Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 512 - Why Are Overseas Vietnamese Chefs Suddenly Moving Back To Saigon?- Helen Nha Van

Transcript

512 - Why Are Overseas Vietnamese Chefs Suddenly Moving Back To Saigon?- Helen Nha Van · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Today I have a very special guest, Helen Yavun.
0:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be addressing you as Nha.
0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I like that name a lot.
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was introduced to Nha and I am so intrigued because it's right up my lane with food and ethnography and the work that Nha does in the food space and the history of food in Vietnam is of deep interest to me.
0:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure, thank you for having me.
0:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is your earliest recollection of food?
0:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess everybody grows up.
0:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people grow up in Vietnam, eating their mothers cooking or some kind of female figures cooking.
0:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I have always have a very deep interest in food.
0:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, of course, it shapes a lot of a person's memory.
0:59
[SPEAKER_01]: and identity.
1:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And so every time you eat a type of food, it's kind of like make a connection to your cultural identity and what you are and also what you are not.
1:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think it's a very interesting thing to explore.
1:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think let me clarify the question I had.
1:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the earliest
1:21
[SPEAKER_00]: memory of food.
1:22
[SPEAKER_00]: What I actually mean is serious food that you've had because I understand your journey you became a food critic.
1:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But so what does that one dish in your, you know, as you're coming up?
1:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't have to be like an early early memory, but something that really, like for me, it's always been thick on, right?
1:40
[SPEAKER_00]: What, what is that for you?
1:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I,
1:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I really like Miquan.
1:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So my father's side is from Hawaii, so from the central Vietnam.
2:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think Miquan encapsulates a lot of Vietnamese components and the kind of texture, textures, and flavors that we like in cooking.
2:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that dish captures it very well.
2:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
2:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And then from that dish to actually becoming a food critic, where is that lineage?
2:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, I guess I first of, I wouldn't, I wouldn't call myself a food critic.
2:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like,
2:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think of myself as qualified to criticize anybody's cooking.
2:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I study food more in a political and cultural sense.
2:44
[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess how, I guess me growing and all those very childhood dish have
2:52
[SPEAKER_01]: always like inspire me and influence me to study food a little deeper, to study how it correlates to the social political making of the dishes itself and how it relates to the nation and our identity.
3:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, where did that begin?
3:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, because I mean, you just don't like, you're not like 18 years old, and you don't like a national identity and me crying, and you're like, where does that happen?
3:21
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that growth begin?
3:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Where does the obsession start?
3:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess like, I mean,
3:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess during college, I took a lot of food glass classes and then the summer of my first year in college I got a job as like a food writer at a food magazine in Vietnam.
3:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And so.
3:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I start to like talk to the chefs and Vietnam and start to get in to know a little bit more about the industry, I also find out that like these people take food and view food in a very like different ways and they feel it very deeply in their culinary labor and so that's how.
4:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So you weren't doing food critic writing.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You were just writing about the process.
4:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
4:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was writing more about this kind of like how people think about their labor, how people think about the food that they make.
4:30
[SPEAKER_01]: they are these taste makers and they are also the trend makers and so I write about them and their stories and how what they think and what they imagine when they make these foods.
4:42
[SPEAKER_00]: How many years did you write for?
4:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, around like, uh, two years.
4:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Years.
4:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
4:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I asked that is, I think two years is enough time to give you some empirical ideas, some anecdotals ideas, about, uh, whatever you formed in those two years, right?
5:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
5:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and you said it's very different.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, you said there are, there are viewpoints are very different.
5:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Different from what?
5:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess the people that I mostly write about are first thing first are not born in Vietnam.
5:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the people that I wrote about are diasporic Vietnamese.
5:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So they are, I think mostly second generation Vietnamese who grew up in either the U.S. or other Western countries and then they decided to come back to Vietnam and to cook Vietnamese food and to make a business out of it.
5:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And I find it very interesting because they could
5:47
[SPEAKER_01]: cook any food that they want.
5:49
[SPEAKER_01]: They can cook French, they can cook American, and they can make a lot of money out of it.
5:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But why Vietnamese?
5:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I find it very interesting.
5:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that does sound interesting.
6:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And would you ate their food?
6:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you feel the sense of how far off they were from the mark of native Vietnamese?
6:15
[SPEAKER_00]: that their taste was in the same vicinity, but they were just trying to do different things.
6:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I would imagine when they're cooking and you're eating it, right?
6:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You could be like, in your mind, you could be like, it's either, they got it, and they just wanna do something different, or they're just missing the mark entirely.
6:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Well that's a really interesting question.
6:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that these people and a lot of them try when I ask them about like oh why do you decide to make Vietnamese food and what are you decide to sell Vietnamese food and they would say oh well I my food is in Vietnamese Vietnamese
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Like my food is fusion or my food is modern Vietnamese.
7:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it is that term modern that makes it very distinct from traditional Vietnamese cooking.
7:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like as someone who grew up abroad,
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: People also taught me that they feel like they're not comfortable enough to cook traditional Vietnamese food.
7:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I feel like their food is always very playful, right?
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they have all these different cultural experiences with them.
7:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But also they also have this kind of...
7:37
[SPEAKER_01]: funnest for Vietnamese ingredients and food ways, and so I don't think that there is a mark there to miss.
7:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're not missing any mark, but they're just doing things very playful and tasteful.
7:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you just being nice?
7:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Or I'm not.
7:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel that way.
7:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Really feel that way.
7:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And my friends and I come back to those restaurants that I did my research a lot.
8:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's
8:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I'm comfortable with my own identity and when I think about my own cooking, I always feel like it's a copy of a copy, right?
8:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I hear you talk about these chefs and Vietnam, I'm just thinking perhaps on one of them, that I can't really, I can't really knock it out.
8:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a traditional Vietnamese cooking, but it's more like I'm doing my best to replicate the taste,
8:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is very interesting, too, because if you think about, and you're talking about food, right?
8:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But it also links back to like how you feel about your Vietnameseness.
8:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of Vietnamese Americans are also feeling that way when they try to like repaid
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: reconnect with their ethnic identity or when they try to come back They are always like in this great area of whether I am American or I'm Vietnamese or I'm in between and I'm not Vietnamese enough Yeah, and there are a lot of things like that and You know, I think it's a very interesting to explore through food through how you think about food.
9:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah
9:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so intrigued because we were introduced by my social media producer, Nam, and I'm getting to know his world a lot more because I spent a lot of time with him, and getting to know people like you and him, all of you speak perfect English, right?
9:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But you all have left Vietnam at a relatively older age where you're fully set.
9:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You fully understand the pop culture of Vietnam.
9:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You understand.
9:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You're all enough to kind of like really articulate these food ways or these fashion ways of music ways, right?
10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, so I'm talking to you.
10:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, sometimes I get really insecure talking about you and to them because it's like, and here's where I get into.
10:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
10:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's where I get insecure is like,
10:17
[SPEAKER_00]: that you guys see the Vietnameseness coming from Vietnam.
10:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm fully able to articulate that.
10:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you come here,
10:28
[SPEAKER_00]: There's another way of being that somebody like me has no idea what, because you know, I don't know my north, southwest east in terms of culture.
10:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I really don't even know I've been doing this for five years.
10:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I still remain obsessed with where the true north is, right?
10:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I'm talking to you, I'm like, I'm confused because
10:49
[SPEAKER_00]: On one hand, your English and NAMM's English is so spot on.
10:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And you guys feel like American kids to me, but I know like deep down inside, you can articulate
10:59
[SPEAKER_00]: me quite very well right.
11:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to ask somebody like you about food and the way you feel about culture being in America now.
11:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do you feel about now when you go back to Vietnam?
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it change you?
11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Or are you kind of like you understand Vietnam and you go back and forth?
11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't really, you don't feel
11:23
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not really much of a difference to you.
11:26
[SPEAKER_00]: In the way you look at food or culture or music.
11:30
[SPEAKER_01]: In Vietnam and the United States.
11:32
[SPEAKER_01]: How I look at food and food.
11:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam, yeah.
11:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I guess.
11:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess there, since
11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So I moved here when I was like 15.
11:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
11:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess, and I haven't been back a lot since then.
11:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's always this,
11:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess there's always this closeness to the culture that I can always feel, right?
12:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But also because I live here and because in the US, there's always this pressure to sort of like, good form.
12:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, conform and being like an in group, to form an in group and so I guess I have
12:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I almost feel like you when I come back to Vietnam.
12:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want it to hear, I'm just kidding.
12:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And I say that, we say that jokingly, but also, I'm dead serious about it is because I feel like an alien sometimes.
12:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But now that, okay, you're born there, you left that 15.
12:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so this is just a natural human thing that we feel like we want to, but I feel like I want to conform to being Vietnamese and American.
12:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's this concept weird.
12:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I feel that too, like sometimes when I go back to Vietnam and people, you know, with talk about music culture, like who's the next rapper?
13:03
[SPEAKER_01]: People watch, like rapping shows a lot, and I can't keep up with...
13:08
[SPEAKER_01]: any of them and even all these food trends and even the way that they speak is very different from the way that I spoke because the language in Vietnam, especially youth language in Vietnam, it changes a lot and it changes like especially with like TikTok and all these micro trends.
13:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's very, so yeah, I almost feel like it's sometimes it's very hard to assimilate into
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And we get this out of the way in the beginning of our conversation because this lays down the foundation of why you get into the PhD work that you're doing really, because if we don't cover that stuff, it's kind of like, oh my god, where's this stuff even come from?
13:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, why does ethnography and anthropology and archaeology?
13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does it even matter to...
13:57
[SPEAKER_00]: to people like us.
13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, clearly it does, and I feel like I'm on my, you know, my six year my PhD in doing this Vietnamese culture work, right?
14:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Mine is, you know, spraying prey.
14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I just like shoot everywhere.
14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And hopefully I can get a picture eventually of like where the Vietnamese culture is, but for you, it's very focused.
14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to know why you picked what you picked.
14:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we can talk about, well, I think first of all, let's talk about
14:27
[SPEAKER_00]: PhD thesis, your idea of what more comes from, and what it's about.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so my work, so I am examining fine dining, fine dining in Vietnam, or we called it modern Vietnamese cuisine, as spearheaded by diasporic Vietnamese chefs.
14:50
[SPEAKER_01]: upon the return migration waves of the economic reforms of 1986, the Doi Mai reform, as we call it.
15:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I want to explore through like ethnographic ethnography research.
15:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do interviews and archival research of policies.
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: between the states and the diaspora, in order to see like how these two parties work together to imagine a modern Vietnam or a new Vietnam and to craft a new national identity.
15:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that it's a new national identity being formed as a result of like,
15:38
[SPEAKER_00]: ask for people coming back and changing the food culture.
15:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's a big statement.
15:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you saying that without us here in the diaspora, there would be no real finding and Vietnam.
15:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so, so here's the thing.
15:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So find that.
15:54
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't mean to put words in your mind.
15:56
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's not.
15:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So find dining is, so first thing, find dining is not like it does not come from Vietnam itself.
16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, it does not come from within.
16:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And it comes, and this is because of like, like a historical formation of like, find dining as a concept.
16:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So, fine dining comes from old cuisine in France, right?
16:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And France has cultural hegemony in like the global stage.
16:26
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you define, coach?
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I know what it is.
16:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure hegemony.
16:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So, cultural hegemony is the, it refers to when we ask like a collective consciousness, take a
16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: at like the pinnacle of like elegance and fineness and refinement and so French, the French culture is one of that and it's shaped through these social political processes and it's also you could also say that it's like a manifestation of like inequalities and like colonialism as well.
17:14
[SPEAKER_00]: a gemony over Vietnam.
17:17
[SPEAKER_01]: over Vietnam, over food, yeah, in the world, because they established colonies all over the world back then, and French food was always like, when you mentioned French food, even right now, like, yeah, I don't think, yeah, you don't think of French food as, you know, unrefined on anything.
17:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I understood, what I understand about French food
17:47
[SPEAKER_00]: In particular, is did they invent the, like the, the entree, right?
17:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't think that we in Vietnam had an entree before, did we?
17:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't we have like a piece of steak?
18:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we have vegetables and like, you know, you, you see the modern like, fine dining plate.
18:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that we didn't have that in Vietnam.
18:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We were like, fam, everything's family style.
18:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you eat like a bowl of soup.
18:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not really like,
18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not really like stations both.
18:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not consistent of like many courses, right?
18:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like an allocard where you have like courses and stuff.
18:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that culture of like having many courses also comes from like, you know, the royal cuisine in French as well, but also it's because of the establishment of the restaurant.
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: and it also comes from France in like the 18th century or so.
18:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So in your work, how do you get to the nitty-gritty details of like all of the goings on, of like the 80s or the, you know, how do you figure out like things that predate things that you could taste and feel today?
19:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so if you think about Vietnam in so pretty, pre-do in my so pre-1986 right, we were completely closed off and we were doing things on our own, we had like a man economy and we don't.
19:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Really, welcome any Vietnamese American diaspora.
19:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's Doi Mai.
19:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And then only 10 years after Doi Mai, that we actually normalized relation with the US.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It was in 1996, and that's when the first few waves of Vietnamese Americans, which is like the largest diaspora in Vietnam, start coming back to Vietnam.
19:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the food during that time, we had like, you know, all these industrial food and we have street food going on all the way, but there was no like fine dining or anything.
20:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so fine dining only came during like maybe the mid.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: 2010s and one of the biggest and most well-known restaurants at that time was actually found it by like a Western, like a European chefs and not Vietnamese, like ethnically Vietnamese, and
20:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and then around like 1926 or 2017, it was when like the first Vietnamese fine dining restaurant was like founded.
20:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
20:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And how did that change?
20:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam's eating culture or did it?
20:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Did it not really fit?
20:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a really good question.
20:59
[SPEAKER_01]: with like the introduction of these like upscale dining, right?
21:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It also correlates with like the increasing number of middle class people in Vietnam.
21:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's because of the economic reforms as well, right?
21:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we have all these like rising middle class who are very eager to do any their class status.
21:26
[SPEAKER_01]: through these new forms of consumption.
21:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you think of luxury consumption of buying luxury clothings, so eating, fine dining is one of those things.
21:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I guess I wouldn't say that like fine dining food is in Vietnam is something that people would go to for a like an everyday meal, but it's definitely like a very good way to delineate class into like as use as a class symbol.
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So what you're basically saying is no my in 86 to 96.
22:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Those years sort of changed the landscape and then by 96, uh, when more Vietnamese American diaspora chefs were coming back, the whole movement to find dining started, right?
22:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say, well, I would say that I still don't have any specific statistic when the first chef start coming back, but I would say that 96 is the start of like, you know, the waves of Vietnamese Americans coming back.
22:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a sense of the question of where does the food taste better, Vietnam or Vietnam's enclaves here in Littersegan, Orange County and Chicago, you know, our ourgile and all these places, these enclaves like South, like San Jose, Houston, all boats like a really vibrant food
23:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to all right and then so wherever you eat you you get used to it and then you start cleaning that's the best But what do you think if you are an outsider like if you are a French writer yeah, we're analyzing all of the food and you are thinking like
23:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not even just talking about fine dining, I'm just so much street food and all of it.
23:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to hear, and of course I'm not asking for a comparison which is better, but I'm saying how should we look at it, you know, because I don't think they're the same.
23:55
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not the same.
23:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
23:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, take just think about what you, what people you ever ask a question of whether Chinese American food is better than Chinese Chinese food.
24:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very different.
24:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's very different.
24:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And should it be evaluated on the same thing?
24:17
[SPEAKER_01]: The same, yeah.
24:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great response, yeah, or Mexican-American food.
24:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Tex-Mex, Mexican-Mexican food.
24:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the same thing.
24:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so every time people migrate, they have to adapt to the culture,
24:39
[SPEAKER_01]: culturally pragmatic strategy to adapt their taste and flavors accordingly to their surrounding environment.
24:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I don't think it's fair to like pit to culture against each other and try to like establish a scale because that would not be fair to neither to either of them.
25:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Hegemonic thinking, right?
25:10
[SPEAKER_00]: That question is actually doing that.
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So look, let's stop asking that question from now on.
25:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it is not comparing apples to apples.
25:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But who would they who in Vietnam is certainly at a much,
25:28
[SPEAKER_00]: crazy or detailed level than any hotel I've ever had in America.
25:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not comparing.
25:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying that it's just very different.
25:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I forgot for whatever reason.
25:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hutal Vietnam
25:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The flavors is just super dense and fungent.
25:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
25:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the Houthil here is, it just seems much more robust.
25:53
[SPEAKER_00]: The ways I can describe it, it just feels really robust, but lacks the kind of like the fine details of the Houthil and you know, in Saigon or.
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, you're right, it's just very different.
26:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know,
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: it just depends on where you grow up I get.
26:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
26:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, who are we?
26:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Who are we cooking for?
26:13
[SPEAKER_01]: In America, you don't just cook for like Vietnamese Vietnamese, right?
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You're cooking.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You're also cooking for these Westerners who are not used to these like, well, let's say complicated flavors.
26:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you kind of have to like, you know, a melody down a bit.
26:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And so all of these kind of like transformation or adaptation to the local taste, to the local palettes.
26:47
[SPEAKER_01]: are things like culinary changes that we see in a lot of other ethnic food in the U.S. Like text mix is very different from Mexican food.
27:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if this next question pertains to your research or
27:07
[SPEAKER_00]: any sort of ethnographic traditions that you go down, but I have a chef friend, as a chef win.
27:15
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about this idea of the cataloging of Vietnamese recipes.
27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: If you think about what we were cooking 100 years ago in the north or in the central, a lot of that is probably gone, right?
27:32
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we save the taste and the archival practice of these flavors?
27:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in your work, do you ever encounter people that are trying to kind of catalogue or kind of this stuff?
27:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I would say that my people, the people that I study is actually
27:59
[SPEAKER_01]: is actually doing the opposite.
28:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They're always trying to push, yes, exactly.
28:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So I study people who are trying to craft like a new and modern national identity, right?
28:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're always trying to imagine how Vietnamese food would look like.
28:20
[SPEAKER_01]: and they're trying, always trying to imagine how Vietnamese food would change upon like, you know, these, um, cultural changes and economic changes.
28:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, um, I'm not sure about, like, archiving base.
28:35
[SPEAKER_00]: it's so weird because I think that you and I, if I was, if I put myself in your shoes, I would go the other way.
28:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're a human being that is going into the future.
28:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going in two different directions, right?
28:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do you think that you look forward and not?
28:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because I look backwards, I'm like, actually sitting here going, oh my god, I can't believe somebody's looking forward because when I think about looking forward, I just feel like it becomes dissipates.
29:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's just weird.
29:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's worry.
29:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, oh, that's interesting.
29:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I'm like, you're in you going, wait, are you worried like we're losing our flavors?
29:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We're losing the mint?
29:20
[SPEAKER_00]: We're losing the smell of my room.
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: My room, Tom, right?
29:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And now you're like, no, no, no, I'm looking in the, I'm looking how this is going, where this is going, so where do you think that development, your focus on the future comes from?
29:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so, um, so that's a really interesting question.
29:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think like, when I guess for a Vietnamese, because I grew up in Vietnam, um, so I,
29:48
[SPEAKER_01]: when I grow up there's always this sense of hope and there's always this sense of like looking forward the future.
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: When you look at like how the party, how the state plan, the economic plan, it's always like this five-year plan, five-year plan, always looking forward.
30:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there are actually
30:19
[SPEAKER_01]: impacts how people look into the future and always like hope and imagine the future.
30:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, and so I guess that is why, but it doesn't mean that like people in Vietnam never look back into the past, especially during precarious times when people cannot imagine a future for themselves,
30:47
[SPEAKER_01]: when I'm talking about like economic development, it also comes with like a woodening wealth crack, right?
30:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when people face with like precariety and they cannot imagine a future for themselves, they will go back to like, order times.
31:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, that's where I'm at.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: and precarious times.
31:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, I do that sometimes.
31:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the point that you're bringing up about the party and the government thinking five years ahead all the time is it affects the way of the youth, you know, you're thinking about the future and you're thinking about where food ways are going.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I think about like,
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I think of modernizing food, it just becomes like gastronomy tricks, being boiled down, being blended, and then all you get is the essence of some foam, or, you know, and I feel so defeated that something like,
31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, but it's not just like, still like, party flavors of crab and it's not like, all it is is just maybe chopped down a little bit and then you have a lot of onions and so on.
32:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still real to me.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you go into the fine dining and you have a lot of gastronomical tricks and smoking mirrors, I feel like that future is never gonna be interesting for me.
32:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I can see what you mean, right?
32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're definitely not the only person in who thinks that way.
32:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are a lot of, actually, there are a lot of like,
32:38
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some food writers that are not a fan, definitely not a fan of like, you know, doing, going over the top of these molecular gastronomy techniques.
32:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, I think with the people that I study with the modern Vietnamese chefs,
33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: if you they think of themselves as artist and so cooking is an art and I think it's also I think it's also fair for them to allow them some room to be playful with their culinary creation right because that is the way that they want to go with the art
33:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are also demands for it.
33:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think it's, and also I think it's fair for both kind of cuisine to exist.
33:38
[SPEAKER_01]: We still have street food, and we still have fine dining.
33:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it does, one doesn't have to be demolished to give place for its successor.
33:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So fine dining is not like a successor of street food or anything.
33:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I know this is going to be a little bit of a hard exercise, but can you paint for me to the future of what modern Vietnamese food will look like?
34:06
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were to just like, if you were a food writer or a describer of the future, could you, in fact, tell me like, okay, here's where we're going with this.
34:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a way to do that?
34:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, well, I think I think it's very hard, right, because that, um, for most of the Vietnamese chefs, for most of the, uh, find dining Vietnamese chefs that I study, um, they are crafting it every day and they're trying to like,
34:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine and reimagine Vietnamese food every day, so no one knows how it's going to look like But what we do know right now is that if you look at the menus of like These Vietnamese restaurants you will see a very large and a very interesting diversification of ingredients and techniques being used
35:00
[SPEAKER_01]: especially in terms of ethnic cuisine.
35:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So Vietnam has a lot of like, has 54 ethnic groups, right?
35:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we are the kind of population, we usually eat gins food, but there are a lot of like high land food or high land ingredients that we don't know about.
35:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's being incorporated into these fine dinoes.
35:29
[SPEAKER_01]: to give exposure to both the urban population and to the global pallet as well.
35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that with these introductions and with more exposure, I do think that a lot of like the quote unquote exotic and unfamiliar ingredients from the high land or from other ethnic minorities will get introduced to the urban population
35:59
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a really good example.
36:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Two years ago, I was at one of these restaurants in Hanoi.
36:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a highland restaurant, and you walk in and you knew you were in a different place.
36:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You knew the decor was elevated, but you felt the highland, because you know, and you can read the signs and the literal stories on the wall.
36:20
[SPEAKER_00]: talking about like where the food comes from.
36:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you sit down, the platings different, the the way it's served is different.
36:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And then obviously the the smell and the taste of the food is way different.
36:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Although you know that it's ingredients that was used from Vietnam's earth.
36:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was highland food done.
36:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know these were like,
36:44
[SPEAKER_00]: some white people that took me out in Hanoi, you know, at they there's like one of their favorite Vietnamese restaurants.
36:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it was Thailand.
36:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was on Facebook.
36:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So what do you mean?
36:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so even if you go around Hanoi or any other big cities, for example, you can't find a restaurant that's like specializes in, I don't know, long cuisine or like damn people cuisine or other 53 ethnic minorities.
37:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't, yeah, you don't.
37:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you just really don't.
37:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But do you imagine all of that's being lost decade after decade?
37:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm.
37:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, I think it's going away.
37:27
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nobody archive, I mean, maybe there is.
37:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to, if there's anybody archive in this stuff, I'd like to know.
37:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think that these are like treasures that are being, that are being buried deep in the earth and we can't get to it.
37:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think for if we're talking about like ethnically specific culinary technique, it's hard, you're right, it's hard to know whether it's actually hard to know whether it's already lost or it's so there.
38:00
[SPEAKER_01]: because there are very little exposure to it as like, you know, we as the urban population, mostly because of the geographical access to the region and you barely see the people in, you know, urban areas as well.
38:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that a lot of the modern Vietnamese chefs and entrepreneur are
38:28
[SPEAKER_01]: trying their best to connect with these populations and to bring their culture from the Highland, from deep inside, you know, the forest, to the urban center, and I think, you know, that's a really interesting thing to see, and it's a really hopeful future trajectory for me.
38:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm not sure if you write about taste
38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: process and the kitchen.
39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you think about Vietnamese food, if I was to say, he can you describe Vietnamese food?
39:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what makes a dish Vietnamese?
39:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I get fond when me and all that.
39:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But as in general, how do you describe Vietnamese food?
39:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is also a very interesting question because Vietnamese culinary palette is so diverse.
39:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And there is no, we're not even regionally and ethnically speaking, we're not like homogenized.
39:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We have like the food from the West.
39:38
[SPEAKER_01]: What I mean, Thai is like very sweet and very like very rich.
39:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we have these coconut cream and we have pandan and we have all these like palm trees and palm sugar.
39:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And something sounds like you're describing the people of Ming Bay.
39:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
39:56
[SPEAKER_00]: The warm and sweet and like buttery, you know.
40:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then rich.
40:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's.
40:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't mean money rich, right?
40:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean like rich in culture, they're just sweet and warm people.
40:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't describe Hanoi that way, right?
40:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Can do damn it.
40:15
[SPEAKER_01]: it's fine.
40:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I say that you.
40:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, okay.
40:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then we have like, and then you have like the sound, who's uh, that's like very close to the west, and it's also known for like a kind of a mellower taste.
40:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually people would say that all um,
40:35
[SPEAKER_01]: like far in the south is so sweet compared to the north.
40:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Something like that.
40:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you have central is like very, very strong and spicy and spicy.
40:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like the people too.
40:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, come in.
40:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then, and it's all, and then there's the North that's like very, let's say, I think the North is, is a bit more can, like I don't, I don't know.
41:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Fan is more pleasant.
41:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's more pleasant.
41:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more, it's more, it's more, it's a kid.
41:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's dialed down.
41:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, flavors are nuanced.
41:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
41:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And so all of those, it's because we're not really homogenized, like, regionally.
41:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that that makes like describing like a Vietnamese palette very hard to do.
41:34
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's a good answer.
41:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you see your role in the future of food and academics?
41:43
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that come together?
41:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you imagine your future?
41:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you're still very young and you're starting out in this amazing trajectory of like analyzing
41:57
[SPEAKER_00]: food, as it relates to economy, as it relates to policy, like what do somebody like you in the future of the world, between the US and Vietnam, what do you do?
42:10
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the role that you see yourself doing?
42:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I actually never thought about this question,
42:27
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of like academia, there are not a lot of people writing about like fine dining and Vietnam and the future.
42:38
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of people writing about like street food and Vietnam and writing about the history of Vietnamese food.
42:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But nobody, I think, not a lot of attention is
42:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a lot of attention is put on, like, you know, how these Vietnamese are imagine their future through food and how it relates to the political economy and the state and other actors that are shaping the cultural and economic future of the country.
43:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I
43:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that I would just love to documents that and give it like a space in the academic landscape.
43:25
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why the conversation with you or your generation would name, excite to me.
43:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I am living on ground zero of the youth culture of Vietnam, but you guys are in America.
43:42
[SPEAKER_00]: full-blown English as an American to me with the sensibilities of people who grew up in Vietnam who understand Vietnam from the inside out and the work that you do, I promise you you'll be back on this podcast for many, many, many years to come because I'm interested in the future of where you're going and where your peers and your colleagues are going with the study of culture.
44:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why I want to start the conversation with you because you're right, there's not a lot of
44:11
[SPEAKER_00]: studying what you study, and there's not like, like, if you think about the pathway of like where you're going, you could be literally working for some department of some ministry in Vietnam in 10 years and you're like figuring out the nutrition sort of dictating nutrition guidelines for the country.
44:32
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how I think of, you know, the people that
44:36
[SPEAKER_00]: that study these things.
44:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know where you're going to end up, but eventually it's going to be somewhere very interesting.
44:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
44:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
44:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
44:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think continue the work that you do.
44:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And last thing, what do you mean, what does mean to be Vietnamese to these days?
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that's a very question.
44:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see.
45:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I think to be Vietnamese is to just remember that you are Vietnamese, no matter where you go.
45:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have like...
45:21
[SPEAKER_01]: any like grandios question and answer for that.
45:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I think especially with like because we talk about like cultural hegemony, right?
45:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that a lot of the a lot of the a large
45:43
[SPEAKER_01]: of the youth population are like emigrating out of the country for, you know, career and studying purposes.
45:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of the times it's just very hard to, it's very hard to assimilate to the new culture, but also to remember that, you know, where you're from.
46:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I guess like
46:09
[SPEAKER_01]: the most simple thing to do is to always remember where you're from, and yeah.
46:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you ever want to go back to work professionally in Vietnam or do you want to stay in America?
46:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, I mean, I think in the near future, I would still want to stay in America because I
46:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this is because of the way it's like institutionally set up, it's the only way that I can put my work out academically and to give these research about Vietnamese people a space in like the academic landscape.
46:52
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an infrastructure in America that provides coverage for the work that you do.
46:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
46:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the only way I can put it.
47:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I see that, and I understand that.
47:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also hope that Vietnam does give space for academic researchers like you to provide infrastructure and funding to help develop all of these very interesting things
47:19
[SPEAKER_00]: really can push the agenda of, you know, strengthening Vietnam's culture, you know, around the world.
47:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for coming on today.
47:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do, like I said, I do hope that you come back on the podcast, like, you know, once you have more of a determination on sort of what you're seeing in the trends, I'm really interested in this stuff.
47:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
47:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so
47:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
47:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
47:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.