Boston
is commonly associated with perfectly cooked beans and creamy clam
chowder. Since the mid 1970s a
growing number of Vietnamese have moved into the Boston area now numbering 20,000,
congregating around the Fields Corner area of Dorchester Avenue they have
created a vibrant hodgepodge of shops.
Some entrepreneurs cater to the young couples with wedding dresses and
formal gowns others offer medical services. The most common sight are restaurants selling a variety of
dishes. Most Americans learn about
Vietnamese food through a bowl of soup that was recently ranked 28th
by CNN on a list of the 50 most delicious foods in the world. Pho (pronounced feu) has a deeper history, one that time has washed away.
A
perfect bowl soup is hard to come by; it creeps up on you when you least expect
it. My first taste of pho was in a
strip mall in Southern California with college friends looking to try something
new rather than another oil-drenched Chinese-Thai hybrid meal. The soup was a revelation, a perfect
combination of deeply flavored beef broth and tender pieces of meat steeped
until tender, with al dente noodles and fresh herbs. The contrast of flavors and the ability to concoct your own
combination of flavors by adding your own amounts of sweet Thai basil,
cilantro, lime juice, hoisin sauce and chili sauce gave my taste buds infinite
possibilities of flavor.
Pho
is the national dish of Vietnam and for good reason; it feeds millions of
people from morning into lunch and even dinner. The soup is flexible and malleable with multiple
permutations utilizing every cut of the beef. You can get your pho with tender slices of tendon, flank,
and even meatballs. Or try the
other popular preparation with chicken.
Through the years a disconnection has occurred, this soup has its roots
deeper in the history of Vietnam, specifically with the Chinese and French
colonialists.
The
act of making and preparing soups were introduced by the Chinese to the Vietnamese
(The Chinese controlled modern day Vietnam for over a thousand years leaving
behind their religious attitudes, culture and food) they also brought the
distinctive noodles we find in Pho from Guangdong,
China made with rice flour.
Pho
would not be what it is today without the mighty beef cattle having been introduced
by the French colonialists who started coming in 1859 initially as part of
missionary operations. During
their conquest of Vietnam and it’s neighbors the French grew tired of the local
proteins such as pigs and chickens and imported cattle to French Indochina to
get their fix. Similar to the
African-American food traditions that adapted the lesser cuts of meat and
created such delicacies such as pigs feet, collard greens with neck bones, the
origins of pho are similarly modest. Making culinary history with scraps is how pho was born. The French would slaughter large
amounts of beef, but the bones and off cuts would not be used. The Vietnamese who were primarily
subsisting on rice and small amounts of vegetables saw the opportunity to make
delicious food from the scraps of the Frenchmen’s cattle. Like many of the great national dishes
from around the world the origins are humble and come from ingredients that you
might not expect. The Vietnamese
learned to stretch the little meat they had access to and create intense flavors,
building on the traditions and influences of their homeland and those of the
Chinese and the French.
Although
there is scant documentation about the exact origins, Dider Corlou (a
celebrated chef who has studied the foods of Vietnam) believes that Pho is a derivation from the French dish pot a feu. The first connection is from the sound
of the dish; feu and pho are the same pronunciation. This pronunciation is a Vietnamese adaptation from the
French word. Pot a feu is also a soup that uses a
deep and complex beef stock. The
comparisons extends to the preparation of the bones to make consume or stock there is the addition
of grilled onions, which adds a distinctive flavor and color to the final
broth. Pho represents the Vietnamese ability to adapt and resist their foreign
invaders.
This
soup has become the national food of Vietnam; it shows how cultural influences
have been filtered through the Vietnamese lens to produce a dish that shows
elements of the past but maintains Vietnamese identity. Pho was first produced
in the Northern city of Hanoi
only a hundred years ago, not as a street food but rather a soup sold by
hawkers who would go door to door.
It spread to the south and other provinces after the first Vietnam War
against the French ended in 1954 when millions of northerners moved to the
southern city of Saigon now Ho Chi Minh City. Since soup was a ubiquitous food served throughout the
country the way these northerners differentiated themselves was by selling pho. As pho gained in popularity the
southerners put their own spin on it, including different herbs and the use of
hoisin sauce. Due to the mass exodus of southerners to the United States in
1975 we typically see this type of preparation in American restaurants. The
advent of pho’s spread is mirrored by the rise street food, which is also a
relatively recent phenomenon in Vietnam only dating from the 1950’s.
Pho
is a perfect example of fusion in a bowl.
The stock adapted from the French, the noodles and allspice from
China. The true Vietnamese culinary
ingenuity comes from the use of Saigon cinnamon (a less spicy and more earthy
cousin to the common cinnamon) and the fresh herbs. Many a pho connoisseur will grade establishments on their
freshness and variety of these condiment plates. The combination of long cooked beef broth with the added
freshness of cilantro, basil, mung beans, a dab of hoisin sauce and lime wedges
adds an acidity and lightness that is not found in any another soup. In the bottom of a bowl of pho three
cultures are combined, this is not fancy modern fusion where cultures are
haphazardly thrown on a plate for the sake of being avant-garde. This is slow fusion, one where the
countries flavors are still distinct and discernible but have slowly melded
over time.
