Blog
29.09.2009
Fun in the sun, homegrown food in Havana and other memories from Bánhmì11′s holiday to the jewel of the Caribbean.
The sails are up, raised proudly toward the vertical midday sun. In the cool breeze, they flutter like red and orange butterflies and our catamaran glides on the turquoise blue sea, powerful and yet graceful like a dancer leaping on air and touching the ground for only brief moments. On one side we see miles of glittering white sands, dry palm thatched beach umbrellas and red brick roofs. Here and there are groups of people, small and interspersed like miniature figurines in a toy box, ready to be picked up and played with by the chubby hands of children looking for amusement. On the other side, stretching toward the horizon, beyond the curve of the earth, is the sea, the serene, sparkling, blue and infinite sea. At the back steering the catamaran is our captain Rudolpho, singing old Spanish ballads and intermittently yelling “ca map”, God knows where this half Cuban, half Russian man picked up this Vietnamese word for shark, which gets us every time looking at each other bewildered, and then bursting out laughing. Life here, for a moment, really seems like a beach.
Cocooned within the realms on the resorts, first in Varadero and then on Cayo Santa Maria, our days took on a happy routine, full of physical activities and magical moments. We would get up at seven and head straight to the sea for a morning swim. The beach is almost always empty at this time and the sun is just rising, sparing us of the scorching heat of the rest of the day. The morning sea is spectacular – the sand is smooth, the waves are gentle, the seabed is sloped and shallow, the water is warm, not too salty, and underneath the clear surface, small silver fish swim at our feet, apparently undisturbed and perhaps even entertained by splashing humans. After swimming, we would snorkel around the nearby reef, walk along the beach, take salsa lessons on the terrace, go along with aquagym in the pool (Cuban style, which means a lot of touching, massaging and even squeezing other people’s nose), or simply lazy around on a beach chair with a book.
Sometimes we would break our routine for something more interesting, like going scuba diving from the Las Brujas marina. Our diving instructor was very charming, in that Latin way which means that he is on autopilot for flirting when in front of girls. We had barely sat down on the bus when he announced “I am going to marry one of you three…” and with a spontaneous decisiveness, he pointed at the the one of the us who sat closest to him and concluded with utmost conviction “You!”. We just bursted out laughing, which was probably a good thing because we were quite nervous. It rained the night before and the sky was all low gray clouds. Our boat looked like a rustic fisherman’s operation, with the exception of two rows of oxygen tanks along the sides. By the time we arrived near the coral and anchored, the boat was rocking violently amidst the heavy winds and strong waves. As we put our wet suits on, people started to throw up and were seasick even underwater. We were not in the calm Caribbean waters of Varadero but the mighty Atlantic ocean around Santa Maria. The seabed was shallow but visibility was poor. I held on tight to the hand of my partner, thirty-two year old IT engineer Alberto from Barcelona, whom we had only met a few moments ago. On land he was a complete stranger to me, but under water I held on to him as if my life depended on it. Without the sun, the corals looked not like the colorful underwater world of Ariel the mermaid, but a rugged prairie of yellow-green, willowy high grass. But the fish were very pretty; we saw big purple fish, small silver and yellow fish, octopus and even baby barracudas, long and slim like a knife. The flora and fauna could have been more interesting, but we were content with how well we did underwater, enduring two immersions of forty-five minutes each, and some of us emerging with still a quarter tank of oxygen left. No mean feat for three beginner uncertified divers in the Atlantic currents.
Now one can not travel without experiencing the food. In the resorts, food was unimaginative but abundant and we stuffed ourselves full three times a day. There was always a huge buffet in the main restaurant with everything you expect of a fancy cafeteria. And in addition there were at least three more sit-down restaurants, from romantic seafood criollo by the beach to steakhouse with air conditioning and white table cloths, and then there was the snack bar, the pool bar, the pizzeria, the ice cream parlor and the beer garden, all of which are dangerously enough included in the stay.
Back in Havana, we realized Cuba was the first place we travelled to where we wished we brought snacks along, more than when we were on road trip to Tibet or on safari in Kenya without refrigeration for weeks. Strolling the street of San Rafael near the Capitolio, we found out that the longest queues were not for the best restaurants, but the ration shops where people lined up with their tickets and stamps for the daily bread. There were oranges peeled with a peculiar machine, hot pizza being sold through the bars of a living room window, and pound cake with a top layer of creme caramel by the sidewalk, and soft ice being sold to Cuban children at 3 pesos monedad nacional but ten times more expensive at 1 pesos convertibles to foreigners.
We stayed at one of Bánhmì11′s friends’ parents’ house at the enviable address of Fifth Avenue and 72nd Street, in the enviable area of Miramar, with a view to the sea and a private guard around the clock. But even in this stately residence, her mother grows their own vegetables and fruits, because in Cuba, money does not cure the shortages and scarcity of basic food stuffs. There was coconut, papaya, mango and orange trees in the garden. When we cooked squash and spinach, she went out to pick them as the water was boiling. When we steamed lobster, we went out searching for bushes of lemongrass and lime. Every week they travelled outside of Havana, all the way to the Matanzas countryside to local farms to buy chicken, eggs and milk, which we pasteurized at home by boiling and skimming out the cream. The rice we ate was carried in hand luggage from Mexico and there were three American sized fridges in the house, where everything from meat, mushrooms, to tomatoes and mangoes were frozen and stored for gradual consumption.
