Viet World Kitchen

Worthy Causes: Charities Cook up Change in Vietnam

Spending Christmas or New Year’s in Vietnam is rather surreal. If you’re in Saigon, it’s hot but there are holiday decorations and Christmas music. I particularly love the fanfare on December 31 because Saigon locals come out for fun; Tet (Lunar New Year) is typically a quiet time for family. Vietnamese people love public celebrations like the one on New Year’s Eve, and the park in front of the Reunification Palace is a giant party and public performance area. Young families ride up on their motorbikes, 3 to 4 people on each, and they hang out, snacking and visiting with friends. It’s loud, colorful, and fun. Multiple stages are set up and you can choose from classical music performance, torch singers, and dance performances by cute young girls dressed up in frilly outfits with stage moms in tow. That night, the scene in the park reminds me of the crazy Asian variety shows that my parents watch on Vietnamese-American television channels.

Indeed, much has changed for the better in Vietnam in the past decade and people, especially young people, are full of optimism. But there is still much to be done to provide greater opportunity to more people. Lots of people visit Vietnam during this season and part of the experience is to understand the needs and potential of the country. We can help out with tourist dollars but you don't have to visit to contribute to change.

Here are three non-profits that are doing interesting work to help improve the lives of Vietnamese people, particularly in the kitchen:

Travel Tips to Vietnam: How to Feed Finicky Kids in Saigon (and still eat well)

There were great tips that people shared in response to the recent piece on travel tips to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). I also received some questions via email but one message this morning got me thinking about traveling to a foreign country with children, particularly those with special needs. Most people I know of have gone overseas when their children are either babies or in their late teens and older. The rationale being that it is easier to cater to their needs or they can take care of themselves.

Ellen posed this question:

We are going to Vietnam for the first time over the holidays and have been reading your website, which is marvelous. Sadly we will only be in Vietnam for just for a few days on the way back from Thailand -and only to Saigon/Mekong area. We are already planning a return visit dedicated just to Vietnam, we are that sure that we will like it.
 
We have two sons, 13 and 11. To say that they have white-bread palates is an understatement. The 11 year old also has autism, so that adds a layer of complexity to travel. I want them to eat local and as native as two Irish/German New Englanders can. Any suggestions? They are not seafood eaters. I want to keep them out of fast food! I have some ideas from your Saigon article, but any place you can think of that might satisfy culinarily-challenged kids would be great...  restaurants, grocery/food market items, types of foods,  etc would be welcome.

Hmmm… as adults, traveling to a foreign country presents both opportunities and challenges. Where to go and what to eat? How to eat safely? When you are traveling with children, particularly those who are finicky or are special needs children, special handling is required. Here are some suggestions and strategies for authentic eating in Vietnam:

Many thanks to Suzanne for sending this photo in!

Prep the kids in advance and start young! If possible, introduce them to Vietnamese classics, such a pho noodle soup before you leave your home country.  That way, they will not suffer culture shock upon arrival. (Ellen and her family will be in Thailand first so that is part of the advance preparation!) To illustrate, the photo above is of a 22-month-old toddler eating a bowl of homemade pho; it was sent in my his Vietnamese American mom, Suzanne (remember the post, Generation Gap: Why some Asian elders bug me?). Here's a tip from when I was a kid: If the bowl of pho is too hot for your child, add an ice cube to the bowl to cool it down. That's how I got trained!

Travel Tips to Saigon: Where to Go, What to Eat

We’re heading into the peak travel season to Vietnam – the winter time when the heat subsides a little in the south, it gets cold in the north, and dreary damp in the central region. This may seem weird but for those of us not used to extreme humidity or heat, winter is the best time to go to Vietnam. Many people are gearing up for their trips abroad and I have recently been receiving more inquiries about where to go and what to eat in Vietnam – one of the major travel destinations these days. I don’t know why I’ve not done this before but I’m going to run a short series of postings based around the major tourist and travel hubs: Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City), Hue, and Hanoi.

Things change rapidly in Vietnam – it’s like a wild frontier land – so feel free to add your tips and insights below. It’s hard to keep up with the latest and greatest, but we can together build a nice repository of information to share with one another.

Tiny Little Saigon in New York

  

There are “Little Saigons” in cities throughout the world. But in New York City, the Vietnamese area exceeds the diminutive connotation. In Manhattan’s sprawling Chinatown, “Little Saigon” is truly little. In fact, it’s tiny. However, I’ve found all my culinary needs for preparing Vietnamese food in a handful of shops near the Grand Street subway station. Pop your head up from the station and you’re looking at the New York’s bevy of Vietnamese shops. It’s an L-shaped teeny area that spans Grand Street up to Bowery and southward down to Hester.  There's produce for sale on the street and people milling about looking for groceries and sundries. The shops are small and packed, kind of like what you'd find in Vietnam itself!

Along Grand, I’ve found a butcher, seafood vendor, and a Vietnamese market that proudly announces its Vietnamese affiliation as a “Sieu Thi Viet Nam” – Vietnamese market. You’ll find fresh herbs, noodles, fish sauce and even net-like wrappers called banh re, which are hard to find outside of Vietnam these days. That market keeps those wrappers very fresh; if you get them, use them as you would a Chinese spring roll/lumpia wrapper for fried cha gio (imperial rolls).

