed by innovation and perpetual innovation.

2) Specialized and smaller, focused menus. Restaurants that offer huge menus can't do everything well. In Vietnam, the best joints only prepare a number of dishes, or maybe even just one.

Read more from this February 6, 2008 Los Angeles Times Food section article :

"In Little Saigon, a revitalized dining scene" by Linda Burum

Little Saigon Controversy in San Jose

Note to repeat visitors to this post -- I've started a new post called "Solving San Jose's Little Saigon Controversy" in hopes of getting some solutions to the bickering and intrigue that have created this impasse.  We have great ideas and have amassed lots of knowledge, so let's put to good use!

If you've had your ears to the ground in the Vietnamese-American community in the last few months, you've probably heard about how San Jose is struggling to come up with a moniker for a strip of Story Road near the intersection with McLaughlin. That corridor of Story is in the southern part of the city where there's a concentration of Vietnamese businesses. At the heart of the matter is what to name the area: "Little Saigon" or "Saigon Business District."

The area (District 7) is represented on the San Jose City Council by Madison Nguyen, the first Vietnamese-American woman elected to office in California. Madison supported and voted for Saigon Business District, which was also the City Council's choice.

However, a small but very vocal group of Vietnamese Americans wants the name "Little Saigon" and have been showing up on Tuesdays at City Hall to protest and demand that Madison resign or face a recall election. Initially, they hit her low by accusing her of being connected to communist Vietnam. Then they said that she voted in an undemocratic way because her vote did not represent the will of the Vietnamese community. Now they're calling her a liar.

The arguments from each side are:

• "Little Saigon" properly acknowledges the former capital of South Vietnam and is a stab to the heart of the post-1975 communist regime.
• "Saigon Business District" honors the former capital and avoids a politically charged name.

I'm not a San Jose resident but rather, live nearby and read the San Jose Mercury News paper, which has diligently reported on the story from the beginning. Here's how I weigh in on this issue:

The area in question is puny, though there is a construction project underway for a large shopping plaza, there isn't much there there. The strip of Story Road that's on the table neglects the area at Tully and South King, which is a 5-minute drive away and loaded with eateries and shops. What about those businesses?

It's not all Viet all the time at Story Road. Turn your head ever so lightly and you'll see a taqueria, tamale shop, and Thai-Vietnamese-Chinese market.

Little Saigon? I grew up in Orange County, where the first and biggest "Little Saigon" is and frankly, have always disliked the name. The 405 Freeway sign near the exit often make me feel uncomfortable. Moreover, inside the O.C. Viet community, the area is called it "Bolsa" after the main drag, where it is indeed, all Viet, all the time.

Saigon was never and is not little. For me, the name "Little Saigon" is pejorative and denotes something that's quaint, small, and not particularly powerful. Vietnam has a rich and long history of having kicked plenty of ass. Yes, we're relatively small in geographic size and population, but we've historically been major players. Remember the geopolitics over the Vietnam War? At one point in Vietnam's history, it was called Dai Viet, which means great Viet. Little Saigon? Please…

Northern vs. Southern California? Is there a bit of competition between San Jose and Westminster? In Westminster, when you turn the corner at Brookhurst and drive down Bolsa, you know you're in an unusual place. The signage is Vietnamese and there is a seemingly endless supply of strip malls full of Vietnamese business - from markets, to restaurants, bakeries, delis, accountants, pharmacies, fabric shops, travel agents, dentists, etc. It's vibrant and pulsating with action.

San Jose's Vietnamese community developed in a much more low-key manner because things are generally more mainstreamed in Northern California. There are more Viet restaurants outside of the Story Road area than in it because people up here are open to mixing and commingling. That's just starting to happen in the O.C., where the community has been insular for the most part.

What I'm saying is don't copy the O.C., but do something that's new, different, and reflective of the community, which has grown and developed differently than that in Southern California.

You can't always get what you want in a democracy. Just because Madison Nguyen didn't vote the way a group of Vietnamese Americans wanted does not mean that she acted undemocratically. In fact, District 7 is full of Latino residents too.

If Madison were to be run out of office, there's no assurance that another Vietnamese-American will be elected to represent that district on the city council. Replacing her is not going to do anything. Coming up with a better, more suitable name would be a better place to start. If one of the names can deliver consistently good restaurants and clean markets, I'll be all for it!

Weigh in yourself on this matter. You don't have to be Viet to have an opinion!

For more information:

• [3/9/08] Solving San Jose's Little Saigon Controversy is a new thread I started because this one was getting really long. Also, we need solutions to end the bickering.
• 8Asians.com blog has a detailed comment thread on this political saga
• 1/15/08 Madison Nguyen's political trajectory and potential downfall: The Rise, Troubles of Madison Nguyen [Again, the SJ Mercury is doing an unscientific online poll of whether or not she should resign. Reader/community comments are quite insightful.]
• 1/8/08 story from SJ Mercury News: "An Ultimatum for Madison Nguyen" [Note, you can vote on whether she should be recalled and leave a comment)
• 12/03/07 SJ Mercury News editorial on recalling Madison Nguyen