Hi everyone, welcome to Potluck Food Talks.
Today we have a very special guest, Yabel Chan.
She's a gastronomic communicator and producer.
I would summarize that like that.
Okay.
How are you?
Welcome.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited to be talking to you today, actually all the way in Spain and I'm in Vietnam.
This is awesome.
So first I wanted to go a little bit into your like background.
I know you have like a hospitality background and you're from Singapore and after a few
international experience you ended up becoming like kind of like a Vietnam food ambassador
or something like that.
How did that happen?
That's really, really kind of, but yeah, that was some really good stalking.
I'm not going to lie, Eric, that was really good stalking.
I like that a lot.
I'm kidding.
Yeah, I'm Singaporean.
I study hotel management and also culinary in Switzerland.
And I worked in various restaurants and hotels doing marketing and doing food writing in
Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Malaysia, Singapore.
And you know, during the pandemic I was working for an airline.
I was working in Malaysia for an airline.
We were doing food for the planes.
And because of the pandemic, I had to find another job.
And then I decided, hey, you know what, let's go to Vietnam.
Because during that time Vietnam was still open.
It wasn't locked down.
And when I was working at the airline, I could see that there was so much demand from Vietnam.
There were so many cities that were opening up, that were opening up plane routes and
stuff like that.
So I said, hey, this country is really like vibrant and let's go there.
So I moved to Vietnam.
And then after three months of moving there, the country locked down.
So you got trapped in Vietnam.
Yes.
So it's like a Stockholm syndrome.
That's how your love through the began.
I think so.
You can, you can actually describe it as a Stockholm syndrome.
Just like came from one lockdown to another lockdown.
But yeah, I arrived in Vietnam when I was locked down.
So all of a sudden I was just stuck in my apartment and then I started a blog really
because the whole country was locked down and there was no way to find out where to
get food.
So I actually started as a directory because it was so hard to find out where to get food
during the lockdown.
You know, like basic needs, where to get coffee, where to get, you know, where to get chocolate,
where to get water, where to get food.
Those were like the first articles.
So if you Google like Vietnam delivery food, my article will be like right there and you
can see like the COVID articles from like 2021.
And that's kind of like where it all started.
But true connecting and finding out and learning about the restaurant dining scene within my
apartment, I got to know so many chefs and restaurant owners and people who were making
coffee and, you know, just naturally being curious, talking to them, develop this, you
know, love for the country.
So you mentioned two things that make me really curious.
So first of all, I've been a huge fan of Vietnamese cuisine ever since I lived in Berlin.
There is a huge Vietnamese community.
Yes, yes, yes.
Because there was like a big migration after the Vietnam War.
And during that time, the Berlinian government took a lot of refugees.
So there are like whole neighborhoods of Vietnamese.
I don't think there is something like that anywhere else in Europe.
But actually, I grew up eating a lot of Chinese food in Venezuela.
And I still think like I've had the best Chinese restaurants in Venezuela.
So I really crave for Asian food.
And for some reason, usually Asian restaurants and in Europe, most of them are crap.
Like it's very hard to find good ones, because most of the time these are people that are
not chefs or they don't have like a hospitality background.
And they open a restaurant just for whatever reason that you get to see that a lot.
So these are just like pre-made things.
Interesting.
But with the Vietnamese, it was different.
This was actually like comfort, home food.
And so I would go to a lot to these restaurants.
And whenever it makes sense to visit a Vietnamese restaurant, for instance, in Paris, there
was also a very good one.
And just recently, I went for the first time to Asia.
And it's where I had for sure the two best experiences in Vietnamese restaurants.
I was in Singapore and also in Kuala Lumpur.
And you know, these were not fancy restaurants at all.
One of them was Miss Saigon in Singapore and Tao Sam or Naosam, something like that, in
Kuala Lumpur.
I had the best four in my life.
It was incredible.
So what I wanted to ask you is, I know like a lot of dishes, sauces.
I could even talk about like a flavor profile or spectrum that I know from what I've eaten
abroad.
But I don't know anything like zero about relevant Vietnamese chefs or the dining scene,
which is precisely your expertise, right?