We ate with a guilty conscience, that perhaps this sumptuous meal was depleting the subsistent garden, that we did not know how long all this food had been saved up for us, that other people were making long trips in the heat so that we could have a smoothie in the morning. But although guilt may have crossed our minds, our stomachs were so satisfied and our hearts truly happy. Everything tasted so good, so fresh, so fragrant; the way organically grown, local, real, just-picked-from-the-earth food is supposed to taste, the way we remembered food tasted like when we grew up in Vietnam before pesticides and growth hormones became so available. We cooked simple dishes, fish soup with tomatoes and tamarind, minced pork sauteed with green onions, and they were more flavorful than the elaborate five-course meals we sometimes ate at home. Bananas were sweet from ripening on the tree and papayas were huge, with a layer of moss outside their skin but firm and fresh on the inside. We still had an appetite in the hot climate and we loved everything we ate, savoring each bite, enjoying each spoonful, not minding the preparing, cooking, dish washing (with a disintegrated sponge) cycle that repeated every few hours, from breakfast to dinner.
Outside of the home and when rationing is not a problem, Cubans showed how they really knew how to cook. Using a mix of very poor Spanish and English, we asked the staff at two hotels nearby for a good paladar, which is a private restaurant in a private residence, as opposed to the state-run restaurants and resorts we ate at for the most part of our trip. We were unanimously recommended to La Fontana, a place only a few blocks down where we lived. London has the underground restaurant scene, and Havana has the paladar scene, both acts of turning the mainstream food on its head and bringing it back into the private home. On the menu was ropa vieja made from lamb, which we did not have the courage to try but went instead for the tomatoes stuffed with crab and avocado, the fillet mignon special and the grilled red snapper special. The food was imaginative, but showing real reverence for the ingredients – from the crisp tomatoes to the ripe and melting avocado to the tender beef- exposing their flavors and leaving their tastes lingering in our mouths long after we have eaten.
Perhaps more importantly, all the staff was always smiling. The waiter was attentive without being intrusive. The sommelier was knowledgeable without showing off. The band approached our table and asked to play music, which meant that we should tip, without being hustling. And as the drummer played the favorite tune of our trip, “Chan chan”, on his bongo, his head was turned around to gaze at Shakira’s bedroom eyes on the screen, which made us smile too. Cuban men, they make no pretense for checking us out by the pool, whistling to us from their truck, crying out from the divider of the road for us to come and join them for beer, and blowing kisses everywhere. But we could laugh it off as they were not vulgar, not weird, just really friendly, really fun. No wonder the women here walk with their head tall, their clothes tight, their heels high and their behind shaking from side to side like they are dancing on a catwalk.
People speak about Cuba and the embargo in the same breath, with a tone of resentment, and pity. But rather selfishly, somehow we saw Cuba’s reluctance to be swept along the wind of change, the chase for prosperity, the race for global competitiveness in some aspects as a blessing for the island. Life here is certainly not glitzy, but the arts blossom. We saw amazing flamenco and salsa and Cuban son, where the dancers were graceful and daring like acrobats, sensual and colorful like carnival paraders. We heard music everywhere, even in the non-tourist quarters of Havana Vieja, where children beat plastic bottles against carton boxes to make the most amazing tunes. We rummaged the arts market and saw an impressive collection on Goya-like bursts of color in oil on canvas, somber black and white portraits of Che and contemporary images of Havana superimposed onto each other into collages. Life here is certainly not full of surpluses, but people are ingenuous with what they have. Plastic bags are washed and dried for reuse, water bottles are never thrown away and used as containers for everything, a plastic colander replaces bin liners and a plate works as cling film to cover food, trash bags are teared up to use in place of tape and sometimes when you really need it, even… condom rings substitute for rubber bands.
The supermarket shelves are empty but people have access to good healthcare. They are not obese, not diabetic and learned to dance, to swim before they could walk. The television has three or four channels of old documentary films but at night people gather around the Malecon, the 8-kilometer long promenade along the sea, watching the sunset, basking in the fresh breeze. Visiting the small village of Cojimar outside of Havana, tracing the footsteps of Hemingway for the thirty years he lived in Cuba, we imagined life here has not changed very much since he left.
Siting in darkness in the white wedding gazebo by the beach, looking up to the starry sky and half moon, listening to nothing but the sound of the waves, we felt like time stopped. We love Cuba because for the ten days that we were there, it turned a bunch of internet-addicts into active people who did not miss facebook, emails, text messaging or even phone calls. It taught us the simple pleasures of moving our hips and legs like we actually can hear a rhyme in our heads, and enjoying the constant companionship of each other without rescheduling to meet up for months. It taught us that t it was okay to smile to strangers who blow kisses at you from a truck, to get up on stage and dance along in the lime light, to breathe underwater while you are throwing up on your regulator. It taught us that it was possible to look great without having ever heard of any designer brand, to make exquisite food from simple ingredients, to listen to thoughts in our heads instead of always finding distractions, to find joy in introspection.
