“LAUREN, DO YOU KNOW how to make cha ca?” asked Son one evening after the dinner rush had ended and we were about to begin cleaning up.
Cha ca is a Hanoian specialty of fish marinated in a turmeric-based sauce and fried with scallions, dill, and peanuts served over rice noodles. Unlike pho or goi cuon—the cooling summer rolls filled with rice noodles, shrimp, and lettuce—it’s rarely the first dish foreigners think of when they consider Vietnamese cuisine, but Cha Ca La Vong, a famous old restaurant in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, specializes in the dish, and over the years it’s become an unofficial requirement for visitors to sample while visiting Hanoi. I had yet to try it, so I shook my head no.
“Okay, I will teach you now,” he said excitedly.
“Right now?”
“Yes, you come to Vietnam to learn Vietnamese food, so I teach you. You can eat it after,” he said.
He pulsed a small handful of sliced galangal in the blender, an outdated cream-colored model that was stained yellow from turmeric-based sauces and roared like a jet engine, and spread the puree over several fish filets in a blue plastic bowl. From the lowboy refrigerator below his workstation, he retrieved a small plastic bottle filled with a murky purple liquid. “Shrimp sauce,” he said, then reached for another plastic bottle filled with bright orange turmeric juice.
After adding these ingredients, he opened a plastic bag filled with a white paste and held it up to my nose. I inhaled the acrid smell, flinching but returning for another whiff, since I was clueless. Yeasty, sour notes bombarded my nasal passages.
“Fermented rice,” Son explained.
“Ah,” I said.
“Do you have that in America?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe you can find it in Chinatown, where there are a lot of Vietnamese markets, but I’ve never seen it,” I said as he added a few spoonfuls to the fish.
“Oh. It’s not popular?”
“No. It smells a little funky, so I don’t think Americans would like it that much or know what to do with it. So you add it to the sauce, and then how long do you marinate everything?”
“About three hours, but for you, now, only five minutes,” said Son, shrugging. In Vietnamese cooking, precision wasn’t that important. Things were done when you needed them to be done.
“So now I will teach you cha ca and you will eat it after. Very Vietnamese dish. You can make it back at home. You be the cha ca expert of New York,” Son said as he heated the oil in the wok to a boil and gently dipped in the scallions using a slotted spoon. He followed suit with a few sprigs of dill so that they wilted but retained some crunch. He lowered several pieces of the marinated fish into the oil, which immediately bubbled and splattered. Once the fish were fully cooked and had turned the color of summer honey, he swirled his perforated spoon into the wok, scooped out the fish, and placed them on paper towels to drain. He took fresh rice noodles out of a bag and placed them in a serving bowl, then added a few fried prawn crackers. On a long black plate, he arranged the fish next to the cooked scallions and dill and poured chile-flecked fish sauce into a small dipping dish.
“For garnish, you want to make the green onion look pretty. Use the light green part only, and, holding in the middle, make many slits into the top and bottom using a small knife. You see, it looks pretty. You try now,” he said, handing me a few scallions. Following his instructions, I quickly transformed them into garnishes that sort of resembled bicycle handles adorned with streamers. We added them on top of the fish, and Son garnished the whole plate with a handful of crispy fried shallots. One complete meal, all in under ten minutes.
“Okay, Lauren! Eat!” said Son.
“Thanks. It looks delicious,” I said.
“Go eat out there.” He motioned toward the front room of the restaurant, which served primarily as the spice shop but had a single table in the middle.
“No, no, it’s okay, I can eat in the kitchen,” I said, not wanting to draw attention to myself. But Son was adamant, so I took my plate and sat at the table, catching Didier’s glance when I walked in.
“Son made this for me,” I explained before he had a chance to speak.
“Ah, cha ca. Good. Do you want some wine?” he said, pulling up a chair next to me.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Have some wine. White wine?”
I gave in. “Sure.”
“One glass of white wine for Lauren and a glass of red for me,” Didier said to one of the servers. Then he turned back to me. “So you have been here for some time now. What do you think?”