So if you could give me like a quick, I don't know, like overlook of what's going on in
the Vietnamese restaurants, what are the changes, what are the key players that will be super
sensitive.
But also the street food.
I remember for me, it was really interesting, the episode of Anthony Bourdain visiting Vietnam.
And I guess that also made an impact on my perception of the country because he travels,
there are videos.
And there was like this lunch lady that he already back then was saying that she was
already like a celebrity that you would find on Google.
The team still exists?
Is it still a thing?
Does she still exist?
Or restaurants?
Okay.
No, no, she's still doing the, she's become very, very famous and popular, of course,
but she's still there.
She's not like, you know, it's not like five times the price, but yeah, she's, yeah, she's
still there.
And what about restaurants and chefs?
Like I'm talking about mostly like Vietnamese cuisine because also what is Vietnamese cuisine?
I mean, it's been a country that has to do with China, France, their own local identity,
different ethnic.
So yeah, what about that?
You know, Vietnam has been occupied by so many people, right?
So you have the Chinese, like what you said that came in.
And of course you have the French who also came in and then you also have like the Americans
that were also here for a really long time.
So a lot of people have kind of like been around in Vietnam and it very much influenced
a lot of its cuisine, right?
Like in Southeast Asia, Vietnam might probably be the only country that eats bread as a staple,
like baguette.
Yeah, that's yeah.
Who else in Southeast Asia has a national dish, which is bread?
We eat rice in Asia, right?
It's all about your, you know, your, your rice dish and stuff like that.
But Vietnam is the only one that for breakfast, they'll eat, you know, something called bonnet,
which is like a sizzling beef with fresh baguettes.
And then you have bun mee.
So you can see that the cuisine itself is, is, is already quite different from Southeast
Asia, right?
Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, kind of, you see a little bit of that similarity, a little
bit, a lot of wok frying and stuff, but it not so much in Vietnam.
It's a lot healthier, right?
Because it's very known for the soups.
Like you've got your pho, your bun rieu and your hotis and all these things, because it's
such a different country that some, that uses a lot of fresh vegetables and herbs.
See when I think of Vietnam, if I don't have like a big plate of vegetables somewhere,
it doesn't, you know, I don't, I don't feel like it's Vietnamese cuisine, right?
If there's not enough like vegetables or herbs and spices that really just tastes very natural,
something just feels missing for me.
I feel the same.
Like if I, I would have to describe it.
I would say like, yes, rice, maybe like a sticky texture that you will find like in
the rolls or the noodles and also lots of fresh vegetables and herbs, like crispy aromatic
vegetable component.
There's always still vegetables somewhere, right?
Either inside or you're wrapping like a lettuce leaf somewhere or, you know, a rice pepper,
like there's always vegetables and it's always fresh.
It's not like deep fried.
It's not like a deep fried dish.
Everything is almost like so clean and fresh.
And the palette is, I think Vietnamese food is very light.
So you know, sauces are always on the side.
It's always a dip.
It's a dipping food culture.
Even for noodles, it's like, okay, you can just add what you want a little bit.
There's no like dish that I feel comes with a sauce at the bottom where you mix it.
It's such a flexible cuisine.
You can add a little bit of noodle and add a little bit of this and you add your own
vegetables and you add your own sauces.
It's such a, you know, like almost like a cuisine that's so rooted in just fresh ingredients.
That's how I feel.
It's very fresh.
It's very light.
It's clean.
It's, it's, it's, it's very flexible.
Yeah.
You mentioned like the right way to pronounce this is phu, the soup?
Phu.
Yeah.
Okay.
I always say it like phu.
Okay.
Phu.
Yeah.
Phu.
Yeah.
It responded at some point, like a long time ago to the French demand of having beef.
So street vendors started like developing a soup with beef instead of pork, which was
more dominant at the moment.
But yeah, what about the soup?
For me, it's like one of the most iconic elements of Vietnamese food.
What's your favorite place to go to have one and why?
So phu is one of those things that I think the origin, yeah, they say that it comes straight
from the North, right?