Cuba is easy to love, because we had a choice, to like it and return or hate it and leave. If given a choice between the makeshift plastic and carton jukebox and a computer game, between the street pizza through the window bars and the supermarket frozen meal, between slow moving serenity and the hectic but no-queues life, we can not tell which path Cuba would choose. One thing we do know, however, is that instead of feeling sad for the Cuban people, the way we feel many times traveling through the developing world, we feel envious of this gorgeous, dignified, smiling, and passionate people.
They say Cuba awaits imminent change, that you should go while the legacy is still intact, the way you should visit Tibet before the railroad came or Antarctica before the polar caps melt or South Pacific islands before they submerge. To us, Cuba did seem fragile, but only in that humorous way that a perfect day at the beach may be wrecked by the rain, a perfect meal may be ruined by biting mosquitoes, a perfect mojitos may be thwarted without the yerba buena. Sometimes somethings are too good to hide in memories…and that’s why we will keep coming back for more. Viva Cuba y Hasta Luego!
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16.09.2009
Last minute thoughts prior to take-off
We are on the plane now, heading first to La Habana, Varadero and then wherever else reading Lonely Planet on the plane may inspire us to do. Having planned this trip before we started making bánh mì, we passed our friends the baton to pick up and run with Bánhmì11 for a couple of weeks. When we started out, we thought it was going to be a solitary exercise. We had had it in our heads for so long that we forgot other people might be thinking the same way. But as Bánhmì11 has grown, it has taken a life of its own, drawing in people with a magnetic pull that exceed the sum of our personal charisma.
People come to Bánhmì11 and make a contribution in different ways. Some come on Wednesdays to help with the initial preparation of the meat and pate. Some come on Fridays to help with cooking in the evening and stay over to Saturday mornings to help us finish up. Some come to the stall to take pictures for the photoblog. Some help us with concept for the website and photo shoots. Everyone generously give their time, thoughts and creativity. Bánhmì11 has somehow become a voice, a quiet nudging to move beyond preparing for the next big thing in life to doing the small things that matter now, holding on to each other even when we may be stumbling every step of the way. We met a friend of friends on the train to a wedding in Wales this weekend and we started talking about bring weekly specials to Bánhmì11. We met up last night at Viet Grill for a special treat of off-menu dining and discussed a collaboration for a photo shoot, with a professional model/ actor whom we have only met twice. Almost strangers as we may be to each other, our stories were similar. Bánhmì11 envelops our conversations and gets under our skin even in our sleep. Every post we write, every photo we take, everyone debate we have over the future of Bánhmì11, is a collaborative act of self-expression, of wanting to explode the boundaries. Perhaps it is about challenging the notion of choosing between a career that makes money and one that makes a difference, where we have made a compromise but our friends are about calling out the out-dated stereotypes about a country and a people, or about pacifying an unsatiated appetite for good food and good company.
As we leave our friends the weight of keeping Bánhmì11 alive and running for the next two weeks, we are not unaware of the joys it brings and the shadows it casts on their lives. There will be times when they juggle to finish what they do at work and what they do for Bánhmì11, when they struggle to do more on less sleep, when they risk our friendship over an idea, when their hands and feet are tired and they must not sit down because then the fatigue really hits them. And hopefully, there will also be times when they smile over a problem solved, when they sigh a sigh of relief over the food that taste as it should, when they bubble with excitement over the faces that they recognize.
At the wedding this weekend, the mother of the bride made a speech that brought tears to our eyes. She asked the in-laws to take care of her daughter because she does not live in the UK, to embrace her with her flaws, to love her as part of the family. Now that we leave Bánhmì11 in the trusty hands of our friends this week, we ask you to give them the same support and guidance you have given us. Maybe they will make mistakes that we can all learn from. Maybe they will make improvements that change the direction we move in. As always though, enjoy Bánhmì11 for what it is and we will be thinking of you all, with lots of love from Cuba!
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11.09.2009
A story of the dish that travelled outside its terroir and gained the taste for another place.
One day Caitlin, will you be cooking this too?
In her first episode of “The French Chef” in 1963, Julia Child made boeuf bourguignon. Wonder if she knew that half way around the world, in a country whose headlines probably shared much airtime with her cooking show in those years, there were people who did not only replicate the dish, but made an adventure out of it and created bò sôt’vang. Bò sô’t vang is what Vietnam did with boeuf bourguignon, in a similar way that Vietnam took the baguette and turned it into bánh mì. Vietnam took out the clear, immediately pleasing olive oil, thyme, parsley, and put in subtle, complex, slow-cooking cinnamon, cardamom, star anise and annatto seeds. Bò sôt’vang is the dish that left Burgundy’s blue sky and rolling landscapes of vineyards to come to Indochina’s fiercely flowing red rivers, monsoon rains of the South and wet and windy winters of the North.
