BY THE SECOND HALF OF JULY, Didier had abandoned Hanoi for his annual summer holiday in France, leaving us cooks happily to our own devices. Belinda’s romance, too, was winding down, since Sinan was preparing to leave the following week for Russia. “He wants me to go to Russia with him, but I’m not going to sit around as someone’s girlfriend in a hotel there. It’s not even like he’s going to Moscow or St. Petersburg, where I could maybe find a job. He’s being transferred to somewhere in the middle of nowhere,” she complained.
A friend of Sinan’s was throwing him a going-away party, and Belinda and Sinan invited Lucy and me. Belinda and I made dinner for all of us, a not very Vietnamese meal of bean burritos and a green salad, and the four of us jumped into a taxi, even though the party was a five-minute walk away. When it’s that humid and muggy, and a taxi costs only sixty cents, you take one.
“Liam lives in the penthouse,” Sinan told me as we got into the elevator of a remarkably modern building on the edge of Tay Ho Lake. Like several of the Tay Ho complexes, this building featured full-serviced luxury apartments, which were usually rented to business travelers or expats by their company.
“Oooh, fancy,” we cooed collectively.
“And he’s single,” Sinan added.
“Great. Just my type: single and rich,” I joked.
“My gosh, this is fantastic,” Lucy said when we walked into the penthouse apartment. The living room was two stories tall and decorated with modern furniture. Liam, the host, was an affable blond with a square jawline and enough confidence to wear a pink, flower-print shirt. He was sandwiched between two striking Vietnamese girls in bright satiny skintight dresses.
“Shall we have a drink, girls?” said Belinda.
“Yes, let’s,” I said. We poured ourselves champagne and then offered some to the Vietnamese girls, who were the only other guests at this point.
“No, we have orange juice,” one of them said. I found it funny how the tables were covered with bowls of Doritos, pretzels, and Lay’s potato chips instead of local treats, but I knew not everyone shared my love of Vietnamese food. And I was also aware that I was a temporary visitor and my culinary experiences in Hanoi were limited to only three months. Perhaps when you’ve been an expat in Vietnam going on three years, the novelty of the foreign cuisine wears off and you just want a taste of home, even if it is one that is shrink-wrapped and artificial nacho cheese–flavored.
Eventually more guests flowed in, many coming from a wine tasting. The crowd ranged from young expats in their twenties like me to Michael Michalak, the American ambassador to Vietnam. I joined Lucy and Liam in the kitchen and helped myself to a glass of imported champagne. “So, Liam, how did you end up in Vietnam?” I asked.
“Before this I was in Dubai for a few years, and before that I spent two years traveling the world as an auditor. It was a good job, and people wanted all these glamorous places like Paris or London, but I said, ‘Where else do you have?’ So I went to Panama, El Salvador, Brazil, Amsterdam, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, twenty different countries over the course of two years.”
“That must have been hard,” said Lucy.
“No, it was great. The company gave us money to travel on the weekends, and we would lose it if we didn’t use it, so we went to some new city or country every weekend. It’s probably the only time in my life where I can remember exactly what I did every single weekend.”
Maybe it’s a by-product of being an expat, but I was getting the impression that Vietnam attracted eternal wanderers. Belinda had lived in Hong Kong and wanted to move to Tokyo; Lucy had come via Hong Kong and was contemplating Dubai next. At the party, I met a couple who worked at the American embassy and were heading out on a mysterious-sounding mission to Cuba the following week, while Sinan had worked in Dubai before Vietnam and was now bound for Russia. It made me dizzy, but perhaps those bitten by the travel bug felt that the grass was always greener elsewhere and that each new locale presented an opportunity for self-reinvention and testing one’s limits.
“I don’t know if I could do that, move somewhere every few years and have to start all over,” I said later to Belinda. As much as I could see myself temporarily packing up and heading out into the unknown, I was comforted to know that I could always call New York home.
She said, “Yeah, you know, I was upset the other day because my life hasn’t gone exactly how I thought it would. Hong Kong didn’t work out professionally and romantically, and now Hanoi hasn’t really either. But I suppose you can meet interesting people, people you wouldn’t necessarily be friends with at home. It makes you think about your preconceived notions of people, doesn’t it?”
