Is This the FUTURE of Vietnamese Food in America?

Man, this ain't even pho gà anymore. This is vista bú pho ratatouille. Man, ha! Wow. For decades, New York City was considered a Vietnamese food desert. I personally enjoyed the mom-and-pop shops here, but the foodies have always said that Houston, San Jose, OC, and Philly were at least 10 times better at pho and everything else. But in the past three years, there has been a huge push by Vietnamese chefs in NYC to change all that. Do these progressive spots live up to the hype? We find out if modern Vietnamese cuisine is here to stay. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to a very special modern Vietnamese episode of Fun Bros Food Android. In the past five years, I would say in New York City, Vietnamese food maybe went from like a three out of 10 on VietFood to a six out of 10. And one of the coolest things about this whole Vietnamese food boom is that all the restaurants are doing something a little bit different. Some of them are doing their own personal take on Vietnamese dishes. Some of them are doing regional dishes, and some of them are even taking concepts that are popular in Vietnam right now and serving them to people here in America. Which leads us to our very first spot today, M Vietnamese. And they are doing something very interesting here, Andrew. They directly ported a Saturday night out restaurant from Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon to Dumbo, Brooklyn. This is a 2021 modern day direct port from Ho Chi Minh City. Let's go. Pat, what are we looking at? So these are Saigon butter clams. This is something that you must get when you go to Vietnam. So this is like a drinking, going out food. Yes, yes. In Vietnam, you can make this with snails, mussels, any kind of shellfish. So this is one of our signature dishes, ball call. It's like beef bourguignon, B2B style. My parents left Vietnam in the 1970s. This is something that just happened in like last 10 or 15 years. This is congee. Congee is eaten in so many Asian countries. And of course, Vietnam is no exception. We decided to go with sea scallops. We found a really great supplier and we were actually inspired when we went to Maine. We bought some sushi grade sea scallops. My wife doesn't like to eat raw fish too much. So she decided to put in congee and it was just fire. You're trying to bring stuff that's popular into Vietnam today. Yes, yes. This is why young people in Vietnam are eating right now. Aren't you guys, you're looking at round one here at M Vietnamese Bistro. Andrew, Pat was insistent. He told me that this is going to be very similar to food that I would get if I went to Vietnam right now to go watch the Saigon heat and play in the VBL. At the buttered clams, we've got the scallop chow. We've got fried vegan tofu with perilla leaves, which, you know, more commonly associated with Korean food, but then you do eat them as well all over Asia. And one of my favorite dishes of all time, it is the bo cao. This is the Vietnamese beef stew. This one's looking really thick, almost like curry. Saigon clams. Man. Wow. Just how he described it. It's like a buttery, sweet, nuoc mam flavor. Give this a six out of five. You know, you've had clams before, but you haven't had them like this. You gotta get these. Yo, I'm gonna give that unequivocally, guys, a five out of five. Beef stew bo cao. What I really like about this one, it's very, very thick. It has like this hint of lemongrass and ginger. This is delicious, man. And I love the thickness of the bo cao stew. All right, moving on to another very, very authentic dish. We got the scallop congee. Asians love congee. Scallop congee. Yo, Pat, isn't chow like the same word for saying like good morning or hello? It's a different tone, but it's very similar. Good morning is chow bu seng. Eat chow during chow bu seng. Yum. It's really good. Scallops fit perfectly with that, man. Okay, here we have the tofu wrapped in a perilla leaf, dipped in the green sauce. Yo, this is so good. As somebody who eats a lot of Asian food, I thought I had tofu like every single way I possibly could have had it. That's a new way in my spectrum. Lemongrass clams. The clams are amazing here. These are some of the best clams I ever had in my entire life. Yeah, I actually feel like even the broth, you could drink this, I don't know, when you're sick or you're hungover. It's almost like a soup on its own. All right, here we got the coconut mussels. Some of these seafood dishes do kind of cross over a little bit with like Thai dishes because it has like the coconut milk, but there's a few elements that are different, such as the use of ginger-like lemongrass type herb. And let's go. It's kind of sweet. It still has some of that buttery nuoc mam flavor right here. All right, you guys, it is going crazy right now. We have the dry houttuynia right here. You know some influence from the Chiu Chau immigrants that sort of spread across Southeast Asia. I have the pho, and this is like, you could tell the quality of beef. You can see the grain there. You can see the fattiness. It's falling apart. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and give this dry houttuynia a five out of five. This, some of the clam dishes, absolute bangers here at MB Vietnamese. All I can tell you is that any pho that is leaving the green onion piece in there like that, that's when you know it's the real deal. Also, you can kind of see that it is a little bit of fattiness on the top, but that is what I like to see from the pho broth. They have a soft-boiled egg in the dry houttuynia. I'm telling you, to be honest, at least at the point I'm at in 2021, I'd probably take this over any tsukemen I had. If you guys have not tried houttuynia before, you've got to check it out. All right, you guys, we are wrapping up here at MB Vietnamese Bistro. Honestly, the food was amazing. You follow us on Instagram, you will find us coming back here again. We're doing what we call Vietnamese tapas, just to keep it simple. There's a lot of seafood dishes that Vietnamese people would have late night, on a Friday night, Saturday night. This is what you're doing with your boys when you're getting some drinks. Your wife is the main chef here, right? And she came, like, she's like, is from Vietnam. She came here four years ago. This is actually food that we ate on our second date. It was my first time having food like this. It's not something my parents grew up eating, but this is what young people- Right, right, because you're right. It's almost like the evolution of cuisine, but a lot of times your parents, when they immigrate, they left, like, a different Vietnam or a different motherland. Right, that was like 50 years ago. Where do you guys get your inspiration from? Are you guys keeping up with social media? My wife is Vietnamese Vietnamese. So she, all of her Instagram is all in Vietnamese. All of her YouTube follows, they're all in Vietnamese. So she's up to date with all the latest viral trends over there, whether it's food, fashion, whatever. What's the response from the local community been like? Because I would imagine for a lot of people, especially in this local Dungo region, they've never been exposed to anything authentically, authentically Vietnamese. There's some people that have never even, even had Vietnamese before. Hey, well, best of luck, Pat. I think you got a great product. You got a great team here. Check it out. On to the next spot. Our next concept for Modern Vietnamese 2021 in New York City is Van Dai. Now Van Dai, Andrew, is really, really interesting. They have a short rib grilled cheese sandwich. Here we have the Banh Xeo. Okay, and this is not in the traditional half moon Banh Xeo. This is like almost individual little taco shell size. Here's the interesting thing about Van Dai. Yes, the chefs are Asian. One of them's Vietnamese, one of them's Chinese. You know, Michelin recognized, maybe not Michelin star, but you know, they're fancy chefs. So they're going to be tying in a lot of like French and high-end cuisine and techniques into their food. Oftentimes this will have pork in it, but this one just has mung beans. So this is a vegetarian. What do you think? This dipping sauce is actually really spicy. I would say I liked it. This is a take on one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes, Banh Xeo. It's pretty good, guys. I'm going to go ahead and give the Banh Xeo a five out of five. That Banh Xeo was very silky, very milky, had a lot of coconut flavor. They did a good job, man. You know what, man? I'm going to become the cameraman. I need Dan Chang from behind the camera to come try this. What do you think? At a price point of $13 for like a quarter of a sandwich, I would say you could skip this one. Last but not least, Andrew, what are we looking here at Van Da? David, we're looking at a tumeric dill branzino fish. Now this is their version of, excuse my pronunciation, the cha ca tang long. This is a tumeric dill fish dish you love. I love this. I love this dish, but a lot of people get it wrong. Cha ca with branzino. Comparing it to other versions of this dish I've had that were definitely cheaper, I got to say the quality here is killing it. I've had a lot of versions of cha ca in LA that I love for like $13. This one's about 26. Honestly, I could see it being worth it. I'll tell you this, for the dishes that we had today, and you know, of course we know it's a little pricey, but the ones I would come back and get again are the bun seo and the branzino fish, for sure. I really like this bun seo. I really like this branzino cha ca. All right, guys, our next modern Vietnamese spot is Hanoi House over in the East Village. David, this spot's pretty interesting because this is what you get when you have like people from the hospitality groups that have also done kind of nightlife party restaurants, and then now they're doing a more authentic Asian concept. You're talking about like Hakkasam, Budokan, Nobu, but those are Japanese and Chinese concepts, and it's sort of those people from that world coming and doing a Vietnamese concept. Immediately, I think the thing that you notice is the presence, obviously, of the Chinese donut, the yaotiu. And then you have bone marrow here. You're gonna scoop the bone marrow into the broth to make it thick. Here you have your bo lat lat, which is going to be your beetle leaf wrapped beef, but this is made with lamb. And then you have your nem nuong. Usually looks a lot more pink, but this kind of looks more of the color of Spam, so I'm interested to try this. David, let's go into the pho. Hanoi-style pho with the bone marrow and Chinese donut. You know what I noticed immediately, Andrew, is that there's less flavors, but those flavors hit harder. One thing I noticed about this northern pho is that there's less ginger in it, and I actually think that might be driven by the fact that most of the people who eat here are not Asian because I feel like this broth, to me, it tastes almost like a French beef broth. All right, so coming in at $25, I am not going to lie, that is pretty expensive for pho, but the beef quality is really good. It comes with the Chinese donut, and it comes with the bone marrow. If you can shell it out, it's something that I would recommend you try. All right, so this is actually a classic Vietnamese dish, bo lat lat. I might be saying it wrong, sorry, guys. And it's usually made with beef or pork wrapped in beetle leaf with some vermicelli noodles, and obviously your garnish is here, but here they're doing it with lamb. Bo lat lat. Oh, that's interesting with the lamb, wow. I think it's really interesting having it be made out of lamb because in New York, when you eat lamb, you often associate that with Mediterranean or Middle Eastern food, so it kind of does feel like a fusion. I know that maybe they do use lamb in Vietnam, but I know that lamb is not a popular meat to use in Vietnam, so this might be more of the fusion side. Another thing they're really known for here is their spring rolls. I don't know if this is a nem nuong or not. I know that this is not just due to the dipping sauce, so it's almost a hybrid. The food here is so difficult to describe because I know that the basis is authentic, the original chef, you know, was from the OC, but they've also done a few twists and turns here, not only it being Hanoi, but it being owned by non-Asians, primarily for non-Asians. I think really here, what they're trying to do is just show you a different type of Vietnamese food that you're not used to having. And all in all, Hanoi House is good. It is on the higher end of the price, of course, but man, quality-wise, it's up there. All right, you guys, next up we're at Bo Cafe, which is headed by a French chef from France, from Paris, but he's always been cooking Vietnamese food. I mean, you've got a bao eggs benedict with a papaya salad on the side, and then you've got a bao burger with taro fries, and then of course you've got a chicken pho that almost resembles a French chicken noodle soup, but with zucchini noodles. Here you have a egg quiche banh mi. David, this is like modern French cafe food mixed with Vietnamese and some other Southeast Asian elements, but it's all just wrapped up in like the most fashionable part of town. As you can see, everybody here looks like they spent at least 40 minutes thinking about their outfit today. I think the people wanna know how this tastes because what am I looking at? I'm gonna go with the bao eggs benedict with the salmon here. Obviously, eggs benedict is probably called a benedictia. Bao's egg benedict. Zucchini noodles, chicken pho. Andrew, I like what Pierre is doing here. Yo, so this was actually a really good chicken stew, but it did not taste like pho at all. Aside from that, if I just took it out of that context, I did enjoy it. Yo, this is something I really love, Andrew. This is a bao burger. I just had the bao's egg benedict, and then I've got these taro fries right here. This is good. This is a five out of five. Meatless quiche banh mi. I'm gonna dip it into a little sauce here. Probably some type of sriracha mayo. Not very Vietnamese tasting, but I like it. I would say the food here was like 60% French, 40% Vietnamese. This feels like a really cool spot in Paris. You know, for me, this might sound crazy, Andrew, I enjoyed this more than Hanoi House. I eat a ton of authentic Vietnamese food that's cheap. Hanoi House, by all means, is good, but it's authentic Vietnamese food with a slight twist that's expensive. This is just straight Parisian fusion Viet. And this ain't even pho gai anymore. This is vis-de-bouf ratatouille. Good, but check your expectations at the door. Andrew, you pointed out that behind us, there was a large family of French-speaking Viets, most likely from Paris. Hey, I'll tell you this. If you're a tourist and you don't wanna leave Soho, but you want some Southeast Asian Vietnamese vibes, this is the spot. After touring all the new spots, I think it's pretty fair to say that NYC elevated Vietnamese might become its own genre. I think that other cities might still be the best at the down-home bar and grill style that may or may not be your preference. But if you love elevated settings with Michelin star trained chefs, then NYC might be becoming the number one spot in America. And I think with the way the global food trends are going, it definitely has staying power.