Like Julia Child, Vietnam adored French food. It absorbed French influences many years before Americans came to love French food. But Vietnamese cuisine did not lose itself in French food, did not worship and did not fuse. It humbly took note, was somewhat seduced, but ultimately remained indifferent. It doesn’t evolve into a world where chefs are celebrities and cooking shows are primetime television. It doesn’t label “classically trained” chefs as those who reduce sauces, cook root vegetables sous-vide, pan sear fish and make perfect soufflé. But it remains a culinary experience of the people, who learn cooking at home, with basic equipments and everyday ingredients.
The way bò sô’t vang came about, we always imagined, was when a Vietnamese woman tasted boeuf bourguignon and remembered how it tasted and how it smelled. She didn’t have recipes and specialist supermarkets. She guessed how it must have been cooked and used ingredients whose flavors she could imagine. She even substituted red wine with vine leaves. She made it for the family to enjoy and later on she invited guests to taste. From this point, like with all other dishes in the Vietnamese repertoire, bò sô’t vang was passed on from mother to daughter, from family to family. In the absence of cookbooks, cooking shows, food critiques and ranked restaurants, the dish is preserved only by the power of word-of-mouth and the memory of the palate.
That was still the way we learned bò sôt’vang a few years ago in Woodside. We would drive our grocery to the most reluctant culinarily talented couple we knew and crashed their dinner, pretending to contribute with whatever we had picked up that afternoon. We love the dish because like a good companion, it was slow to simmer but quick to comfort. When it’s getting cold outside and we are feeling weary inside, our most acute need is perhaps the very basic one, to be fed spoonfuls of a warm, sweet, and spiced stew.
These days we still have an appetite for bò sô’t vang, which is why we have started making it at Bánhmì11. But we are learning that apart from a good appetite, more experimenting and better technique is needed. Last week the soup was so overwhelmingly sweet from bone marrow stock that you could pour it over noodles and make pho sô’t vang. Corn flour made the soup opaque and cancelled out the vibrant colors of tomatoes. And while coriander added a nice garnish, it only looked good in the beginning but bemused the taste.
So…while we measure our experience with bò sô’t vang in years, it has been around for decades. It has travelled far and long through space and time. If a dish can do that, how can we not love it and follow it?
Photo Credits: Boni Lin
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03.09.2009
Precious moments in the company of good people, under the influence of too much food, drink, and juvenile behavior.
Sometimes, life is a party! On Sunday Bánhmì11 had a late summer party, bún cha and karaoke, for family and friends. Recently it had been all work and no play so in the spirit of the bank holiday weekend, we decided to chill and have some fun. Everywhere in the city seemed empty. It’s as if among London’s denizens, the bad had all gone to southern France to catch the last parties of the season, the good had caravanned to visit family in Wales, and the ugly were busy poking holes in paper bags to prepare for the Notting Hill carnival.
The only people left out-and-about in town were vacation-less stall-holders like us (no need to pity though, we are counting down to mid-September’s awesome adventures…viva la Cuba!). Saturday was quiet at Broadway and business was slow, making time for some pleasant conversations with our regulars. Who knew Ca Phe VN was a place crammed with media folks and rising starlettes on stilettos?
As for the party, they came, they ate, they sang…and they went home without their purse! We have said before, what happens at Bánhmì11 stays at Bánhmì11. Well, in some cases, I suppose they just end up on the website, so virtually…we are still happily mingling in Bánhmì11 land.
8am: No use pretending you are Holly Golightly with satin eye mask and frilly ear plugs sleeping in after your breakfast at Tiffany’s. When it’s bright outside, it’s time to get up and clean the house.
10am: I love my girlfriends! They sliced and diced a whole lot of kohlrabi (and they know exactly what this is too) and carrot into cute little flowers to make pickles. If I were a boy, I would be on my knees popping the question while I still have the chance.
12pm: One of us went off to pick up cupcakes from Bea’s of Bloomsbury, who was selling them that weekend to buy mosquito nets and help fight malaria. We have always been faithful to simple and shell-shaped madeleines (never mentioning the Proustian “vicissitudes of life”) and forgot about cupcakes when that chapter of SATC and Magnolia Bakery closed yester-year. But when Bea makes such wonderful looking food for such a wonderful cause, we have to go for both the cake and the icing.
1pm: The first floor was looking like a hurricane had passed by but rescue crew arrived from the shores of Isles of Dogs. This dynamic duo cleaned up the garden like with a magic wand and rearranged the kitchen with table cloth and all. Watch out for that low-hanging light, it kills brain cells!
3pm: When it comes to entertaining the guests, one should leave it to the professionals. This is why we resorted to our secrete weapon and called on the powers of our family friend, cô Sinh, who brought bánh cuô’n. She had been up since 4am to make these paper-thin Vietnamese rice pancakes filled with mince pork and black mushroom. When you top them with fried shallots and fish sauce, add a few sprigs of mint and coriander, they intrigue your palate with a pleasant rush of flavors. This stuff is so good we could eat kilos of it all day.