“Everyone has been great. I’m teaching them some English and they’re teaching me Vietnamese. I’ve learned how to use lemongrass and fish sauce and all the Vietnamese herbs, how to use the wok, and now, how to make cha ca.”
“Good, good. Eat,” he said, pointing to the fish.
I lifted my chopsticks and ate a piece of fish with the rice noodles. “When did you open La Verticale?” I asked between mouthfuls. Although I had done some preliminary research on Didier and the restaurant before I arrived, I didn’t know why Didier had left the esteemed Metropole Hotel, his previous employer. It was the nicest hotel in Hanoi, if not in all of Vietnam.
“In 2007,” said Didier, adding that it took time to get the restaurant up and running. “But I think 2010 will be our year. But you know, sometimes there are issues with the staff… You know how it goes in Vietnam.”
“Mmmm…,” I murmured, not entirely sure what he meant.
“You really have to train the staff well. It’s not Paris or New York here, but you want the level of quality to be there. That’s why we brought in Valentin. I always want young people, too. I wouldn’t want another European chef in the kitchen. There would be too much conflict, and the restaurant wouldn’t have my spirit,” he said, knocking his knuckles together.
“I can understand that,” I said. Everyone knows too many cooks spoil the broth.
“And you know, I’m not going to pay the workers all the same wage and be a socialist. No, they do different amounts of work, and some are better than others. But I share the tips with everyone. The front-of-house staff, they don’t like that, but I think it’s only fair to the kitchen. Some people tip twenty or thirty dollars, which is enormous for here, since Vietnam is not really a tipping culture.”
I admired his egalitarianism, since I also benefited from these tips. By the time they got distributed to the whole staff, I received about 150,000 dong, or a little less than $10; though that’s not a lot in America, in Vietnam it’s ten bowls of pho. I felt that Didier wanted to reassure me that he knew things were different elsewhere in the world. But as much as I liked being the chef’s confidante, it made me a little uncomfortable as he talked about the staff. These were my new friends, after all.
“Do you make much money from the spice shop?” I asked, trying to change the subject. The shop sold not only Didier’s spice blends, but also his cookbooks and postcards with his recipes.
“No, not really, maybe forty American dollars a month. But it creates the esprit. I want to teach people about my spices and cuisine and to share my knowledge,” he said. While Didier didn’t work the line each night, he was nevertheless represented in each of the recipes, and he did add the finishing touches to dishes before they went into the dining room, ensuring that they met his standards. And there was no denying that Didier Corlou was embodied in all aspects of the restaurant. The name Didier Corlou boldly branded everything in sight, from the C of his last name intersecting with the c in La Verticale on the restaurant’s outdoor signage to the DC embossed on the bottom of every plate and bowl.
Still, I kept flashing back to Wylie sautéing fish filets for hours on end nearly every night in the wd~50 kitchen. He was so much more in touch with the day-to-day workings of his restaurant; but I began to wonder if it was really so wrong for a chef to take a backseat from cooking if his spirit was still present in the restaurant. Or did there come a point later in life where a chef’s priorities changed, and it simply became less important to be working the line each night? I wondered what this would mean for me in the future. As much as I wanted to take the Wylie approach, it seemed more practical to take Didier’s.
JUST AS DIDIER had encouraged me (although I needed little encouragement, if any), I supplemented my formal training at La Verticale by applying myself to the study of Vietnamese street food culture. I trawled the streets of Hanoi during my off-hours for authentic dishes, stopping whenever I saw eager customers poised on miniature blue plastic stools, chopsticks in hand. Because I lived far away from the restaurant, I never returned home between the lunch and dinner shifts like the rest of the staff but wandered around until I got too hot or tired. Most eateries specialized in one dish, almost always written on their signs, so ordering wasn’t too difficult, especially since my Vietnamese culinary vocabulary was growing quickly. And if a waiter approached me and said something I didn’t understand, I simply nodded, figuring he was offering me the restaurant’s specialty. So far no mishaps, although pausing at one crowded spot, I was glad I knew that “trung vit lon” meant cooked embryonic duck egg, once described by a friend as “the most vile thing I have ever put in my mouth.” I had come to Vietnam to push my boundaries, but I wasn’t ready for that. Yet.
