able to grow a diverse variety of vegetables and fruits throughout the country, and little food is imported. Rice and seafood are once again in abundant supply.
Restaurants, which reflect this renewed interest in food, are as much about ambience—sipping a pastis or lingering over a bottle of fine French wine—as about the quality of food. Found all over Ho Chi Minh City and, to a slightly lesser extent, in Hanoi, these restaurants are often built around courtyards in French colonial buildings or designed to resemble old Vietnamese family homes. With their distinctly nostalgic feel, these new restaurants are not only redefining the Vietnamese aesthetic, but also serving food which is improving by the year. French restaurants are once again establishing themselves, and fashionable Italian restaurants are making an appearance, but the most interesting development is undoubtedly the new Vietnamese restaurants.
Modern Vietnamese cuisine is a marriage of the old and the new. Recipes from past generations coupled with new dishes created for the increasingly sophisticated and well-traveled local consumers. A good example is thit kho to, pork cooked slowly in a claypot, a dish of peasant origins which now appears on restaurant menus alongside cua rang me. an innovative fried crab dish, richly flavored with tamarind. The traditional Hanoi beef soup, pho, served with noodles, bean sprouts and fresh herbs, has gone through many transitions, but remains as tasty today as in the past.
The sometimes lengthy preparation times and cooking processes required by Vietnamese cuisine can render it something of a luxury for people with busy lives, so many chefs and teachers within Vietnam have begun experimenting with new methods that preserve the spirit of the cuisine, but allow it to be prepared quickly and simply at home. For example, deep-fried squid, which is traditionally made with minced squid combined with egg. wrapped in rice paper and then fried, is today being made with whole pieces of squid to save time. The Chinese influence is also being felt In fact, it is not unusual to find soy sauce on the table alongside nuoc mam in the newer restaurants.
Ironically, at the same time that this movement towards quicker cooking has been evolving, there has also been a resurgence of interest in the traditional dishes of the Hue court, the style of Vietnamese cooking that requires the longest preparation time of all. Restaurants specializing in this cuisine often cannot open until after lunch because of the considerable amount of time required to prepare the food, and often close early at night because the food has run out.
More and more attention is being paid to attractive presentation as well, although very few changes, if any, are made to cater to the tourist trade. The changes are subtle and often imperceptible: ga bop, a chicken salad flavored with onion, rau ram herb and a seasoning of salt, pepper and lime juice, has traditionally been made with chicken skin and bones, but new restaurants are preparing it with lean chicken meat instead. Some fat may also be removed from the meat in the pork and bamboo shoot dish mang ham chan goi, a move welcomed as much by health-conscious Vietnamese as by the increasing number of visitors.
The cuisine is based on rice, fish and fresh vegetables. Little oil is used in cooking, except for deep-frying and salads are lightly dressed. Healthy, cleansing soups such as the tasty canh chua thorn ca loc are featured on menus, fresh fruit and delicious homemade yogurt are often served for dessert, and drinks like freshly squeezed sugar cane juice are widely available. It seems likely that, as more cooks learn how to prepare it, and diners begin to understand and appreciate the flavors, Vietnamese food could become as popular as Chinese and Thai. France, Australia and the United States in particular, are already key centers for Vietnamese food. However, there is nothing like eating at a smart new restaurant in a converted French villa in Ho Chi Minh City.
Saigon's chic new eateries cater to a growing band of discerning diners.
Homestyle Vietnamese Cooking
A personal approach to experiencing the essence of Vietnamese cooking
A soft rain falls as dusk approaches, as so often happens in Vietnam. The suburban streets, lined with houses and gardens, are quiet but for a few workers on their way home. Moving away from the main streets into a maze of alleys designed for motorbikes rather than cars, past the vendor selling baguettes door-to-door from a cart, we reach Tuyen's house. In the large but sparsely decorated living room, Tuyen's husband is watching television with their delightful four-year-old daughter, already in her pajamas, and their brother-in-law from the countryside. He is here visiting his eight-year-old daughter who lives with Tuyen's family in the town of Hue because he, a widower, does not earn enough money to support her. This is not unusual in Vietnam—those with higher incomes take care of those who earn less. It is a happy family scene, and they are all beginning to enjoy the smell of cooking coming from the next room.
Tuyen, slim and elegant, is chopping mushrooms and carrots into tiny cubes on a large wooden board. A talented dressmaker, by day she cuts fabric on the sturdy wooden table which takes up almost the entire room. However, tonight the table is laden with fruit, vegetables, meat and fish fresh from Hue's central market along the side of the river A pot of gently bubbling water is on a two-ring burner. Tuyen usually cooks in the kitchen under the light of a single bulb, but she does not think that would be appropriate on this occasion.
Although time-consuming, the effort put into the subtle details of food preparation is the key to a rewarding culinary experience.
Tonight she has promised to teach me how to cook Vietnamese food, an arrangement made by my marvelous guide Mai, who is her best friend. I arrive on the back of Mai's 50cc motorbike—a common mode of transportation—followed behind by her niece, a 19-year-old learning English at evening school, in the hope of one day becoming a tour guide. She has been commandeered to help with preparation of a very special dinner, which few would undertake during the week. Tuyen is, I am assured by Mai. the most accomplished home cook in Hue, and even then it takes her a full morning, with two helpers, to prepare a traditionally Hue Sunday lunch.
So what do I learn? I learn that before stuffing a cabbage leaf, it is dipped into boiling water to soften it and remove any bitterness. To soften grated carrot, it is mixed vigorously with salt and then rinsed. To extract the maximum juice from a tiny Vietnamese lime, it is rolled like a piece of dough across a hard surface before squeezing. When boiling king beans, continually remove the foam that forms at the edges of the pan. These are the types of detail Tuyen tells me everyone in Vietnam knows, but it is difficult to believe that there are many people who can carry out these tasks with the dexterity of her slim, strong, and highly competent fingers.
Mai's niece is in charge of preparing the purple banana flower, but through lack of experience cuts it the wrong way. But Tuyen does not panic; she selects some pieces for deep-frying in a wheat flour batter, while the remainder is mixed with just a squeeze of lime and some crushed, roasted peanuts for a wonderfully nutty-tasting salad.
I also learn that tapioca dough is nice to touch, easy to work with, and however much you knead it, it never loses its perfect smoothness—it also takes a long time to prepare. Mai, adamant that she cannot cook, spends almost the entire evening rolling the dough into little balls and stuffing flattened disks (barely larger than a coin) with steamed mung beans seasoned with salt and pepper, or coating roasted peanuts and tiny pieces of coconut in the same dough. The secret is to work with such a thin piece of dough that when each banh bot loc (tapioca starch cake) is cooked—about five minutes in boiling water until the pieces float to the top—you achieve a translucence that means you can almost see what is inside. Once cooked, they are immediately plunged into cold water to prevent them from sticking together. We stuff other banh bot loc with a single shrimp, a little pork fat and black pepper, this time forming the creations into crescent shapes, then frying them in oil with salt and a little nuoc mam.