New York Vietnamese Restaurant Recommendations

When visiting New York, my question always is: Where should I eat? This weekend I'm in New York and a number of people have emailed, tweeted and Facebooked me restaurant recommendations. One person, Jennie M. sent this detailed message and though I can't go to all of these places, I'm sharing her list of mostly Vietnamese restaurants with you:

Hi Andrea,

I just saw your tweet about NYC asian food recommendations on Twitter.  Honestly, Asian food is really watered down in the city.  Cong Ly is about the only Viet place I go to when I'm in Manhattan's Chinatown. I usually order pho, #57, banh beo, or cha gio there.  I think the outer-boroughs have much more variety and flavor compared to Manhattan.  It's not California for sure, but it's the best list I've got. 

Richmond and Footscray: Old and New Vietnam in Melbourne

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Australia was among the nations that opened its doors to Vietnamese refugees. There is a very large population of Vietnamese-Australians, numbering roughly 200,000, and 75% of the Vietnamese people in Australia live in New South Wales (Sydney) and Victoria (Melbourne). My trip to Australia began in Sydney where I explored the Vietnamese community of  Cabramatta with Luke Nguyen. On my own in Melbourne, I headed for Richmond and Footscray, as recommended to me by Stephanie Wood, a Sydney Morning Herald food journalist who also blogs at The Elegant Sufficiency.  Stephanie used to live in Melbourne and directed me to these two suburbs to explore the Vietnamese scene here. Some of you recommended Springvale as well but I did not have enough time to make the trek.

Richmond
After checking in to my hotel, I got on a tram and spent the afternoon in Richmond, located just a few kilometers from Melbourne CBD (central business district/downtown). Most of the Vietnamese shops line Victoria Place so I spent hours walking up and down the street. Great little markets, restaurants, and fantastic houseware and restaurant supply shops. At Unicorn, I scored Chinese egg tartlet pans that are hard to get in the U.S., and at Chefland I found moon cake molds to add to my collection.  What’s striking about Richmond is how much it looks like Vietnam. Narrow buildings with some colonial architecture, there’s even a mini version of the landmark Cho Ben Thanh market clock tower from Saigon. With the peeling paint and Melbourne’s dreary spring weather (think Seattle), I felt like I was in Hue or Hanoi in winter. Only most of the people here are southerners.

Cabramatta: Little Saigon near Sydney

I’ve been in Sydney Australia since Wednesday for the Sydney International Food Festival’s World Chef Showcase. I arrived feeling fresh from having actually slept for 8 hours  on the 14-hour flight, courtesy of Qantas Airlines. After checking in, I called my local contact, Luke Nguyen (photo above).  He let me chill for a few hours and then we went out for drinks and dinner at Aria, one of the finest restaurants in Sydney with a sweeping few of the harbor. The food and wine showcased Sydney's finest, but the highlight came the next day when Luke took me to Cabramatta, the hub of Australia’s Vietnamese community.

Luke is the chef/owner of Red Lantern Restaurant, cookbook author (Secrets of the Red Lantern and The Songs of Sapa was released on 10/1/09), and a travel-TV show host. He's also giving back to his community of Cabramatta by being its unofficial spokesperson. For months on email he'd been telling me how keen he was on taking me to his Little Saigon in Sydney. 

First off, it's not in Sydney proper like lots of Little Saigon's I've been to. Cabramatta is highly unusual as it reflects an Asian-Western sensibility as I've not experienced. It felt oddly like a cleaned up version of Saigon. The shops, food and liveliness made me feel right at home. My kind of people.

I was so impressed with the vibrant community as it’s had its fair share of challenges in the past. Luke recounted how unsafe it used to be browing up with gang and drug trafficking problems in this area. Sydneysiders (it’s a strange term) were scared to go to Cabramatta (or Cabra as the locals say it).  But when we went on Thursday, it was nothing but bustling with shoppers, food and amazing produce. I spent time in Los Angeles during the post-riot era and there was no sense of fear or impending doom in Cabramatta. It was mellow. We met with city managers who have various campaigns going to highlight Cabramatta's cultural and culinary offerings to the urban Sydneysiders. Nowadays, it's not so much a public safety issue but of of a distance. Convenience? Okay -- the train takes you directly from downtown Sydney to Cabramatta and the toll roads are even faster.Cabramatta is located 45 minutes away from downtown Sydney. It takes longer to get to Saigon itself!

I don’t have time to go into all the details but wanted to post some photo highlights here for you.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

What sticks in my mind about Cabramatta -- the Little Saigon in Sydney:

• The local population is 67% Vietnamese – that’s 2 out of 3 people!
• The condensed area is lively with shops, alley ways, and markets that say, “All Viet All the Time” but in an oddly Australian-Vietnamese-Asian kind of way. Look at the banh mi vendor stall that looks like a super cleaned up stall in Saigon.
• Great bun mam noodle soup made with a mam nem, a funky, murky, sludgy anchovy fish sauce. Tastes much better than it sounds.
• Shopkeepers are Viet, Lao, Cambodian or Chinese. See the text on shops.
• You can get kangaroo meat, which tastes kinda like buffalo and venison, Luke said.
• There are separate vendors for meat, seafood, and produce like in Vietnam. Totally cool in an old-school way.
• Just as I had heard – the produce is super fresh (perky, just-harvested herbs) and the fruit is gorgeous (mangosteen, jackfruit, and 3 or 4 types of mangos).
• Crazy good seafood in the form of fresh fish, giant tiger prawns, tiny raw school prawns (sorta like tom tep, I think), mud crabs, blood clams, and new things like spanner crab.

I’ve been eating very well but I wished I had a kitchen to cook some of these ingredients!

Have you been to Cabramatta? What are your favorite shops and restaurants? I'm going to Melbourne next week, so let me know your insights there on Viet stuff too!

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.