Viet World Kitchen

Diep Tran & Good Girl Dinette: Viet Food in the 'Hood

You can measure the mainstreaming of Vietnamese food by where it pops up. A fine example is Good Girl Dinette, a little café devoted to classic and modern Vietnamese comfort food. It’s run by Diep Tran, whose family owns the Los Angeles-based chain of Pho 79. (I’ve been to nearly all of them.) After working at non-profits for nearly 10 years, Diep wanted a career change. She was on the verge of burning out and decided to return to her family’s trade by opening hip Viet eateries in non-Viet neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Her first venture was Blue Hen in Eagle Rock and her current restaurant, opened in 2009,  is Good Girl Dinette in Highland Park. (Diep is no longer affiliated with Blue Hen.) Eagle Rock and Highland Park are not sexy areas of Los Angeles. They’re working class communities with diverse immigrant populations. They’re a tad edgy and out of the way. Tourists rarely go there.  

Los Angeles is a place of urban and suburban opportunities to mesh cultures and create something new. Diep, whose family came to the United States in the 1970s, embodies that spirit of thoughtful reinvention. She’s not the typical Vietnamese woman and does things a little different. Here’s a glimpse of Good Girl Dinette.

May Flowers: Happy Cooks, Glowing Reviews

Not long ago my mother remarked, “You do noble work.” I interpreted it as a mixture of maternal pride and understanding about my financial outlook. My career in food writing has at times stunned and miffed my parents. They did not  know how things would develop after I wrote Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. It was clear that I was capable of feeding myself, but could I afford to pay for my ingredients?

My four siblings have lucrative, conventional careers in medicine and law. Everyone thought I was destined for international business or banking, but I didn’t exactly end up among the 1%. “That’s okay,” Mom continued. “What’s important is that you are happy.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about her comments because one of the popular topics these days among food writers is how can we maintain viable careers. Amanda Hesser recently offered a reality check to future food writers. Monica Bhide revealed her personal frustrations and discussed tips for crafting a realistic food writing career. Dianne Jacob’s blog is a rich source of sensible advice for aspiring writers.

I didn’t start writing about food expecting to buy a vacation home in the Bahamas. I wanted to write about food traditions and techniques that I felt had not been presented well enough in print. That said, there are late nights when I’m cleaning my kitchen or looking up words in my Vietnamese and Chinese dictionaries that I wonder, “Why am I doing this?” 

In the last couple of weeks, a number of interesting people and great things have passed through my life to remind of why I enjoy my work:

Real Men Make Tofu, Pho and More

One of the bestsellers in the early 1980s was a book called Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. The 1982 work gave rise to the term quiche-eater, which connoted a man who had elite tastes in food and clothing, brought flowers to his date, knew how to make, pronounce, and/or enjoy quiche. (Hey, that sounds like the man I married!)

The concept of the metrosexual male wasn’t around yet. What a difference [gulp] thirty years make. If you look at who’s into fashion, food, and Whole Foods these days, you’ll see a lot of men. According to an Adweek article last September, there’s a growing number of men cooking and watching food television. While women still comprise a large number of food blog readers and cooks, men are weighing in online at food sites and taking on a larger portion of the home cooking duties.

In my corner of the food world, I’ve noticed a bit of this shift. It has been wonderfully surprising.

Soon after Asian Tofu came out, I got a message from James Glucksman of the Pen-y-bryn Lodge in New Zealand. He’d listened to my radio interview on NPR’s Splendid Table, immediately downloaded the tofu ebook, and started making tofu from scratch. James used to live in Beijing and was without good fresh tofu in the area where he currently resided. We emailed about sourcing coagulants, and he kept me abreast of his progress via email and Facebook. 

James was so enthralled that he initiated a great eGullet discussion on making tofu and using the book. One of the eGullet contributors was a blogger named The Tin Cook, who was also among the first responders to the tofu book. 

Tofu Misozuke: Q & A with Dang Vu of Rau Om Foods

Tofu is an extremely versatile food that can be manipulated in countless ways. A few months ago, Dang Vu emailed me about an unusual tofu product that he his wife, Oanh, had developed. The Vietnamese-American couple was selling tofu misozuke at Bay Area farmer’s markets, packaged under their company name, Rau Om (the name of a citrusy cuminy fresh herb also called ngo om; see the Viet herb primer for more info).

I’d read about the Japanese preserved “tofu cheese” in Elizabeth Andoh’s Washoku cookbook and seen it in Tofu Hyaku Chin, a 1782 bestseller in Japan. Alas, I hadn’t tasted it yet. It the world of Asian tofu, tofu no miso-zuke (how Elizabeth spelled it) is somewhat esoteric stuff. That is, a Japanese market or restaurant isn’t likely to have it.

I tried Rau Om’s tofu misozuke and found its meaty creaminess to be pleasant. Then I wondered why and how someone was introducing this rare tofu product to the Bay Area market. So I asked Dang, 32, to tell me a bit more about their background and endeavor.

New Crop of Asian Americans in Farming

Meet Daniel (Dan) Tran. He and his cohorts at the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Foods Systems (CASFS) may be your future farmer, landscape designer, chef, or urban renewal leader. A visitor to this website, Dan reached out to me this earlier summer with an invitation to visit and give a talk to CASFS apprentices about my work in food. Of course!, though we had to wait till I finished reviewing the Asian Tofu first pages.

Last Tuesday, on the heels of sending the pages back to editor Melissa Moore at Ten Speed Press, I drove up to the University and met Dan face to face. All I knew up until then was that his family was in the Asian grocery store business in Southern California.

I was intrigued about CASFS (easily said as “cass-fis”) because years ago, I worked at UCSC in fundraising and wrote glowing things about the program. Despite my office being close to the 25-acre farm, I never went to see it in person. I knew about it in theory but had never been to the expansive hilltop location with a view of the Pacific.