Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table

by Graham Holliday

“Everything is fresh. I have no secrets to how I make a good bánh mì. The key thing is good ingredients and freshness. If Big C has a promotion on, I’ll buy from there,” she said, referring to the vast supermarket on Tô Hiến Thành Street, just a five-minute motorbike ride away. “Otherwise, I always buy from Hòa Hưng market on CMT8. Everyone knows that I never use any chemicals.” Here was yet another Vietnamese conundrum. No one admitted to using “chemicals,” meaning flavor enhancers or substitutes of any kind. Chinese substitutes were especially suspect, as was anything Chinese, in general. And yet everyone said the practice was rife. So who, I wondered, was doing it? The answer was everyone else, but not me, and not my family. Maybe that woman down the road. “My customers are all regulars. They know I choose the best meat and it’s always fresh and clean, and I only use pâté made by Vissan,” she said, referring to the meat products company based in Sài Gòn’s Bình Thạnh district.