And you know, the dish phu comes from pot of phu, which is a French dish.
No way.
Okay.
Yeah.
Pot of phu, which is the French dish, which is what you're talking about.
But if you think about it, how you cook phu, 18 hours with all the beef bones and you know,
the spices and everything, that's great.
That's very Chinese.
Yeah.
I mean, the concept of a noodle soup itself is Chinese.
Yeah, exactly.
The whole concept of, you know, taking the bones and you know, like cooking it and simmering
for like 18, 24 hours.
That's quite a Chinesey kind of like way of cooking.
Like what in Europe, sure you have soups, but it's not done in the same way.
And the soups in Europe, it's not like that, right?
It's more of a thickening and the texture.
So you know, who knows about the origins of phu?
So I don't want to say anything.
And also when you eat it in the North, it's so different from the South and different
parts of Vietnam eat phu differently.
There's also stir fried phu.
There's deep fried phu.
So in different parts and there's dry phu, but not a lot of people know about it.
A lot of people know about phu as one type of soup.
As a noodle soup.
Yeah.
Same with me.
Exactly.
I would use it as a noodle soup, but it's very different across different parts of Vietnam.
Vietnam is huge, right?
And the one that everybody knows actually comes from the South.
The famous noodle soup that you will find abroad.
The one that everybody thinks of phu comes from Saigon, like Ho Chi Minh City.
It's not though.
So if you go to Hanoi and you eat phu, you almost won't really recognize it as what you
think.
Okay.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
I've seen it before of having the, going to the real country and realizing everything
I had so far was fake.
Like for instance, I went to Israel recently and I went to this Lebanese restaurant where
I had hummus and I was like, okay, this has nothing to do with my conception of hummus
and this is like the real place.
You know, this is where it comes from.
Yeah.
Do you have like a favorite one?
Like a favorite spot to have a phu?
My favorite place.
Okay.
So my, I, I, I prefer the Northern phu instead of the Southern phu.
So in Saigon, I have a few places that I go phu phu, but I don't think it's like the best
phu because I think all of them are like, they're like all pretty good to me personally.
And I go to one down the street from where I live and I can't remember the name of it.
I just, the kind of like always just know what it is.
Like, you know, sometimes street food stalls, you don't really know what the names of them
are.
You just got to know what street number they're on and then that's it.
Sometimes it's just the span as well.
You know, that's the thing, right?
They have no names, but street food for me, if I'm in the North, I only eat the street
food, but in the South, I'm a little bit more, you know, inclined to eat other kinds of things
personally.
That's my personal preference.
Okay.
That's interesting.
So what about the mission guide?
I know it was also not so long ago introduced in Vietnam or...
23, 2023.
Ah, just super recently.
Okay.
And how has it been the impact of the, are there like fine dining Vietnamese places?
How are they?
Who are the chefs?
What can you tell us about that?
I was seeing the past like three to five years, the modern Vietnamese fine dining scene has
really picked up, right?
And I don't mean, I don't mean, you know, your, your hotel restaurant, but I really
mean like independent Vietnamese chefs who are doing modern Vietnamese cuisine.
That really came about, I would say in the last like three, four years.
I've been writing a new restaurant guide every month for the past almost like one and a half
to two years.
And the one that I see, the one category of restaurant that keeps opening as new Vietnamese.
So it's kind of like Vietnamese food, but like elevated in some sorts or more modern
versions or you can now get tasting menus of Vietnamese cuisine.
And what the Michelin guide did, right?
When it came in last year and it announced the winners, there are four restaurants that
got the Michelin star, one star.
We only have one star for now.
And three of the four are Vietnamese.
Yeah.
Like for me, that makes perfectly sense.
Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense and you know, those chefs are your like finer dining Vietnamese
restaurants, right?
And then 29 restaurants, the big commands are all Vietnamese.
Nice.
It was, you know, less than 10% is international.
And then you have your Michelin select, which are almost all kind of international.
So what I'm trying to say is that what is signal to the country was, Hey, you know what?
If you do Vietnamese cuisine or you have some kind of modern Vietnamese, you can get a star
or you can get recognized.
