Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table

by Graham Holliday

This is possibly the most sugary pork broth in all of southern Việt Nam, which can be explained in part by its origins. The roots of this dish stretch across the border to Cambodia, where sugar-infused soups are ubiquitous on the boulevards of Phnom Penh. The Vietnamese often call the dish Hủ Tiếu Nam Vang (Nam Vang is what the Vietnamese call Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital) to recognize the soup’s source. Chinese Cambodians purportedly brought the dish to Việt Nam. And, as is ever the way, the Vietnamese got their boots on and made it their own. What was, once upon a time, a simple, slightly sweet Cambodian pork stock noodle soup, the Vinas pimped out with an outrageous number of options: congealed pig’s blood, squid, pork, offal, prawns, caramelized shallots, lettuce. You can even have it without stock, or “dry.” (I always went with “wet” myself.) As Vietnamese cookbook author Andrea Nguyễn says, “Hủ tiếu is the extreme have-it-your-way Vietnamese food experience.” There is also a rarer variant, hủ tiếu Mỹ Tho. Mỹ Tho is a hick town an hour or two south of Sài Gòn, in the Mekong Delta’s Tiền Giang province. This version lacks the Cambodian namesake’s sweetness, but it does boast a sizable added punch in the form of a whole pork knuckle, planted like an islet in a soup sea. I prefer the Vietnamese-Cambodian style of Miss Phạm’s hủ tiếu.