Scholarly Works

Christopher, Annear, and Jack Harris. “Cooking up the Culinary Nation or Savoring Its Regions? Teaching Food Studies in Vietnam.” The Asianetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts, Vol 25, Iss 1, Pp 115-148 (2018), no. 1, 2018, p. 115.

Harris and Christopher explore the difficulty of establishing a national Vietnamese cuisine amongst a complex history of foreign occupancy and influence. The text sources several Vietnamese cookbooks to defend that Vietnamese cooks exhibit an “absorptive power” to adapt foreign recipes in a uniquely Vietnamese manner.

 

Nyman, Jopi. “Fancy some Cobra? Exploring Vietnamese Cuisine in Contemporary Culinary Travelogues.” Journeys, no. 1, 2003, p. 84.

Nyman asserts that the use of practices such as snake-eating in Western narratives is a problematic form of Othering in which one, knowingly or unknowingly, furthers a divide between East and West. The author goes on to display that both indulgence in and abstinence from seemingly savage culinary performances hold their own unique consequences of separation.

 

Peters, E. “Defusing Phở: Soup Stories and Ethnic Erasures, 1919-2009.” Contemporary French and FrancoPhở ne Studies, no. 2, 2010, p. 159.

Peters argues that the history of phở, a traditional Vietnamese soup of popularity, has been mangled under a recent French context that exercises little regard for the dish’s true origin. The article frames this erasure of phở background as a blatant disregard to the spirit of the soup and to the ingenuity of the Vietnamese people by which the soup owes its creation.

 

Popular Works

Morris, Michael. “When American Soldiers Met Vietnamese Cuisine.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/opinion/when-american-soldiers-met-vietnamese-cuisine.html.

Morris recounts his time as an American soldier in the Vietnam War. The author gives vivid descriptions of his personal experience with, or absence thereof, Vietnamese cuisine and of life in Vietnam further than the streets of popular guided tours.

 

Sheraton, Mimi. “Searching for Hanoi’s Ultimate Phở .” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Mar. 2010, www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/searching-for-hanois-ultimate-Phở -7419146/.

Mimi Sheraton, author of the article, embarks with Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic orchestra on a journey to find the greatest phở Hanoi has to offer. On their adventure, the two learn much of what constitutes an authentic soup from experience and from phở connoisseur and esteemed chef, Didier Corlou.

 

Uong, An. “When the Food You Rejected as a Kid Becomes Trendy.” Catapult, Catapult, 4 Jan. 2018, https://catapult.co/stories/when-the-food-you-rejected-as-a-kid-becomes-trendy.

Author An Uong opens on her struggle with the acceptance of her culture in an American context. As a dish Uong finds so embarrassing in the past, a tie to her un-Americanness, becomes popular amongst Western culture, she narrates the difficulty of finding pride in her background as an Asian-American.

 

Cookbooks/Food Blogs

Nguyen, Chi. Cooking the Vietnamese Way, Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks. Minneapolis : Lerner Publications, 1985.

This cookbook from 1985 labels many dishes from broad Asian origin under that of Vietnamese cuisine. An interesting take on cooking the ‘Vietnamese way’ obviously caters to a western audience.

 

Vu, Bryan Huy. “Bánh Cam Recipe (Vietnamese Sesame Balls).” HungryHuy.com, 21 Feb. 2013, www.hungryhuy.com/banh-cam-banh-ran-recipe-vietnamese-fried-sesame-balls/.

Bryan Huy Vu is a food blogger, photographer, and first-generation American the catalogues his recipes on his website www.hungryhuy.com. He credits his mother’s discerning palette for the quality and substance of his recipes as he blogs of both Vietnamese cuisine and that of cultures around the world. In this post, Huy teaches how to make Bánh Cam, Vietnamese sesame balls, while telling of their origin and significance.

 

Television Program

“Hanoi.” Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, written by Anthony Bourdain, created by Zero Point Zero Production Inc., CNN, 25 September 2016.

In this episode of Bourdain’s television show, Parts Unknown, he sets down with the 44th U.S. President Barack Obama over a dish of Bun Cha in Vietnam’s capital city. The two discuss their travels and share personal stories.