So I think what happened after that was a lot more of these Vietnamese openings because
they realized that, you know, to be competitive or maybe to get international recognition,
there was an interest in modern Vietnamese from, you know, the foodie, the international
culinary world for recognitions, even 50 best, the only Vietnamese restaurant or the Vietnamese
bars that are on it are also like modern Vietnamese places.
So what you see now is a lot of these modern Vietnamese restaurants opening.
Yeah.
You know, because it's now like a marketing angle, maybe for some, and even some restaurants
that were not modern Vietnamese or didn't try to say that in the past, all of a sudden
started, you know, being a little bit more Vietnamese.
Okay.
That's I've seen like in many places in the world, this has happened over and over again.
It happened in the Basque country, it has happened in many Latin American cities, it
has happened in Copenhagen, in many cities, like the dominant player in fine dining restaurant
was French.
And many of the chefs that after this reinvented their local cuisines were working at French
restaurants or maybe even started a French restaurant that evolved into a local cuisine
restaurant.
I've seen this happening over and over again and in different regions and moments in history.
Is there like, I don't know, like key chef you could mention that are worth like visiting
or reading the word or checking out?
So one of the chefs in the restaurants, I would say he's like the most famous Vietnamese
chef in Vietnam.
His name is Chef Peter from Anan Saigon.
So he is the only one star restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City.
The only one with a star here.
He's also the only chef on the 50 best lists.
Okay.
So his restaurant does modern Vietnamese cuisine.
And he is known as the chef who is really championing Vietnamese cuisine and modern
Vietnamese cuisine overseas and in Vietnam.
So he himself is also very much like an ambassador in the international culinary world.
So I think we're all very grateful for that because, you know, it's set like a role model
and what he's done with his restaurant is very impressive.
And then in Hanoi, you have your other one star, which is a chef called Sam Tran.
So Chef Sam Tran comes from Gia Hanoi, Gia Hanoi, G-I-A, but in Vietnamese it's called
Zia with a Z.
Okay.
And she is a Vietnamese chef, first and foremost, also a female Vietnamese female chef.
So you know, big deal in Vietnam to be very honest.
And comes from Hanoi, but she trained in Australia at some of the hats, you know, like the, they
have the hats, right?
In Australia instead of the stars.
Yes.
And she does really beautiful like Vietnamese cuisine.
She's now representing, you know, Vietnam going overseas to do like Michelin awards
and events and stuff.
So these two people, I think have really stepped out of Vietnam and gone overseas as culinary
ambassadors.
But honestly, very much in the last few years as well.
We've talked a lot about Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon and Hanoi.
Yeah.
Are these the two food capitals?
Are there any other like relevant places when it comes to food worth visiting?
So these two places are like, you know, your, so Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and then
Saigon is kind of like your business hub.
So you've got like, you know, you're Washington, DC and New York, right?
Kind of relationship like Tokyo and Kyoto kind of thing.
So naturally I think because there's a lot more business and stuff like that and happenings,
even the low posts also all go to these two places for work.
So by naturally, you know, having more people and more travelers and tourists, the food
scene is a lot more lively.
But recently I would say starting this year with more tourism in the different cities
like Hoi An and Da Nang and even Nha Trang and Phu Quoc.
When the tourists are interested in places like that, the hotels come in and then they
are the ones who bring in good dining concepts and good chefs, right?
So for example, Nha Trang, which is a beach destination, recently opened up a hotel, Melia
Nha Trang, right?
And international hotels that go there.
And they brought in a new restaurant called Hispania, which used to be owned by a one
star chef from Spain who's now doing Spanish cuisine in Nha Trang, which is, you know,
what?
Right?
So they're like suddenly because Vietnam as a tourism destination is just becoming more
popular, you see things happening.
Yeah, and perhaps at first they will cater a lot more to the tourists.
But I do foresee that in due time, locals will also just in general be able to dine
more and enjoy more in each smaller city.
You get to see that also here in Spain, there are like cities that are very well known for
their food.
But it's also interesting finding like something super interesting in a remote village or like
a small city or these kind of things.
I think it has its own magic.
