Comfort food
Finding Vietnamese food everywhere I go in the world
Cooking food is the way Vietnamese mothers show they care about you. My mother never says “I love you.” Instead, she asks, “What do you want me to cook for you? Chả giò? Bánh xèo? Caramel pork with rice? Bún riêu” These are my favorite dishes and she knows it. She’s getting older now, though, so I try to steer her away from the kitchen and suggest we eat out. We don’t usually eat at Vietnamese restaurants near where she lives in Florida, though. The good ones can only be found in Vietnamese enclaves around Houston, San Jose, and Falls Church.
There were no Vietnamese restaurants at all in Richmond, Virginia, when I was growing up there. On weekends, we sometimes drove two hours north to “Little Saigon” in the Clarendon neighborhood where many Vietnamese immigrants settled after the war ended in 1975. Rent was cheap in this once bustling neighborhood that had declined from competition with the large shopping malls and strip malls that were becoming popular at the time and from the disruption caused by construction of the metro system. Immigrants opened stores and restaurants that served their community, providing places to socialize and to ship money and goods to relatives left behind in Vietnam, and bulletin boards for the newly arrived to find kin. The center of Vietnamese cultural life eventually shifted further west to Eden Center after rents in Clarendon rose when the CLarendon metro station opened and before Crate and Barrel, Cheesecake Factory, and the Apple store moved in.
Clarendon used to be the only place you could find decent pho on the East Coast. Nowadays, pho shops have popped up everywhere and everyone seems to have a favorite. The banh mi sandwich has become ubiquitous, too, and even non-Vietnamese restaurants boast fusion versions. I refuse to eat them in any other form than the classic crusty baguette smeared with pork liver pate, mayo, Asian “ham” (though I also like the grilled pork option), pickled vegetables, cucumber, cilantro, a fresh red chili pepper (or sliced jalapeño in a pinch), and a drizzle of Magi seasoning. Veggie banh mi is simply not banh mi, and veggie pho is an abomination.
When people tell me they love Vietnamese food, they usually mean pho and who can blame them for enjoying the aromatic noodle and beef soup. I take friends to Eden Center to introduce them to things beyond pho. I test their palate by offering mam tom, a pungent condiment made from fermented crushed shrimp and salt. Do they wrinkle their noses when presented with this option meant to enhance the flavor of certain dishes? Do they politely dip the tip of a chopstick into the jar and stir the trace sample into the broth? My own family displays surprise no matter how many times they have seen me scoop dollops of the gray paste into my soup.
Like most Vietnamese people, they do not think I am really Vietnamese. No matter how much Vietnamese food I devour, to them, I am a hybrid, a half breed. I don’t speak Vietnamese and I don’t follow customs. I have gleaned most of what I know about Vietnamese culture and history from reading books. I don’t look Vietnamese to them. I don’t look Vietnamese to anyone. I look like a hybrid of races that no one can put their finger on.
Even if Vietnamese people don’t claim me, I still claim my Vietnamese heritage. At least I claim the food and that makes me feel like I belong to this heritage. A little.
Everywhere I go in the world I notice Vietnamese restaurants, which means I’ll find at least one Vietnamese person inside, and probably an entire family waiting tables, cleaning dishes, mopping floors. I feel a sense of comfort in the familiarity of the menu, and in knowing there are a few people nearby who share my heritage when I’m away from home, even if they would not recognize me as one of their own.
I’ve eaten at Vietnamese restaurants in Prague, BudaPest, and Krakow. The presence of Vietnamese people in these places felt like a novelty until I learned that Cold War era communist countries offered educational and professional training to their fellow North Vietnamese communists. Some remained after the Cold War ended and established small communities. Much larger communities of Vietnamese people exist in the United States and France. Thousands of Vietnamese people fled their country at the end of the American War in 1975 and sought refuge in the United States.The Vietnamese diaspora to France began much earlier, during the colonial period when Vietnam was a French colony and known as Indochine.
Vietnamese people studied in France and some stayed, and some like Ho Chi Minh came back to Vietnam and overthrew their colonizers. Many Vietnamese moved to France after the communists vanquished the French colonists in 1954 and another wave arrived after 1975. When I first visited Vietnam in the 90’s, I met older people whose second language was French. I was able to speak to them with the French I’d learned in high school.
The colonizers had established vast rubber plantations in the highlands. Companies like Michelin, primarily known for making tires, accumulated vast wealth by extracting resources from the land. The Michelin brothers also wrote the first Michelin Guide in 1900, which was handed out to motorists for free to create demand for automobiles, and therefore, the tires they manufactured. The guide contained maps and lists of restaurants along the roadways. Eventually, they started rating restaurants and now chefs vie for stars and mentions.
The Michelin Guide recognizes only one Vietnamese restaurant in Paris, Pho Tai, which is situated in a cluster of Vietnamese restaurants in the 13th arrondissement. I went by one rainy night and it was packed with pale-faced diners who did not look Vietnamese, except for one table of boisterous men who seemed to know the owners. The rice crêpes were stale and dry and the sauce lacked pungency. The garden rolls were filled mostly with noodles and iceberg lettuce, and I could barely find a morsel of pork or shrimp in them. I tried Vietnamese food all over the city and discovered numerous restaurants that were tastier than Pho Tai, including a nearby one called Chao Ba. I am perplexed that the Michelin Guide includes only one Vietnamese restaurant in Paris and not even the best one in the city.
My favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Paris is in the Marais. I discovered it a few years ago when I was staying with a friend who lived close by. I was wandering around the neighborhood one day when I turned down a narrow, curved passageway and unexpectedly ended up on the Rue Volta where I discovered Song Heng, inside a 16th century building. Getting lost on the winding streets of the Marais happens frequently. The tiny establishment offers only two dishes, pho and bun bo, in only two size options for each, regular and large. You almost always share a table with a stranger, sitting shoulder to shoulder and back to back. If you sit near the wall, everyone at the table must stand up and step aside for you to leave. I go there every time I visit Paris. The pho is tasty and cheap and the cramped quarters feel authentic. When I lived in Paris for three months last fall, I joined a writing group on Saturday mornings at the nearby Unicorner Cafe. Song Heng was my go-to lunch spot after sitting for hours hunched over my laptop.
Wholesale leather goods stores once populated this section of the Marais. A few leather sellers remain, but the neighborhood turned into a mini-Chinatown consisting of cheap Chinese food and grocery stores around the 1970’s, and then became a more pan-Asian vibe later one. Since the first time I walked down this street, though, a skate shop, a concept store, and a vegan makeup shop have opened their doors. I assume more independent shops will continue opening on this lower rent street and soon all the Asian storefronts will have disappeared, and eventually they will be replaced again by the same French chain stores that have taken over the more fashionable parts of the Marais.