4pm: It’s so nice when you have well-behaving and hard-working guests, they do all the work and you can actually attend the party. While everyone is enjoying themselves, the Daydreamer single-handledly grilled all the skewers to charcoal perfection. In between her smokes, Panda fussed around with endearing attention.
5pm: Finally karaoke can begin and everyone is a little bit shy, or perhaps food comatose, so let’s begin with a song that no one understands. We would tell you what it was but we forgot now…let’s just say it was like Luis Miguel but better.
6pm: When Björk is in the room, everyone goes quiet, pressing their ears for those whispering words. That’s how good Panda sings. This girl is born a performer and she makes Ha Tran look like an imitator.
8pm: Let’s see how many ridiculous YouTube videos we can dance to, starting with YMCA, La Bamba, Las Ketchup, Menaito and of course, Macarena. When you get dizzy, follow the Romanian.
9pm: Cultural exchange is all about exploiting stereotypes so after the talk about Argentine steaks, we begged for a tango lesson. Remember to drag your toes, not lift, and shift your weight onto one foot. Resist the man but follow him, step back when he goes forward and move forward when he backs up. If only seduction could be so clearly laid out in so few steps!
10pm: When being fashionably late is a statement, eight hours late to a party must make you a true diva. Nonetheless Mr. High-Frequency-Trader graced us with his presence and even brought along his fabulous friend signorina Si. Oh how we adored everything about her. Très chic in leopard print and quickly très tipsy after a few rounds of rosé. Brownie points for the gentleman of finance and lady of fashion combination, that is certainly very in vogue.
11pm: Drinking games are evil and so are the people who stay sober. Zero, zero, seven…boom! I shot you, you raised your hands, and you must drink. Joy, joy, oh shameful joy in taking pleasure in the suffering of others. Oh well, that is if you call sipping Moët et Chandon suffering.
3am: Tenacity is a virtue, often underappreciated in the context of parties. But you know those people who came first and stayed last, they will be on top of our guest list next time. Bruce Lee, we are glad that just like in uni, we can still count on you for a good time.
So as quickly as summer came in a couple of heat waves, it seems to have left us with nothing but the gusty winds of autumn. Last Saturday we had the best day, foodwise, with an improved recipe to make xá xíu and pate. This Saturday, we are launching a new bánh mì, very different from what’s currently on the menu. The party is over but as always, making bánh mì in London is a cakewalk right over some crazy line between conspicuously happy and passionately maniac. Tough life!
Photo Credits: Phuong N. Nguyen and Vu A. Tran
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25.08.2009
To answer, the only way is to look into yourself and be yourself.
Life with Bánhmì11 is truly like living with a young child, where things unfold with greater rapidity, emotions run wild with greater intensity and people come together with greater frequency. We often feel like we are diving underwater. All these wonderful things pass by in front of us like in a dream but we can’t speak, we can’t share, we can just make simple signs. Words have become identical bubbles with no meaning and things that were sayable on the surface we walked before are no longer sayable in the space that we occupy now.
That’s why we needed to listen to the words of others. We asked anyone who will talk with us for opinions about the food and we have discussions at length about how to create the authentic bánh mì. Must bánh mì be accompanied by soy sauce or maggi sauce? Should the pickles be mild or sour? Do we use butter or mayo, and should the mayo be made with egg yolks or egg whites? Are we missing pork floss or sausage? Can xá xiú be white or must it be red? Do we slice or spread the pate?
The answers we received were infinite. Hanoians use melted butter but in Saigon bánh mì has home-made mayo and soy sauce is always present. Sydney bánh mì comes with cha lua and in New York they can resemble anything, from Philly cheesesteak to Southern barbeque. The constant factor, however, is not in the fillings but in the bread. Bánh mì in Vietnamese means bread, not a sandwich of any particular filling. An airy and crusty demi-baguette in the shape of a rugby ball and hidden among layers of blanket to be eaten warm- that is the only meaning of bánh mì. And as long as we work with The Spence to create a bread of this texture, we think we have stayed true to the meaning of bánh mì.
So at this point we decided we should avoid looking outside or else we will soon lose ourselves. The world has given us a lot of affirmation, from food bloggers, Time Out critics to our customers, our friends. Family and friends who know us before we had Bánhmì11 have supported us, guided us with their business acumen, shared with us recipes that can not be found in cookbooks but are passed on from people to people, generation to generation. And we are so grateful for your words, somehow they help us to be clearer in our vision, deeper in our faith in this venture and happier in life on less sleep.
That’s not to say all the words we received have been kind, sometimes they were mean, intentionally or perhaps inadvertently. Parents worry about us taking on too much, going into unknown territory, risking security and losing our place in life. Customers complain about not seeing enough meat or what they expect from home. Sometimes it’s not even what’s said but what’s unsaid, a look, a smirk, or a frown.
So in the pursuit of authenticity, what is more authentic than being yourself? In the quiet hours of the night, when your mind is empty and your body is tired, go into yourselves to ask if this is really worth it? Do we really love it? Is this a child that we created, a part of our flesh and bones, or is it actually a pet that can run stray? And from this self-seeking, the food that is created is then an expression of who we are. Yes Bánhmì11 is as authentically Vietnamese as we are, born and bred in that country that raised us and gave us its glorious food. And yes Bánhmì11 is as authentically London as we are, making a home in this city, trying to grow humbly and earnestly in this cosmopolitan mart.
Bánhmì11 is growing up, befriending those who value her and love her for who she is. Sometimes she cries when people put her down for things that she is still learning to become perfect at. But as for those who have nurtured her along the way, she adores you with all that childlike wonder and in her eyes, only you mean the world. For us, it means that we need not look outside for a stamp of approval on how authentic this food is, because the child has a soul of its own. It can stand on its own feet because it was created, not replicated. That’s why we may call Bánhmì11 “the art of Vietnamese baguette”.
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16.08.2009
New York, sometimes we still miss you, but no longer because of your bánh mì.
August 15th marked the beginning of a new chapter in Bánhmì11 and Ca Phe VN’s common history. Rob and Tuyen became proud parents. And as proud aunties, we can just imagine parading adorable baby girl Lotus around and bask in the glorious envy of all the yummy mummies of Broadway Market. She was born at seven minutes before five in the morning, and it was only by a “miracle” slightly smaller than her birth that Rob was there at 7 to set up the stall. With Rob having pulled an all-nighter and our main barista delayed by the train, everyone had to be in new positions. After a few glitches in the morning, we operated the stall with an efficiency that I think merited us of being called the SWAT team of Ca Phe VN.
In between waiting for the baby’s much anticipated arrival this week, we have been seeing old friends from New York on holiday in Europe, and thus reminiscing things past. In London, if you know about bánh mì, you most likely already know about it from elsewhere, whether it’s Saigon or Sydney. Likewise for us, our relationship with bánh mì started in Hanoi and continues here in London, and in between, we had New York.
There was an epoch in our lives when we lived in a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Long Island City, Queens. In a different time, under different circumstances, it would have not been so exciting or memorable to live among yellow cab repair garages at the foot of the 59th Street Bridge. But in my eyes, it was a heaven-sent habitat. Our brick building with a large old-fashioned stairway was on a residential tree-lined street with that rare luxury everyone takes for granted elsewhere in the country but which no one affords in Manhattan – a parking space. The apartment had old, but not creaking, oak wooden floor, nicely rectangular rooms and large windows with a view of the skyline across the bridge. On summer nights, we would pull up the window screens and sit out on the fire staircase to gaze at the mesmerizing shimmering lights, with our feet dangling in midair.
And as you live long enough in any place, you start to develop rituals. On Saturdays, we would ride the N train all the way to Canal Street to visit Paris Deli for our weekly fix of bánh mì. We would emerge from the subway in front of the Starbucks, turned right to go along Canal, pass all the garbage and fruit vendors and jewelry stores, turn left on Mott and find Paris Deli almost at the end of the second block. I would order the Number 1 Special, together with a milk tea bubble tea and get a few jars of yogurt to bring home. Now that we have Bánhmì11, I remember Paris Deli’s operations clearly. They had an electronic ordering system and your order would transmit from the cashier to the screens of the people making bánh mì in the adjoining room, where you picked up your sandwiches with a ticket. And more importantly, they baked their own bread from scratch on site. You could see the tall racks with baguette trays fresh out of the oven. But as I search my memory to remember what was so special about the Paris Deli bánh mì, I mostly remembered the post-bánh mì yogurt. Their yogurt comes in clear little plastic cups and tastes just like the stuff you get waking up from a nap in kindergarten in Hanoi. It was white like Greek yogurt, but smooth and mildly sweet with the distinct fragrance and flavor of condensed milk.
Good food is food worth reflecting upon. Which is perhaps why when you are twenty-something and actually in an affair with a big city, you thought you would remember its food, but it was rather the dessert that was memorable. With Paris Deli, it was less about the taste of the bánh mì, but more about the abundance of it. Like everything else in New York, it was always open, always available and always came in great variety. It persuaded you that it was a truer and deeper experience than whatever you had in the past. Somehow among this mass of millions of people, you still felt that it was singularly yours and even if you are always by yourself, you never feel alone. Traversing the grid of the city, I always thought I felt happy. Not in that sense of contentment but that feeling of happiness when you are very young, very free and very confident that life owed you every wonderful and adventurous thing.
It seems a long time ago but that romantic notion of infinite possibility never ceased to follow us. We have just decided to turn it into something of our own. Bánhmì11is our way of not just receiving, but returning; of not just consuming, but creating. Slowly Bánhmì11 is becoming, we hope, a destination in London, where you can come on your own, or bring a few friends, or come to meet other people. The real reward for us is in hearing people seek us out by word-of-mouth, in seeing friends return, in the precious moments after four when the market has quieted down and we can have a conversation with our visitors. Perhaps somehow Bánhmì11 can have that big-city-but-small-village sense of wonder, of everyone under these bright red umbrellas being perfectly strangers but perfectly connected.
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10.08.2009
Making bánh mì seems a simple pursuit, but with rules and repetition it can teach us a lot
"Remember the fire!"
One small observation about life is that despite how deceptively varied as it seems, much of it is actually repeated. It’s always about you doing something and life undoing it, over and over again. You eat and get hungry and eat again, you sleep and get tired and sleep again, you learn and forget and learn from almost scratch again. So then in general, I think human beings can only achieve something substantial out of a repetitious routine when we are very loved, very pushed or very disciplined.
For the three of us, we have probably relied on a lot of luck and a little of spontaneous intensity to get through life. Now gastronomical discipline means a two-facetted lesson in building a regimented operation to start with and getting chastised for your mistakes as you go along. Another sold-out Saturday last weekend was the result of many days of thought and preparation. It was the same process of mincing and mixing, shredding and soaking, cooling and cutting, all compounded with our hopes and enthusiasm.
Somehow, we were always thinking that at the end of the line, when we have put on the cilantro and sprinkled the chili sauce, bánh mì became a more artful thing, sublimely comforting and surprisingly intriguing. Try to take a Western staple like the baguette and throw “Vietnamese” infront of it, place yourself at the mercy of gourmets of Broadway Market, live up to the expectations and nostalgia for the Tribeca/Williamsburg/13e arrondissemont/Cambramatta bánh mì, and find a pricing point where you don’t have to break your back or bank account to keep the stall running. That must be chased after, yearned for, and worked at like an art.
Getting a regimented operation in place has been our goal for the past weeks. Things moved much faster at the stall last week when we had the oven on maximum capacity and constanly churning out steamingly hot baguettes. It is always interesting when your oven decides it won’t rise beyond 150 degrees when you really need it at 250, and the chemist in the group speculates that you should look at the color of the flame, orange or clear blue, to tell whether the gas tank needs refill. Then Duke of Edinburgh gold medalist fussed around pulling up engineering tricks with the camp stove. All was in vain though. We did however figured out that life is repetitious even in its rules, which in this case is that all good things come in three. Indeed, three is the optimal number of people for our bánh mì production. It takes one to staff the oven, one to stuff the bread before it goes into the oven, and one to stack all the freshness into it after the bread comes out. Last week we were constantly apologizing and thanking people for their patience. This week, people went “Oh it’s mine already?” when we hand them the made-to-order bánh mì as they are still getting their change.
The second part of discipline is of course that is not only an inner strength exercise, but also that you need the outside correction, which not easy to either give or receive. Some of you will know that we really adore Miu, our cat, and we rarely punish him for anything. So now when he makes trouble, I may yell and scream but he doesn’t hear or care. However, he is really scared of bà Trinh and as soon as she raises her voice, he runs away as fast as his four little feet could carry him. When you really love someone, it is all the harder to discipline them and it becomes more of thinking of their own good rather what makes your sappy soul feel good. And on the receiving end, if you ever wonder what all the cacophony behind the cart is about, it’s bà Trinh disciplining us. She gets really upset when we overload the ingredients- and we think we are being generous but actually we are distorting very basic gastronomical precepts.
So having discipline often comes back to a very simple principle: obey the rules. We were born so stubborn and we were raised to rebut rather than adhere. Sometimes though, we just have to learn to let go of ourselves and trust that someone else really does know better.
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03.08.2009
An intimate dialogue on raising Bánhmì11
Tin Tin- my little nephew
When you trade in an outdoor market, you are gambling with the weather gods. You look at the weather forecasts, think hard about how much foot traffic you can expect, recheck the weather forecast again every day and finally submit to the precariousness of British weather and place a bet on how many bánh mì you can prepare for the week, just in time for the bakers to do their job. In this game, there is no option to hedge and no lifeline to call, you will either destroy your margins by ordering too much or disappoint customers who trekked across London to find you. Like a fickle friend, sometimes the weather lets you down after a promising start and sometimes he makes it up to you in sunny bursts. Yesterday we thought was going to be a nasty rainy day, but actually the weather held up quite well and we were sold out by 2PM.
The bread turned out more beautiful this week, baked to a just perfect golden-brown. We also made the pate creamier, which added moisture without compromising the bread’s crispiness or the pickle’s crunchiness. You may notice that the bread vary slightly in size, but this is purely because each and everyone of them is hand-crafted. The weight remains exactly the same, 140 gram of doug, but the baguettes will not look identical as those produced through an industrial process. Artisanal bread brings an uniqueness in flavor, texture and to a degree, also size. That said, we are working with The Spence to achieve a certain uniformity to the baguettes because we understand, consistency is one of the trademarks of good quality.
I think it’s fair to say that all of us are head-over-heels in love with Bánhmì11. You know that feeling of anticipation and butterflies in your stomach, that’s how we feel as Saturday is approaching. And that moment when you wake up and try to remember your last conscious thought before you go to sleep, the first thing that enters our minds is bánh mì. And just like when you are so obsessed with someone you manage to direct all your conversations with friends to be about that person, I think our friends are between being intrigued by our enthusiasm and wondering if they should bill us by the hour for listening. Bánhmì11 is our brainchild and we are completely enamored with it. We eat, talk, think, sleep and dream banh mi. The other day I woke up and realized that I dreamt we had a solvency problem – completely nightmarish. And I dreamt that the pate was not congealing, instead falling apart like biscuit crumbs and the cilantro all had marks of snail bites on them – very scary in a science-fiction way.
When I am not panicking in my dreams though, we have been worrying about how to raise this child, as parents usually do. What values do we need to plant? What self-image do we want it to grow up with? Where do we want us to live? What kind of people do we want it to grow up with? As it grows, our responsibilities increases. It’s not just about milk bottles and warm baths, it’s about bringing up another being. How do we do that with the resources we have, in the environment we are in? How do we give it as many opportunities as we can afford? So we asked for help, from friends whom we trust to be godmother and godfather to Bánhmì11. You will probably see them soon all over our baby. And we talked to other parents, or people who seemingly were just born with a wealth of parenting knowledge. Sometimes we even plot them to take us out and pick up the tab for the best scrambled eggs and french toast breakfast in town! For the time being though, there are no easy answer but I guess we will think it up as we go along. Indeed, is there any other way to go along?
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27.07.2009
Bánhmì11 is donating 50% of this week’s (1/8/2009) trading profits to a development project in Thanh Binh, Vietnam
Back in 2005, I was lucky to spend a summer in rural Vietnam, first Ben Tre and then Can Gio province, on a volunteer project. We joined thousands of Vietnamese students in the Mùa Hè Xanh or Green Summer campaign to teach and work on infrastructure projects. Although we were supposed to be the teachers, we came out stronger for the lessons we learned from the children and local communities. I took home a box of hand-written notes the students wrote us before we left and little crafts they made out of shells or palm leaves. I got to see a part of Vietnam which I would have been sheltered from if I never left the country in the first place. It made me laugh, it made me cry and most of all, it made me remember to return.
This month, from August 2 to 12, one of Bánhmì11‘s first friends, Wenqi Chow, will embark of a trip with 14 fellow Singaporeans in collaboration with YMCA Vietnam to go to the district of Thanh Binh in the Dong Thap Province, about 250km from Ho Chi Minh City. They will be refurbishing the infrastructure of the local school and as part of the process provide some basic English lessons to the village children. They need to raise at least $3000 to cover the minimum cost of the project, including building materials and transportation. Any excess they raise will given to YMCA Vietnam after to provide study materials for the students.
To this end, Bánhmì11 pledges to give 50% of this week’s trading profit to the group. So if you are picking a Saturday to come out to Broadway Market, come this week because you know you can get a great bánh mì as always and your pounds will be traveling all the way to Vietnam to make an impact on many young people’s lives.
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26.07.2009
Bánh mì is best enjoyed when shared with friends.
Friday night past 10pm and the heat is on in Bánhmì11‘s kitchen. With all four burners in use, the pate is entering its forth hour and slowly simmering into a cohesive mass. The carrot and daikon radish are julienned and the cabbage is shredded. Squeezing brine out of them, the limes’ sourness and the chili’s spiciness pierce through my gloves and leave a burning sensation on my fingers. The handful of vegetables shrinks to fit neatly inside my palms. But my pickle, deemed not dry enough, is promptly formed into a ball and squeezed again by bà Trinh.
The pate is cooled and we nervously flip it over. As we lift the container, the pate slowly releases the edges and slides off nicely like a cake. With a lack of control not dissimilar to baking, there is no turning back as you can not fix the texture or taste of pate once it has been cooked. With the hours invested in the final product and trying to make everything as fresh as possible, we really don’t have a margin for error.
When people ask us how our bánh mì is so different than any other places, we think this is the reason. We spend a lot more time cooking the resolutely old-fashioned, family-made way. The flavors seem to speak for themselves as by 2:40pm on Saturday we were sold out of all bánh mì. When we ordered double of the number of baguettes from our baker this week, we thought we might be stuck with quite a few left over to eat until the beginning of next week. But the queues just kept forming and we couldn’t make bánh mì fast enough.
We introduced a vegetarian option, which was very well received. While you may have a difficult time finding a truly vegetarian meal in Vietnam, that is not cooked with lard or meat broth or fish sauce, there is wealth of wonderfully tasty dishes in the cooking of Buddhist monks. Drawing on this heritage, Bánhmì11 has created a vegetarian option where the complex juxtaposition of tastes, textures and temperatures in a traditional bánh mì is not lost. The softness of tenderly crumbled fresh tofu mingles with the crunchiness of black dry mushroom and glass noodles and even as an adamant carnivore, you may have a hard time resisting.
Icing on the cake this week was all our friends who showed up at Broadway Market. You came and you brought so many friends and family, or in some cases, your pet. You gave us many critical and honest comments, for which we are truly grateful. We couldn’t really chat but we hope you had a good time and experienced that same special feeling that we got when we came to Ca Phe VN stall the first time. We will make a few improvements next week, fine-tuning the made-to-order process and enhancing the recipe, so that we may be deserving of your support.
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