“Definitely,” I said. Indeed, Lucy and Belinda were so different in terms of age and background from most of my friends back home, nearly all of whom I had met through school or were friends of friends, but we had quickly formed strong bonds. On the few occasions where I was home with Belinda on a weekend and we didn’t feel like going out to dinner, she’d make us a light soup and salad or sautéed vegetables over rice. She didn’t do it to impress me by showing me that she, too, knew how to cook. She did it because she wanted to, because here, abroad, we were like a little makeshift family.
“Soooo, what do you think about Liam?” said Belinda, smiling.
I glanced at him. “Do you really think he’s flirting with me?”
“Yeah! Was he holding your hand just then?”
“Yeah.” Okay, he was flirting.
“Lauren, go back there! Go talk to him! Think of this apartment. This is as good as it’s going to get in Hanoi!” said Lucy.
“What should I say? I’m out of practice being flirty,” I said.
“Say, ‘I didn’t know which of the wines I should open and can you come and help?’” said Belinda.
“Maybe I’ll take a beer and ask if he needs a refill. I’m nervous, though! I haven’t been out on a date in forever, since working in New York halted all chance of a dating life and here I just haven’t bothered,” I said.
“Don’t overanalyze it, just go!” But before she could shoo me away, Liam trooped into the kitchen with a posse and a bottle of whiskey.
“Shots!” they said, and glasses were distributed. Liam handed me one and we clinked plastic cups. Somehow the conversation turned to dating.
“Yeah, well, the Western girl has it worse off,” I said. “Western guys are all off with Vietnamese girls, and Vietnamese guys aren’t interested in Western women because the power dynamic in the relationship is different than if they’re with a Vietnamese woman.”
“Let’s go outside,” said Liam. He grabbed me by the hand, and we walked to the terrace.
“So what are you doing here in Hanoi?” he asked.
“Cooking, taking a break from New York…,” I started.
“Cooking? That seems rather bizarre.”
“Well, it’s what I’m passionate about, so it’s not that bizarre. Do you like your job?”
“Do I like my job? I’m not going to lie and say I love my job, but it lets me live in places like this. But all jobs basically suck. No one would work if they didn’t have to. If you were, like, here’s a pile of money, take it, or here’s a pile of money but go do x, y, and z first, I tell you, no one’s going to choose the second option…” He paused and smiled at me. “Come on, let’s stop talking and dance.”
We started dancing to the music, an odd amalgam of songs from the past decade, and, fueled on French champagne and American bourbon and a steamy Vietnamese summer night, he leaned in to kiss me. And kiss me again.
“LAUREN, we take photograph after work, okay?” said Son.
It was my last day in the kitchen, and I was sad to leave the kitchen staff, but I was looking forward to having a break and traveling for two weeks with my friend Coreen, who was coming to visit from California before starting law school in the fall. Once the lunch service ended, the staff crowded around and presented me with a bag. The day before, I had given them a box of See’s chocolates that I had asked Coreen to bring so that the Vietnamese cooks could have a small taste of American candy.
“We wanted to give you a present,” said one of the barmen. I opened it and saw two Vietnamese figurines, as well as a small wooden box filled with chopsticks and a set of bamboo place mats.
“Now when I’m home, I can eat as if I’m in Vietnam,” I said as they all giggled.
“Now pictures,” said Son, ushering us out to the patio.
I posed for photos with each of the staff members, and then we all posed for a group photo, in which I towered over the girls but stood at about eye level with the guys. For the first time in my life, I was one of the tall ones in a group photo.
“So, Lauren, now we drink a coffee or a beer together. Which do you want?” said Thanh.
“Either is fine by me,” I said.
“Beer is more funny,” said Son.
“Yes, beer is more funny,” I agreed.
The whole kitchen staff—minus Luyen, who had never warmed to me and perhaps decided I wasn’t worth spending an afternoon with—headed for their motorbikes, and I leapt onto the back of Thanh’s. We soon pulled up to a small bia hoi joint that was pretty empty. Bia hoi is a type of local beer; because it’s unpasteurized, it needs to be consumed right away and is thus sold at dirt cheap prices. A glass is about 4,000 dong, or around twenty-five cents. Usually it’s a predominantly male activity, which was why I had gone out for bia hoi only a few times, though it’s popular with both men and women on the tourist circuit.
