Written by Sonia Gregor and Martin Zorrilla
During our stay in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam we started writing restaurant reviews for Ơi Magazine . Our first assignment took us to a Vietnamese restaurant called The Fish Sauce. Being fresh off the boat, we had some misgivings about the eponymous fermented fish liquid, so we approached with caution. Instead, we were delighted to discover a restaurant dedicated to traditional dishes and local ingredients, in the style of farm-to-table restaurants in the US. And the delicious nutty fish sauce was just the first in a long list of artisanal fermented ingredients on their menu.
Of course, Ho Chi Minh is a city obsessed with good food, much of it eaten on plastic stools by the side of the road. Most of these delicious meals cost under $2, and come with heaps of fresh herbs. As a rooftop restaurant in the center of town, The Fish Sauce is a fine dining spot catering to a different clientele. It’s somewhere you might take a date or a business associate, which puts it into competition with several restaurants serving international cuisine. French, Spanish, and Brooklynian food are all popular here. But it’s nice to see that Vietnam, like Peru, has restaurants that are elevating local cuisine to the level of fine dining. You can read our full review here, below are some of our takeaways from the assignment.
Despite serving up truly tasty food with homemade pickles, sauces, and organic ingredients, the menu was surprisingly humble. In sharp contrast to the farm-to-table restaurants in New York, the Fish Sauce did not trumpet their house-made items or the careful sourcing of their ingredients. When asked, our server explained that their fish sauce comes from Phu Quoc island, where it is fermented in wooden barrels. Most Vietnamese people would not need to be told that Phu Quoc fish sauce is widely considered the best in Vietnam. Instead it seems that local diners are mainly concerned with food safety. To that end, the menu assures diners that the vegetables are organic, and that the meat is held to high safety standards. Their pricing was also modest compared with other fine dining spots in the city. Our favorite main dish, braised howling fish, cost VND75,000 or $3.40; not bad even by Ho Chi Minh City standards.
The Fish Sauce also struck a contrast with the local competition by emphasizing ingredients not traditionally considered for full-service restaurants. In Vietnam, thinly sliced banana flower can be found in street stalls selling noodle bowls, but not in sit-down establishments. And if you are a foreigner at a street-side eatery, servers may remove the banana flowers from your hot-pot ingredients, assuming you don’t want it. But the salads we ate at The Fish Sauce proudly featured paper-thin slices of banana flower. Crunchy like celery or endive, they soak up dressing and offer the perfect backdrop to toppings like roasted meat and peanuts.
Similarly chayote is an ingredient little known even to outsiders who pride themselves on exploring Vietnamese cuisine. The stout vegetable from the squash family is typical of soups in rural Vietnam. Chayote is Mesoamerican in origin, but has been adopted into a range of cuisines from Italian to Indian. Despite its global reach, it enjoys little recognition. It can be overcooked and mushy, but at The Fish Sauce we had a delicious clear soup with thick ribbons of chayote that were reminiscent of noodles. Topping it off were bits of pork and green tea buds – the latter being the restaurant’s own twist on a traditional soup.
In the US, the local food movement has been critiqued for being expensive, putting it out of reach for many people. The flip side of this is that in some countries elite dining options are almost all foreign cuisine. This can perpetuate the social and class stigmas associated with certain dishes and ingredients. Quinoa used to be considered the food of rural farmers who couldn’t afford any better. And we have yet to see an Ecuadorian restaurant serve Camote, sweet potato, despite its popularity among rural people. But the growing interest in local food has put the spotlight on these little-known yet fascinating ingredients. During our travels we saw several restaurants that echo The Fish Sauce’s approach, with chefs in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru venerating humble ingredients and breaking down cultural barriers in fine dining.