Yeah.
And now you can like back in the day, there used to be nothing.
But now I hear like I can hear it be like, oh, yeah, and this like sleepy beach resort
three hours away.
It is like now this French chef there doing things.
And I was like, Whoa, what?
I also wanted to ask you about coffee.
I understand that coffee is like a big deal in Vietnam and is one of the main producers
worldwide.
What's the deal about coffee?
So Vietnam is actually one of the top five countries that produces coffee and the number
one producer of robusta coffee.
I think number one or number two, I think the other one might have be Brazil.
Brazil is number one.
I think also producer in general.
Yeah, I think so.
I don't know the ranking to be honest.
I know just that Vietnam is among the first ones.
Yeah.
So Vietnam is one of the largest producers of coffee in the world and potentially the
largest coffee producer of the robusta coffee bean.
And yeah, it's a huge coffee and cafe culture.
Is it more like a coffee drinking country than a tea drinking country?
Because that's very unusual in Asia.
No, I so okay.
In Asia, I definitely believe it's one of the higher coffee consuming countries, right?
For the reason that it probably this is a French influence thing.
I think the coffee drinking thing is a very French influence.
Like the baguette, of course.
Yeah, it's a very, very like French culture because even the way they drink the coffee
is very relaxed.
A lot of Vietnamese people can just sit by the streets and then wait for the coffee to
drip for like an hour.
It's very like midday siesta, not siesta, like a midday coffee kind of like slow down.
Whereas, you know, I come from Singapore and when I was living in Malaysia, you drink this
coffee pretty fast.
We never have to wait for the coffee, right?
It's a very different kind of way that we drink coffee, I personally feel, but I enjoy
the one in Vietnam a lot more.
Yeah, but on your note, people here also drink a lot of tea.
Okay.
I'm a big tea drinker.
That's also what I'm asking.
Like, I love tea.
But not in the way that we drink tea in Southeast Asia or from China, right?
Okay.
I love tea and it's always, it's very spandead to go to any street place and order chada,
which is basically iced tea.
And it tastes like water.
Okay, like super diluted.
Yeah, it's just like a cup with a massive ice and then tea.
And it tastes like water.
It's not hot.
It's really just to cool down.
It's like a spandead drink.
Anywhere you sit down, you'd be like, hi chada, like to chada, you sit down and you drink
it.
And I think that's interesting because if people would ask me about, what do you know
about Vietnamese drinks, I would say lemonade.
Because every time I went to Vietnamese restaurants, I would have lemonade and they were like nice
and different and with herbs.
And the one I had in Singapore in Miss Aigon, it had a bit of salt.
And I was like, really like, wow, this is nice.
Like a lemonade with a pinch of salt.
Like what's the deal with lemonade and this kind of refreshing drinks?
Are there any more besides lemonade and iced tea?
Yeah, of course.
There's so many.
So like in Vietnam, like, you know, salted lemon is such a popular thing in some of the
restaurants and like, you know, local places, you see salted lemon with like Coca Cola,
salted lemon with like, you know, lime and it's fizzy and it's ice because it's really
hot in Vietnam, right?
So you got to drink like cool drinks like that.
And I think that's the reason why I say like Vietnam is really a home to a lot of very
innovative beverages.
And what about spirits and alcoholic beverage?
What's the national drink?
The national drink meaning?
I mean, like the thing people drink the most.
I assume beer.
But like in terms of spirits of liquors, is there like something like you want them to
suck it or something?
They call it like roux, which is like a rice wine.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's like the local moonshine, right?
Like it's, you know, the look, the local like if they're not drinking beer on the streets,
they're probably going to drink roux, which is the yeah, the local, you know, yeah, the
easy to go drink.
Yeah.
I don't know whether it's as like perhaps premium as sake.
It's really like a moonshine.
I mean, like this kind of things.
I've seen them also like getting revalorized, like here in the Basque country, there's like
a very specific type of apple cider, hard cider.
Yeah.
And today this is something every time I get food tours, I include it on the tour and people
love it.
Also, when I talk with Basque friends, they tell me that 30 years ago that this was something
like just all drunk people would drink.
