The Art of Vietnamese Cuisine

Vietnamese cuisine reflects the quintessence and richness of thousands of years of cultural heritage. When you think about Vietnamese food, the first image that people often mention is a steamy bowl of pho. However, the Vietnamese culinary culture is incredibly diverse and shaped by an array of influences from other cultures. Vietnamese cuisine centers around the harmony and artistic presentation of fresh seasonal ingredients. It is the brilliant balance of colors, aromas, and flavors. With the right composition of warming and cooling elements, Vietnamese food can also be used as medicine to regain the yin and yang balance in our body. It requires patience and dedication. It is artisanal and it offers an opportunity to bring people with different backgrounds together to celebrate the essence and richness of the Vietnamese heritage. On the map, you will see the letter S. On one side is the mountain and on the other side is the sea. Therefore, the food is very rich. The difference between Vietnamese food is that our food is less oily. It depends on the dish, but most of the time, we have to use very fresh ingredients. Everyone just loves Vietnamese food because Vietnamese food is light and healthy and also has a lot of flavors. It's not too spicy and it's not too sour. It's well-balanced and it's a good combination of everything. So we have a mixture of Cambodian Thai on one side, we have the French influence, and then we have the Chinese influence, and I think that's the best mix. The beauty about Vietnamese cuisine is you can have the same dish with 10 different chefs and it all tastes differently because everybody cooks differently. Even though it's called Gà kho tổ, but it could be 10 different moms have 10 different things. When I was growing up, my mom would ask, what would you like to eat today? I would always go to bún chả ngộ. It's just a taste of childhood, a taste of growing up, a taste of Hanoi, where I'm from, and I like to bring that to America. We want to show that there are so much more delicious, tasteful, flavorful dishes Vietnamese cuisine has to offer. It's very difficult for a young chef, when I started back in 1993, to make a dish where people from Huế or from Hanoi or from Saigon say, wow, that's original. It's very hard. So I learned a lot from my mother, and I have a lot of teaching from other chefs. First, I learned how to make the food originally as much as I can from that region. But as I go older, I want to cook the way that if I would ask my family or my friends to join me in my family, this is how I cook for my family. My holy food is like during the Tet holidays, the important days, I have to keep it, because it's my culture, my origin. Each Vietnamese dish has its own story, its own origin, and it changes over time. Each dish is a medicine that comes from my grandmother's experience. There are chefs from all over the world who have started to show their own way of understanding Vietnamese food. Even if it is a dish that is prepared in the way that their grandparents often cook, or a completely new dish, the beauty of Vietnamese food is that there is no right or wrong way. My wish is that we will combine together, share, and highlight the essence of Vietnamese cuisine. Let's work together to make Vietnamese cuisine stand out in a diverse space, so that it can have a strong impact for a long time in the US, as well as in the world, in its own way.