Archive Guide

Thao Bui, chef/owner of An Xoi and Van Van

  • Cashew paste and Vietnamese chicken curry (cà ri gà)

  • Covid and food business

  • Employment-based immigrant visas

  • Home cooking vs. pop-up cooking

  • Meningioma

  • Pop-up food business

  • Pricing and the value of Vietnamese spices

  • Saigon

  • Tomato egg drop soup (canh mây)

  • Viet Nam’s declining fish supply

  • War chemical defoliants

  • Why Red Boat makes fish sauce “the right way”

  • Working with Vietnamese spice farmers

Lauren Tran, chef/owner of Banh by Lauren

  • Changing dessert recipes to fit parents’ palates

  • Cooking by taste memory

  • Covid and food business

  • Dad’s love of Petit Beurre cookies

  • Eating palmier cookies with her grandfather

  • Financial and market reasons immigrants adjust recipes

  • Importance of texture in Vietnamese foods

  • International Culinary Center, NYC

  • Mom’s cassava cake (bánh khoai mì nướng)

  • Not going to medical school

  • Pandan (lá dứa) as a gateway flavor to Vietnamese tastes

  • Pricing and the value of Vietnamese food

  • Vietnamese and American perceptions of sweetness

  • Vietnamese reactions to her food

  • Vietnamese recipes on the Internet

  • Winning Gramercy Tavern’s pie contest: coconut-pandan-lemongrass pie

Phoebe Tran, chef/owner of Be Bep

  • Breast cancer

  • Brooklyn Grange, urban farming

  • Cooking and grief

  • Covid and food business

  • Đạo Mẫu (woman-based folk religion)

  • Dreaming of a Vietnamese herb garden

  • “Grief Ephemeral, Grief Eternal” (short film)

  • Meal delivery service

  • Orange County, California

  • Pesticides and food

  • Problems with locavorism

  • Quy Nhon and Cho Lon, Viet Nam

  • Sweet and sour soup with cowa fruit (Canh chua thai chua )

  • The versatile banana plant

  • Unlearning restaurant techniques

  • Vietnamese folk medicine

  • Vietnamese food naming practices

  • Vietnamese herbs / foraging

  • War chemical defoliants

Dennis Ngo, former chef at An Choi and Di An Di

  • An Choi restaurant (Lower East Side)

  • Banh Anh Em restaurant (East Village)

  • Bún đậu mắm tôm

  • Cooking as performance

  • Dad’s chicken bone salad (Gỏi gá)

  • Di An Di restaurant (Greenpoint, Brooklyn)

  • Emotional and financial costs of running a restaurant

  • Fame City Waterworks (Houston, Texas)

  • Fried shallots (Hành phi)

  • Grilled pork (Thịt nướng)

  • Ha’s Dac Biet/Ha’s Snack Bar

  • Health challenges, aging, and cooking Vietnamese food

  • How to properly treat, store, prepare herbs

  • Illegal kitchens/illegal lofts

  • Kitchen camaraderie

  • Learning from embezzlement

  • Lemongrass

  • Lone Star Empire (Texas-style brisket business at Brooklyn Flea)

  • Mam restaurant (Lower East Side)

Chef/Food Stylist Thu Pham Buser and partner, Taylor Buser

  • Acquiring/learning new tastes through gateway dishes

  • Ăn Cỗ, Vietnamese banquet culture, pop-up dinner party

  • Being part of an ideologically divided family

  • Bitterness as a cultural concept and life philosophy (“overcoming one’s suffering and limits”)

  • Comfort food vs. banquet food

  • Connecting to others and to the world through food

  • Dad, message runner as a child during the war

  • Differences between post-war Vietnamese American food and contemporary Vietnamese immigrant food

  • Grilled goat (Dê nướng)

  • Inheriting the love of cooking and feeding others from mom

  • Interracial marriage

  • Learning to cook Vietnamese food in an American kitchen

  • Mangrove charcoal (Than rừng ngập mặn)

  • Misunderstandings among Vietnamese people

Tuan Nguyen, owner of Larry’s Ca Phe

  • “Clean” coffee

  • Being a transnational adoptee

  • Black coffee (cà phê đen)