We crowded around a table in a small room that looked as though it hadn’t been refurbished in about forty years. Its peach-colored paint was chipped, and the dark gray carpet cried out for vacuuming, but we didn’t care. Shortly after we ordered the beers, our waitress came back with four two-liter jugs of bia hoi. Everyone began conversing in Vietnamese, and Son explained, “They are just very excited because we do not usually have the opportunity to drink beer with a foreigner.”
Drinking bia hoi required clinking glasses with everyone at the table no fewer than ten times. Okay, this wasn’t a set rule, but after every ten minutes, or after anyone finished a glass, we all raised our glasses anew and cheered.
“Drink, Lauren,” said Thanh.
“I am drinking. I don’t want to end up too drunk!”
“You tell me yesterday that you can drink five glasses of beer. You must drink five glasses.”
“Okay, I’ll try.” I was thankful not to be returning to work for the evening shift but worried for any customers whose meals would be whipped up by my soon-to-be-drunk colleagues.
A menu was passed around, and I tested my new Vietnamese vocabulary. “Okay, so moc, that’s squid, and ech, that’s frog, right?”
“Yes, yes. Good. You speak Vietnamese now,” said Son.
“See, this is dish I tell you earlier. You want to try it?” Thanh said, indicating the bo cuon la cai on the menu. Earlier that day, he had explained that it was a popular food to be eaten with bia hoi, but that girls generally didn’t like it because it was too spicy.
“Sure, I like spicy,” I said, which was true, though I also wanted to refute the idea that girls couldn’t handle the heat.
In the center of the table, our waitress placed a large circular platter holding piles of vegetables that formed a brilliant kaleidoscope: thin slices of red chiles, yellow pineapple, orange carrots, spears of green cucumbers, branches of ngo herb, and earthy shiitake mushrooms, all next to the cooked, cold sliced beef.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a mound of greenish brown vegetables next to the pineapple.
“Green banana,” said Thanh. He placed a mustard green leaf on top of a sleeve of rice paper and topped it with a few vegetables and a few slices of beef. After rolling it up tightly but leaving the ends open, he dipped it in the thick brown sauce and handed it to me.
A rush of fire exploded through my nostrils as I took a bite. The wasabi in the dipping sauce was way stronger than I had anticipated. My eyes teared up, and the whole table giggled at the sight of the Westerner getting a real taste of Vietnam.
Once the burning subsided, I pried open my eyes. “Yes, that was definitely spicy,” I said, and everyone laughed. Our waitress then brought out a plate of deep-fried corn kernels that were crunchy and sweet and tossed with melted butter like movie theater popcorn, but a hundred times better. Next we dove into a whole carp nestled under a bed of pickled cabbage and stewed tomatoes, pausing occasionally to refill our glasses and toast one another. It didn’t matter that most of the conversation was in Vietnamese—I felt right at home.
I SPENT THE NEXT TWO WEEKS in central and South Vietnam with Coreen, and we basically ate our weight in food. In Hoi An’s central market I inhaled bowls of cao lau, a local specialty of chewy, textured noodles in a soy-based broth, while two young Vietnamese girls with toothy smiles showed me how to add vinegar for extra flavor. On the beaches of Nha Trang, I ate spiny lobster with sweet chile sauce served by little old ladies pedaling portable charcoal grills. I wound up with sticky fingers and a full belly after eating crabs in a pool of sugary tamarind sauce in Ho Chi Minh City, where I also slurped down bowls of mi quang and glasses of che in the central market.
But I was excited to see Liam again in Hanoi. We had spent time together before I went on vacation, and I was happy. I had texted him the day before I got back to Hanoi and hadn’t heard back, but I figured he was busy with work. Even though I was soon leaving Vietnam, I felt there was a spark between us, and I’d even told my mother that I’d met someone special.
The Friday night I returned to Hanoi coincided with a monthly event called Friday Night on the Terrace, which was held at the Press Club, a restaurant and lounge frequented by expats. I had dinner with Lucy and some of her friends, then headed to the Press Club to meet Belinda. As the elevator opened up to the bar, I immediately spotted Belinda sitting on a bar stool, sipping champagne and chatting with an older gentleman.
“Your boyfriend is over there,” said Belinda, jerking her head toward Liam.
I spotted him amid the jostling bodies and made my way over. “Hi. How are you? How was Thailand?” I asked, leaning in to kiss his cheek.