Thus I chanced upon a bun bo Hue stall on Quang Trang, a busy street near La Verticale. Bun bo Hue is the official soup of Hue, the former imperial city in central Vietnam. Pho may be the blood that runs through the veins of Hanoi, but frankly it pales in comparison with bun bo Hue. While the general condiments for the two beef noodle soups are identical, bun bo Hue packs a punch with lemongrass, shrimp paste, and chiles instead of the delicate spices of cinnamon and star anise found in pho. The former is a soup whose bold, expressive flavors represented what I loved about Vietnamese food.
And tucked away in the Hom market, I found a new favorite in banh bot loc, small cold tapioca flour dumplings stuffed with shrimp and pork and served with fish sauce and herbs. The dish was a harmonious combination of textures, flavors, and colors: chewy dough with crisp herbs and crunchy shallots, unctuous pork fat with fish sauce, the bright greens of the herbs contrasting with the pale pinks of shrimp filling. Food wove a spell over me in Vietnam, and as Didier had promised, the most important foods weren’t in restaurants; they were in storefronts with unsteady plastic tables and child-sized blue stools spilling out onto the streets and where bowls of steaming soup were ladled out of waist-high metal stockpots.
However, not every dish was a success; I wandered all over Hanoi in search of banh mi sandwiches like those Chase and I had feasted on in our ethnic food outings in New York, but to no avail. One sandwich was an air-filled baguette lightly smeared with pâté and pickled green papaya, while another was basically an omelet inside of a baguette with pork pâté and scallions, served with pickled cucumbers, cilantro, and hot sauce.
“Today, I ate bun bo Hue, and banh beo,” I said to Son as I helped him marinate tuna in passion fruit sauce one evening. I liked telling him all the different things I sampled in the streets and sought his advice on those foods I hadn’t yet tasted.
“Oh, bun bo Hue, very spicy. From Hue, in the center of Vietnam. Yes, good! Oh, Lauren, you eat so many different things in Vietnam. You eat more kinds of Vietnamese food than me,” he said with delight. I was an outsider, the white female foreigner, but I wanted to convince Son and Thanh that I had come to Vietnam to learn about and embrace their food culture and that I wasn’t like the other tourists or expats who kept their refrigerators stocked with balsamic vinegar, pasta sauces in jars, and other Western goods. After all, it was easy enough to avoid Vietnamese food; McDonald’s and Starbucks, emblems of Western “progress,” had yet to arrive, but the local alternatives, Lotteria and Highlands Coffee, were always packed with foreigners. Even Belinda rarely ate Vietnamese food. Our housekeeper, Lan, came five days a week and made dinner for Belinda every night while I was at work. Although Lan occasionally made vegetarian summer rolls or tofu sautéed with lemongrass, Belinda usually left her a recipe, often for a Western-style salad or vegetable stew that she had printed from an Australian food website. I found it odd that Belinda lived in Vietnam and rarely ate Vietnamese food, but I guessed that she wanted a reminder of home. I wanted to show Son and Thanh that I was different, but perhaps they didn’t need convincing. Maybe I simply needed to convince myself.
“LAUREN, what do you do after lunch? You go home?” Thanh asked at work.
“Usually I walk around Hanoi, or sometimes I eat at restaurants or go to cafés and read,” I said.
“Next time can I come with you?”
“Yes, of course.”
So the next day after lunch, I changed into my street clothes and met Thanh on the terrace. “Okay, we go eat ice cream. Here, here,” he said, handing me a motorbike helmet.
We got on his bike and zigzagged through the Old Quarter, a labyrinth of curving streets. Many of these were devoted to a specific kind of store, either toy, or lanterns and paper, or sunglasses. En route, Thanh pointed to an Italian restaurant called Pane e Vino. “This is where I work before La Verticale,” he said.
