Co mam co ruoc moi roi bua an. Please don’t turn up your nose at smelly fish sauce. Only with fish sauce and pickled shrimp do you get a real meal. —Vietnamese saying My mother never returned to visit Vietnam after she emigrated to Canada, but half of my genes are from her, and so as my plane lands in Saigon, it is as if she has come back to the homeland, the ghost of her DNA expressed in my features—the same dry skin prone to eczema, the same thin hair—and behavioral tendencies, like an aversion to noise, crowds, and being rushed. I’ve booked a windowless third-story hotel room in gringo-grunge Pham Ngu Lao. The hotel driver who picks me up at the airport is initially taciturn, but when I tell him that I am writing a book about traditional food, he becomes animated in describing his Mekong Delta hometown specialty, banh xeo, a kind of pancake that features bean sprouts, assorted greens, and shrimp in a quick-fried rice-paper wrap. “You say you’re Vietnamese and you don’t know banh xeo?”
What do You think about 100 Million Years Of Food?