He paused for a moment. “Oh, yeah, my vacation was good… yeah…”
“Oh. That’s good, I guess,” I said, confused and feeling uneasy. Why wasn’t he happier to see me?
“Yeah… how was Hanoi?”
“I was actually in the South, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, I think I remember you said something about that…”
We stood in silence, an awkwardness separating us like two opposite poles of a magnet. Why was he being so cold?
“Okay, I’m going to get a drink,” I said. As I turned away, he walked toward a group of people across the room.
I gulped down my champagne and rejoined Belinda. “He wouldn’t talk to me. He completely brushed me off and acted all weird. I don’t get it,” I said, my voice cracking. I had let down my guard and now I was paying for it.
“Just forget him. He looks like a weirdo anyway,” she said.
“But why would he ignore me?”
“Because he’s weird! Because he’s a man, and men are assholes.”
Though I appreciated Belinda’s loyalty, I couldn’t shake how hurt I felt. Was it me? Was it him? How do you go from being so hot to so cold? When my mother called me a few days later to ask about my trip with Coreen, she also asked about Liam.
“I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too upsetting,” I said.
“Why? What happened?”
“Nothing happened. That’s the point. It’s over,” I said.
“I’m sorry. What a jerk.”
“Why can’t I just find someone who likes me?” I said, on the verge of tears.
“Daniel liked you,” said my mother, referring to my first serious boyfriend. She still believed that he was pining away for me, despite the fact that he was now living with a new girlfriend in Philadelphia.
“Mom, that was over seven years ago!”
“Still.”
“Mom, that’s not helping. I’ve always worked hard to achieve what I’ve wanted, but it doesn’t work like that with love. What if I end up alone? Why can’t everything just work out perfectly and I’ll be happily married?”
“Honey, is that what you really want right now? You know that you don’t need to have your entire life figured out just yet. Look at me, I changed careers after fifty and now I’m happier than I ever was as a corporate slave. You’re only twenty-five. Give it time.”
“It seems like everyone else has their lives all sorted out.”
“Lauren, that’s ridiculous and not true. Look, you’re only in Vietnam for two more weeks. There’s no need to let this asshole ruin things. Think about what you’ve learned and the fun you’ve had.”
“Okay,” I muttered.
“Your future will happen when you no longer plan it out in advance. Think about the present. Vietnam’s been special,” she said gently.
She was right, and with the exception of this Liam thing, I was happier than I had been in a long time. I loved my job and co-workers and felt a true kinship in the kitchen. I liked that at La Verticale I didn’t have to crosshatch the shallots or brunoise the chile peppers—rough chopping was fine. I learned how to appreciate taste and flavor and was in an environment that valued those aspects of cooking over technique. I always smiled when Thanh greeted me with, “Hello, my teacher!” or when Yen grabbed my stomach in what I hoped was a sign of affection. I would miss the friendliness of both the Vietnamese people and the expat community, and of course, I loved eating Vietnamese food all day, every day. I liked that I wasn’t always measuring myself against my friends and that I wasn’t defining my worth by my job, social status, or apartment address. It was reassuring that other people here, Didier Corlou among them, not only didn’t think it was weird when I explained I’d chosen Vietnam simply because I’d felt inexplicably drawn to it, but had come themselves for the same reasons.
Before Didier had left for France on vacation, he had asked me, “Did you have a good experience here?”
“Yes,” I replied without hesitation. I had come to the country to be seduced by its food, but I was leaving it having also been seduced by the people behind it—by Didier and everyone at La Verticale, by all the street food vendors who doled out bowls of noodle soup, by Hung and his gleeful enthusiasm for dog meat, and by Lucy and Belinda, who had been both dining companions and friends who had taken to the kitchen for me when all I needed was a good home-cooked meal.
“Good,” he had said. “Because, you know, a stage is not just a culinary experience, it’s also a human experience.”
Under Didier Corlou, I analyzed my own style of cooking and how to incorporate the Asian flavors and ingredients I had so grown to love. Didier’s food combines East and West. The recipes that follow take the same approach, with a nod to the new American school of cooking.
Didier made summer rolls using a single large shrimp wrapped inside a thin slice of mango in a dramatic presentation. But I love the taste of crab, and I was inspired by the flavor combination of California sushi rolls when inventing this dish. Perilla (or shiso, its Japanese version) can be hard to find outside of Asian markets in major cities, but basil leaves are a fine alternative.