“Oh, cool. Do you like working at La Verticale more?”
“Yes, yes,” he said. But I wasn’t sure. Was he merely being polite, or did he actually prefer Didier’s kingdom? I sensed that cooking was more of a job for Thanh and the rest of the La Verticale staff than a true passion, the way it had been for the chefs at wd~50.
We slowed down once we reached Kem Trang Tien, an ice cream shop which I had seen but not yet tried. We sped into the motorbike parking lot located in the back.
“Great. I’ve been wanting to try this place,” I said to Thanh.
“This ice cream, very famous. Anytime someone come to Hanoi, they come here. Very good because not so expensive. Poor people can come here,” he said.
“Do you come here a lot?” I asked.
“Sometimes. Now, stay here,” he said, indicating that I should remain to guard the bike. “What kind you want? Coconut?”
Pleased that he had remembered my favorite ice cream flavor, I smiled and nodded, then watched as he headed to the counter. He returned with two ice pops on sticks, mine as white as milk and his cream-colored with a few beige splotches. “What kind did you get?” I asked.
“Bean. Better than the sweet rice and corn flavors. But coconut is good, too. I will bring my child here next month when he comes to visit. My child, he lives in my countryside because it is too expensive to buy a house in Hanoi,” he said.
“So it’s only you and your wife here, and your son is in the country?”
“Yes, I miss him. But too expensive.” I instantly regretted letting him pay for the ice cream.
We ate our ice pops in the motorbike park underneath a trellis of fake pink and red hibiscus flowers. A television projected an animated movie on one of the walls, and kids chased one another, high on sugar. “Okay, now we eat ice cream cup,” said Thanh, pointing to the soft-serve station a few steps away.
“No! You’ll get me fat,” I protested. “You have one, and this time let me buy it for you.” Despite my insistence, he refused. “No, I pay. One for you, one for me.”
“No. Really.” I was struck by Thanh’s genuine good-heartedness and vowed to be a kinder person myself.
“Okay, then, instead we go to market?” Thanh said after we had finished our ice pops.
“Sure.”
He steered the motorbike to the Dong Xuan market, a treasure chest for the bargain hunter. We walked through jam-packed stalls selling fake designer clothing, souvenirs, trinkets, and rolls of fabric. We stopped at one on the ground floor displaying plastic magnets of Hanoi. Thanh picked out a pale blue one depicting Hoan Kiem Lake and took out his wallet. After a spirited negotiation with the seller, he paid and handed me the magnet.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, touched.
“But it’s your birthday tomorrow, yes?” asked Thanh.
“Yes, I’ll be twenty-five. How did you remember? It was over a month ago that I told you my birthday.”
“My birthday is July twenty-first. Almost same-same.”
“Oh, what will you do for it? Drink some beer?” I joked.
He laughed. “My wife, she will make dinner.”
“What will you have? Cake?”
“No, no cake. We have rice and fish.”
“What kind of fish?”
“Little fish, the kind you had at lunch today. Good because not too expensive. Okay, we come back,” Thanh said as we reached the end of the market, confusing the “go back” and “come,” as the kitchen staff did nightly when they said, “Okay, Lauren, come back home.”
Later at La Verticale, while I filled small ceramic bowls with fried rice, Thanh said, “Lauren, come here.”
I signaled to him that I was working, but he called out again. “When you go back to America, you don’t want to tell people you learned to make rice and potatoes. Potatoes not important for Vietnam.” He flicked his hand in mock disgust. “You work on meat, you can take back. Make your style.”
“Okay, sounds good, boss. I will make beef in America,” I said, pleased to see plates in their final stages.
“Yes, yes. My style, always same-same, though. My style is Didier Corlou,” he said with a note of disappointment, and it saddened me that Thanh or the other chefs here probably couldn’t afford to open their own restaurants or wouldn’t have a real chance to develop their own cooking styles. I joined Thanh at the stove to begin the dinner shift. The differences between our lives were still pronounced, but now, as we stood side by side behind the stove’s burners, the distance didn’t feel as wide.