Like it was really like denigrated, not taken seriously.
And now it's interesting because cider houses, they're also innovating and creating new types
of drinks, like applying ice wine techniques into apples or making apple liqueurs or different
things around the, this local varieties of apples, which is also super interesting.
Yeah.
There's a lot of innovation with spirits.
A lot of people are making it modern.
So we also do have like modern versions of rice wine or different versions of like liqueurs.
Quite similar.
I mean, it was what's happening.
And also later I got to understand.
Yes, of course they did because every time I would go to Vietnamese restaurants, I would
see that they had like this kind of roasted dogs.
And for me, this was like, but that's, I feel that that's more Chinese.
Like it didn't feel like something local.
And I guess it comes like baguette from China.
It was a Vietnamite sized, but it's also a big deal, right?
Like the dishes are on duck.
Roasted duck.
It's duck in general.
I think there are some duck dishes, but I, I'm not, it's not as popular as I, I think
like chicken and beef and even pork.
There are duck dishes though, but not like on a day to day basis, not, not like not as
popular.
Okay.
No, that's interesting because also, and I know this because I myself have worked in
Spanish restaurants in Germany and I know that you have to adapt things to the local
audience and sometimes you have to make things that Spanish people would say, I've never
seen that in Spain.
But for the German audience, it would make sense.
And I guess this was also something like that probably.
Yeah.
It's probably like that.
I think they're like, like what I said, I think like, you know, Vietnam is really interesting
in a sense that like different parts of Vietnam have greater accessibility to different animals.
Right?
Like in Ho Chi Minh City, you'll see restaurants that are like, we specialize in cuisine from
Hoi, we specialize in cuisine from the Mekong Delta and we specialize in cuisine from Hoi
An and every single restaurant, even though it's all Vietnamese food, it's actually super,
super different.
Yeah.
I can imagine for sure.
So, you know, for example, if it's the Mekong Delta, maybe you'll see a lot more dishes
with duck.
And then if you see like, you know, food from perhaps like, you know, nearer to the sea,
it's a lot more seafood.
So to say that, you know, Vietnamese cuisine has a lot of duck, it's a yes answer, but
also not really a yes answer.
Like in Ho Chi Minh City, we don't see a lot of ducks around in general.
Right?
So I think it really, really depends as well.
Okay.
And my last questions would be about, because this is something I have to admit, I haven't
had anything memorable or like outstanding, but what about desserts?
What's the dessert culture in Vietnam in general?
So one of the very, very popular desserts in Vietnam is something called che.
And the best way to describe it is a sweet soup.
Okay.
It's like a sweet, like condensed milk.
There's a lot of condensed, like people love sweet stuff in Vietnam.
Okay.
Especially in the South and Ho Chi Minh City.
So the desserts are always kind of like condensed milk, a size, like condensed milk size.
And che is, there's many different types of che.
There's maybe like a durian che, which comes with like durian and then, you know, like
a little bit of condensed milk and ice.
Okay.
Like, yeah, like a super, this actually reminds me of some kinds of desserts that you find
in Venezuela, in my home country.
Really?
That's really interesting.
Because it's also very hot.
So there are desserts that are like ice shapes with like a condensed milk syrup and some
fruit also syrup, something like that.
Yeah.
And I think it kind of, you know, like if you have access to fruits and it's a hot country,
it almost seems like the natural recipe for it.
Yeah.
Like common sense, of course.
Yeah.
In Vietnam though, we don't do shaved ice.
In Singapore and Malaysia, we do shaved ice.
In Vietnam, it's just an ice cube and then, you know, just all together.
And that's how you eat it.
It's just like a bowl with ice, condensed milk, some water and then some fruits.
And it's amazing.
There's some, you know, like nowadays if you're maybe more in the city, you have like certain
jelly and toppings as well, you know, just for the younger kids to appeal to them.
But you can make chair from everything and anything.
Like I love one that has like an avocado pudding with like avocado ice cream with a bunch of
stuff.
So yeah, you can have mango chair.
You can have anything.
That's it for this week's episode of Potluck Food Talks.