SERVES 4 AS AN APPETIZER
½ cup water
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon rice vinegar
¼ teaspoon finely minced Thai chile
2 ounces thin rice noodles
1 avocado
2 large lettuce leaves (either green leaf or romaine is a good option)
8 rice paper roll sheets
8 large perilla leaves (or 16 small leaves)
½ pound lump crabmeat
Place all the ingredients for the sauce in a small serving bowl and mix until well combined.
In a pot of boiling water, cook the rice noodles according to the directions on the package until done. Rinse under cold water and place in a bowl. Slice the avocado in half and remove the pit. Slice lengthwise into ¼-inch-thick strips and remove the slices from the peel. Slice the lettuce leaves into thin strips.
Working on a kitchen towel, moisten a rice paper roll sheet with a splash of water and rub both sides of the rice paper with the water. When pliable (about 30 seconds later), place a perilla leaf on the bottom half of the rice paper sheet. Place 1 ounce of crabmeat on top of the perilla leaves in an even row. Place 1 or 2 slices of avocado next to the crab. Add a small amount of noodles, about 1 ounce, on top of the crab. Place a small amount of lettuce on top of the avocado.
Fold the bottom of the rice paper over all the filling and begin rolling about halfway to the top. When the side with the avocado and noodles is facing upward, fold in the side flaps and then continue rolling until you reach the top. Repeat seven more times with the remaining rice paper sheets. Serve with the dipping sauce.
This is a salad you will want to serve during the late summer months, when tomatoes are at their prime. If you can find them (check your local farmers’ market), use a variety of different-shaped and-colored heirloom tomatoes for a bright and festive salad.
SERVES 4
1 pound tomatoes (heirloom, if possible)
¼ pound watermelon
2 tablespoons chopped basil leaves
2 tablespoons chopped perilla leaves
1 teaspoon chopped mint leaves
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon sherry vinegar
Core the tomatoes and cut into wedges, then place in a large serving bowl. Cut the watermelon into ½-inch chunks, discarding the rind, and add to the bowl. Add all of the chopped herbs to the bowl.
In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients for the dressing. Pour over the tomatoes and mix until well coated and evenly distributed. Serve immediately.
Pho is quite possibly the national dish of Vietnam and a source of culinary contention between the North and the South. Beef pho and chicken pho are the most common types you’ll find in Vietnam, but the warm spices like cinnamon and cardamom found in the beef broth immediately led me to think of duck pho. Instead of buying a whole duck and breaking it down to get the bones and breast meat (reserving the leg meat for another use), I find it easiest to buy a 1-pound package of duck wings from my local Asian supermarket and then purchase a single duck breast separately.
SERVES 4
1 pound duck bones
2 large shallots, cut in half
1 (2-inch) piece ginger, peeled
2 garlic cloves
1 cinnamon stick
2 pieces star anise
1 black cardamom pod, crushed
6 black peppercorns, crushed
10 cups water
Kosher salt (about 1 teaspoon, as desired)
1 duck breast, about 6 ounces
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
12 ounces thin, flat rice noodles
2 scallions, sliced into thin rings
1 large shallot, sliced as thinly as possible
¼ cup cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 to 2 red Thai chiles, cut into thin rings
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Place the duck bones in a roasting pan along with the shallots, ginger, and garlic, and roast until the bones begin to brown, about 40 minutes. Place the bones, shallots, ginger, and garlic in a large stockpot along with the cinnamon, star anise, cardamom pod, and peppercorns, and add the water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 2 hours. Skim off the fat, then strain the stock using a paper towel–lined fine-meshed sieve into a large bowl, discarding the solids. Add the salt (if desired) to the broth and rinse out the pot, then return the broth to the stockpot.
Now that you have your broth, prepare the rest of the soup’s components. Discard the layer of fat on the duck breast. Heat the oil in a skillet over high heat, then add the duck breast. Cook for about 2 minutes on each side. The meat should be just browned on the outside but still rare inside. Slice the meat as thinly as possible.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the rice noodles according to the directions on the package, until al dente. Divide among four bowls and top with the duck meat, scallions, shallot, and cilantro.
Return the broth to a boil. Ladle the broth over the noodles and duck, and garnish with the lime and chile to taste. Serve immediately.