Vietnam is filled with delectable treats, but the following recipes particularly recall summer days in Hanoi.
Green papaya salad is ubiquitous in Hanoi and is generally served with thinly sliced dried beef or sometimes quail. I’ve made this salad with cooked shrimp, and I’ve added shredded carrots and scallion, but personally I think it’s at its best when it’s just green papaya with a few added flavorings. Green papayas can be found in Asian markets, but if you don’t live near any, just search for an unripe regular papaya at your grocery store. This salad is also great with green mango. If you don’t have a mandolin, you can cut the green papaya into thin strips using a knife; just be forewarned that it will take a bit longer.
SERVES 4 TO 6
cup Chinese peanuts (or regular peanuts)
½ cup loosely packed mint leaves
½ cup loosely packed cilantro leaves
1 to 2 red Thai chiles
3 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon sugar
1 large green papaya, about 1½ pounds
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Bake the peanuts for about 10 minutes, or until golden brown, then chop them roughly and set aside. Chop the mint and cilantro leaves, and slice the chiles into rings as thin as possible (if you want to avoid touching the chiles, use a pair of scissors to cut them into rings), then set aside.
In a small bowl, combine the fish sauce, water, rice vinegar, lime juice, and sugar, and mix well.
Cut the top and bottom off the papaya, then peel it and cut in half. Use a spoon to scoop out the seeds and inner membrane, then slice each half into quarters. Using a mandolin, slice the papaya into thin strips about 1 to 2 millimeters thick. Place the papaya into a large mixing bowl along with the peanuts, mint, cilantro, and chiles. Pour in the dressing and mix well. Let sit for 30 minutes, then mix again before serving.
The two main places to eat cha ca in Hanoi (besides the upscale version at La Verticale, of course) are Cha Ca La Vong and Cha Ca Thang Long. The following recipe is my approximation of the dish. Don’t balk at the amount of oil used; it’s supposed to be like that, as the spice-infused oil forms a sauce for the fish.
SERVES 4
2 teaspoons minced or grated ginger
2 tablespoons ground turmeric
2 tablespoons fish sauce
¼ teaspoon finely minced Thai red chile
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 pound tilapia or other mild, firm-fleshed fish, skinned and boned and cut into 1-inch chunks
cup Chinese peanuts or regular peanuts
12 ounces thin rice noodles
¼ cup vegetable oil
5 scallions, sliced into 2-inch pieces
1 bunch dill, roots cut off, cut into 3-inch stems
Combine all ingredients for the marinade in a small bowl. Add the fish and coat well. Let marinate, covered, in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Roast the peanuts for 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown, then roughly chop and set aside.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the rice noodles according to directions on the package. Drain, then rinse under cool water for a few seconds to halt the cooking process. Divide the noodles among four bowls.
In a large frying pan, heat the vegetable oil over medium-high heat. When the oil starts to shimmer, add the fish. Sauté for about 5 minutes, or until the fish is almost fully cooked, making sure not to stir too frequently. Add the scallions and cook for another minute, then add the dill, stirring until just wilted.
To serve, spoon the fish and herbs over the noodles along with a spoonful of the oil. Sprinkle generously with the peanuts.
The Hanoi summer is a scorcher, and nothing beats the heat like a big glass of limeade, which the Vietnamese call “lime juice.” I like to add lemongrass for a Southeast Asian flavor, but it’s great without it, too.
MAKES 1 PITCHER (ABOUT 6 TO 8 SERVINGS)
1 cup sugar
7 cups water
Pinch of kosher salt
1 (6-inch) piece lemongrass, smashed with a mallet
1 cup freshly squeezed lime juice (from about 6 to 7 limes)
Ice
In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar with 1 cup water, salt, and lemongrass, and cook until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and steep until room temperature.
Pour the lime juice and remaining water in a pitcher and add the syrup, making sure to discard the lemongrass. Stir well and serve over ice.