  • Family reunions in Vinh Phuc

  • Forging relationships from behind the cafe counter

  • His father and the coffeeshop’s namesake, Larry Hilton

  • Iced coffee (cà phê sữa đá)

  • Sea-salt coffee (cà phê muối)

  • Viet Nam vs. New York coffee culture

  • Vietnamese robusta coffee beans

Nhu Ton, chef/owner of Banh Shop House & Banh Anh Em

  • Bedbugs in New York

  • Buddhism

  • Celebrating Vietnamese food, food workers, kitchen appliances, and skills

  • Cooking as therapy; cooking as meditation

  • Fine-tuning her Vietnamese baguette recipe

  • Grilled rice crackers (bánh đa)

  • Her non-profit vegetable/teaching farm in Buôn Ma Thuột

  • Learning how to live and cook from older Vietnamese women

  • Living with and learning from Ede people (an ethnic minority group in the Central Highlands)

  • Making food, making family

  • Making peace with an unhappy childhood

  • Relationship with dad

  • Stacked rice sheets (bánh ướt chồng)

  • The deceptiveness of “simple” Vietnamese dishes

  • The joy and exhaustion of owning restaurants

  • Viet Nam’s many hot sauces and condiments

  • Vietnamese reactions to her food

  • Wage theft in Baton Rouge

  • Water bug essence (cà cuống)

  • Why charcoal is her favorite ingredient

Eric Tran, chef/owner of Falansai

  • Art Institute of Chicago in Culinary Arts

  • Banh Anh Em restaurant (East Village)

  • Blue Hill at Stone Barns restaurant (Tarrytown, NY)

  • Cattle economies

  • Chinese Vietnamese

  • Comparing Vietnamese and Mexican cuisines and food cultures

  • Cooking as performance

  • Cooking untraditional Vietnamese/Mexican food

  • Deanna Ting, “Today New York Has Some of the Best Vietnamese Food in America. Here’s why.” Resy.com

  • Feeding people, producing feelings

  • Food planning/prep is the most exciting part of cooking

  • Food sustainability / locavorism / seasonal cooking

  • Grilled pork with vermicelli noodles (Bún thịt nướng)

  • Growing up Vietnamese and Mexican in the Midwest

  • Joseph Leonard restaurant (West Village)

  • Pricing and the value of Vietnamese and Mexican foods

  • Pulau Bidong refugee camp (Malaysia)

  • Refugee dispersal and internal migrations

  • Similarities between DJing and cooking

  • Vietnamese American regional foods/cooking

  • Vietnamese dipping sauce (Nước chấm)

  • Why Vietnamese people are the harshest critics

  • Momofuku

  • Nha Trang, Viet Nam

  • No-waste cooking/stretching every ingredient

  • Philosophy of abundance

  • Pricing and the value of Vietnamese food and labor

  • Silent H restaurant (Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

  • The three phases of the Vietnamese restaurant industry in the US

  • The unique breadth and variety of New York’s Vietnamese food

  • The vibrant and knotty social networks of New York’s Vietnamese restauranteurs

  • Tuan Bui (owner of An Choi and Di An Di restaurants)

  • Vietnamese chicken salad (gỏi gà)

  • Vietnamese coriander (rau răm)

  • Vietnamese home cooking lessons and economics of the restaurant business

  • Vietnamese home cooking lessons and French culinary techniques

  • Vinh Nguyen (chef/owner of Silent H restaurant)

  • Why smoke is his favorite ingredient and why it’s hard to get smoke right in NYC

  • Why some chefs don’t put phở on their menu

  • Misunderstandings between domestic and overseas Vietnamese people (Việt kiều)

  • Parents’ restaurant in Saigon (District 10)

  • Practices and politics of food styling

  • Presentation of Vietnamese food (“abundance and happiness on the table”)

  • Representation in food media

  • Social media and the expanding curiosity in Vietnamese food

  • Sourcing Vietnamese ingredients through family in Viet Nam

  • Stuffed bitter melon soup (Canh khổ qua)

  • Tariffs

  • The status of the restaurant business in Viet Nam

  • The untranslatable elements of food culture

  • Urban Vietnamese food is fusion food

  • Viet Nam in the 1990s

  • Why Thu Pham Buser doesn’t want to open a restaurant