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)

Cheater’s Guide to Little Saigons in America

Want to know where to find good Vietnamese food? Look on a map and check Census data. That’s how you find the Little Saigon enclaves. I used to have to piece the information together but today, I found an amazing resource from the Orange County Register, a newspaper in Southern California, home of the largest population of Viet-Americans.

According to reporter Jim Hinch, the newspaper is running a series on how Orange County influences other areas of the country and world. Hinch interviewed me for his story on Little Saigons in America. Today he emailed to say that it been posted online. “OC’s Little Saigon?  Nothing little about it” contains great insights on the complex nature of the Vietnamese American community, the push and pull between Vietnam and expatriates populations abroad. This isn’t anything new, but the OC Register has done an excellent job in presenting information about Vietnamese people. Major newspapers have featured Little Saigon enclaves but the OC has the granddaddy of them all. Thus, the Register has a strong understanding of and commitment to Vietnamese-Americans.  

Along with the article, there were extra goodies, such as a slideshow of Little Saigon daily life. What blew me away was a this graphic of Vietnamese history and people in America:

How Banh Cuon Rice Noodle Rolls are Made (+ video)

On my last day in Seattle, Eric Banh took me and my friend, vegetarian cookbook author Michael Natkin out to eat. We started at noon and I ended up eating 4 meals with Eric that day. (Then I flew to Portland and had a very late dinner with other friends.)

Eric is the chef and restaurateur behind the Monsoon restaurants and Ba Bar; he also owned Baguette Box up until a little while ago when he sold it. He and his sister, Sophie, operate modern Viet restaurants that are fun and sophisticated tributes to Vietnam’s food traditions. We met in 2005 when I dined at Monsoon after it had been favorably reviewed in Gourmet. Eric and I clicked while talking about elevating the status of Vietnamese food. We’ve been friends ever since. Every time one of my book releases, he and Sophie organize a special event at one of their restaurants to showcase my work.

We hang out and eat a lot when I’m in town. Right now, Eric is obsessed about freshly made bun round rice noodles and banh cuon steamed rice noodle rolls. For more info on bun check the bun primer post but what are banh cuon? They are thin rice sheets that can be stuffed with a meat and mushroom mixture (like bottom row in the photo above) or served unstuffed (top row in the photo) with slices of silky Viet sausage (goi or cha lua), nuoc cham dipping sauce, and sometimes bean sprouts and herbs (if you’re southern Vietnamese). If you've had fun noodles or think of banh pho noodles, banh cuon are thinner and not cut into noodles. 

Though the noodles are more expensive, Eric and Sophie offer it at Monsoon at a fair price to customers. On the weekends at Ba Bar, Mr. Chau mans a banh cuon station by the front door, chatting with customers as he steams and fills their orders.

Eric is advocating for stellar bun rice noodles and banh cuon steamed rice noodles rolls so that his customers can further appreciate Vietnamese cuisine.  He wanted to show me what Seattle had to offer.

Five Food Faves from My Father

I may have learned to cook from my mother but I learned to eat from my father. He adores good food and when I was growing up, we spent a lot of time together. Before my family fled Vietnam in 1975, my dad was a busy business man struggling to stay afloat in a country that was on the verge of falling apart. When Saigon fell to the communists in April 1975, we were lucky to leave by plane. My parents had to start over in America, forty-somethings with five kids in tow.

Needless to say, Dad had more time hanging with me, in between teaching ESL at the local junior high in the day and adult school in the evening. We drove around Southern California a lot in our Ford Mercury to explore, and we went fishing together too. At home, he’d tell me stories of his life in Vietnam, though I was too young to appreciate them all.

The lasting memories of our time together were frankly, all about food. Does that surprise you? Bo Gia (“Old Daddy” in Vietnamese) and I shared many foods over time and these five are particularly special:

Rice Paper Gadget Wars: Mr. Spring Roll vs. New Star International

Vietnamese business people can be hyper-entrepreneurial and competitive. When an idea succeeds, copycats and rivals inevitably appear – springing up practically overnight like mushrooms.

That, my friends, is happening with the plastic Vietnamese rice paper dipping bowl that I recently wrote about. Vinh, Mr. Spring Roll’s maker, commented in the post and thanked everyone for supporting his product. He also apologized for the hiccups in distribution. He was working out of his apartment!

Not long after that post, a Viet chef friend, Terrence Khuu, pointed me to a rival product, New Star International, which had a fledgling Facebook page but no website. (The first 100 people to like their page get a chance to win a dipping bowl.)

New Star’s to nhung banh trang (bowl for dipping rice paper) comes in three colors and is fashioned from “high-quality PVC” (PVC is a type of plastic that I typically associate with plumbing pipes but it has many industrial uses). Terrence’s friend is distributing New Star International and sent a lime green one for me to test drive. The other options include blue and clear.

My first thought was, “Mr. Spring Roll works fine. Who needs another one of these?” New Star thinks that its rice paper water bowl beats out Mr. Spring Roll. This week, I compared the two on these points: