Turning left at what we thought was a dead end in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, we hesitantly inched down Ngõ Trung Yên road, wide-eyed and excited, but with little idea of what to expect. We didn’t know what we were looking for save that it was a food stall under a banyan tree, next to the entrance of a temple — directions we garnered from a food blog on Vietnamese street food. My husband and I had arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, a mere two hours earlier, and we were already on the hunt for some of the city’s famed street food.
Our first mission was to find a street food Hanoi is known for: Bún chả, which is grilled pork served on top of vermicelli noodles. When we spotted the banyan tree and the words “bún cá” (note: not chả) written on the wall behind a set of mini tables, we knew we were in the right place. We just didn’t realize yet we were there for the wrong dish.
Speaking not a lick of Vietnamese, we sat down on a pair of blue plastic stools and smiled at the man tending to a large, steel stock pot in the corner. With no way to communicate what we were looking for or what we hoped to order, we just kept smiling. Luckily, with four options on the menu — which consisted of the writing on the wall behind us — little communication was needed to convey that we wanted two orders of whatever he wanted to give us. From what we could see in the open kitchen by our side and on the plates of the people around us, there were only two items being served at that moment, and neither one of them was grilled pork on vermicelli noodles. As the man served us a plate of what looked like fried spring rolls, followed by two steaming bowls of soup, it became clear we weren’t going to be eating Bún chả. The irresistible aroma of fried pork, beautiful vegetables in our soup bowls and heaping pile of herbs on our garnish plate made the realization an easy one to stomach. We dug in, happily.
Knowing not what we were eating, we tried to decipher the savory, complex, enchanting flavors that were overwhelming our senses. Dill, fresh tomatoes and scallions swam in a broth studded with hunks of fish and fried something else. Was it also fish? The meat tasted minced. Was it the same minced meat in the fried spring rolls on the communal plate between us? We couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t matter much. It wasn’t quite noon and while the heat of the day was overpowering, all we could think about was how amazing the food tasted.
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Could soup ever become a street food in the United States? Marco Canora, the chef behind the broth trend, seems to think so. At Brodo in New York City, he sells broth in coffee cups for people to drink on the go, at any time of day. Canora knows his customers, however, and knows how to sell and market his product in a way that will reach Americans. Brodo’s incredible success confirms Canora clearly knows what he’s doing. Shortly after Brodo’s debut, “broth is the new juice” became every media outlet’s favorite refrain, to-go bone broth surfaced in San Francisco at Belcampo Meat Co, and even Panera tried to commandeer the both trend. Canora markets his broth not as soup but as a “hot beverage” to drink any time of day, which is reiterated by the fact that he sells it in coffee cups. While Brodo doesn’t open until noon, Canora told me that he’d open the shop earlier if he could. As of now, he can’t make enough broth to open any earlier, but his idea is to encourage people to drink broth morning, noon and night. He also wisely pointed out that, “It’s one thing to ask people to rethink their afternoon [beverage], and another thing to rethink their morning caffeine habit.” Canora’s conscious strategy isn’t only garnering buzz. People are flocking to Brodo, and “the vast majority” of them are buying the broth in to-go cups, Canora said. Only about 20 to 25 percent buy the stuff in bulk to eat at home. While Canora may be redefining how Americans think of broth, turning it into a street food in the process, it’s still miles away from the bone broth-based soups of Vietnam. Namely, Brodo’s broth is portable, while Vietnamese noodle soups are not.
Americans love street food. If anybody thought that food trucks were just a passing trend, they’ve been proven very wrong. Americans, however, do street food very differently than Vietnamese people. On a daily basis, Americans will grab a hot dog or a taco to eat on the go, shawarma or a sandwich to bring back to the office and eat at their desks. Rarely will they stop and sit at the stand from which they buy their food. They’ll make an event of hitting up a street food market like Brooklyn’s Smorgasburg, whose very success is a testament to Americans’ affection for street-style eating. But Smorgasburg is exactly that: an event. Chef Xuan of Bep restaurant, who sets up a stand at Smorgasburg, said some people tell him eating at the food market is like being in Vietnam, where people go to one stand for one item and cooks make food to-order right in front of you, serving it right away. Ultimately, however, it’s a different street culture, Xuan acknowledged. And that’s the crux of the matter — street food is inseparable from the culture in which it exists. Xuan grew up in Paris where the street food is entirely different as well. Eating anything on the street used to be frowned upon there, but with the introduction of food trucks, “now they’re kind of catching up,” Xuan said. Whatever form street food takes and no matter where you go, you can’t take the street out of the street food.
Phở may have succeeded at becoming a mainstream soup in the U.S., but, eaten for dinner and not breakfast and in sit-down restaurants and not on the street, it looks very different than it does in Vietnam. The dish itself might be transferable across the globe, but there’s an unbreakable tie between the location and the food — the tie that turns a dish into a meal. When I think back to the morning when we ate bún cá by accident, it was the full experience — the humid air, the tiny table and stools, the man ladling soup an arm’s length away and the unfamiliarity of it all — just as much as the food itself that made it the best meal we ate in a two monthlong trip through Southeast Asia. We may never be able to replicate the experience again, but that’s the beauty of Vietnamese street food: there will always be another totally unique and extraordinary meal to be had just around the corner.
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