![]() Knowing exactly where to go to satisfy any specific Vietnamese-food craving is now a source of personal pride. It wasn’t until I became an undergrad at UCLA that I started really getting to know Little Saigon - jump-starting a 20-year kinship with the neighborhood. Chả cá thăng long: a Northern Vietnamese specialty of turmeric fish with dill at Song Long Restaurant. We would spend hours in the little shops, browsing jewelry, makeup counters, gift items and clothing, before breaking for Vietnamese street snacks at the food court, where we’d buy items like nem n ướ ng (grilled pork sausage) skewers, đ u đủ kh ô b ò (shredded green papaya and beef jerky salad) and fresh-pressed n ướ c m í a (sugarcane juice). The one thing we always did was hit the indoor Asian Garden Mall, known as Ph ướ c L ộ c Th ọ, which is the closest Stateside equivalent to the famous central market in Saigon called Cho Ben Thanh. I remember the excitement and sense of homecoming I’d feel when we’d exit the Santa Ana freeway and begin seeing clusters of Vietnamese signage, indicating that we’d arrived in the land of the Vietnamese. We found our way to Sacramento, California, where I grew up with a strong sense of ethnicity, a sense of being not only Vietnamese but Northern Vietnamese.įrom the time I was a teenager, our family would make the six-hour drive to Southern California specifically so we could visit the area known as Little Saigon in Orange County, home to the largest Vietnamese population in the United States. I was born in Saigon, two years before its fall and our subsequent emigration abroad in 1975. The communist revolution in Southeast Asia created two generations of Vietnamese diaspora first, in 1954, when Ho Chi Minh–led insurgents took over Hanoi and the northern half of the country then again, in 1975, when they conquered the southern half, forcing a mass exodus of refugees who had but two things to take with them to far-flung destinations: a regional Vietnamese accent and a yearning for the tastes and flavors of their beloved homeland.Īmong these immigrants were my parents, each born in Hanoi, the national capital of Vietnam at the time, but forced to restart their lives in the southern capital of Saigon in 1954. Not by a long shot.īut first, some history. And it’s led me to a conclusion that some may find surprising: The Vietnamese food in Southern California is not the same as what you’ll find in Houston. As a first-generation Vietnamese immigrant who has lived in both areas, I’ve eaten my way through the sandwich shops, crawfish shacks and noodle-soup joints with a fair amount of alacrity. Saturdays are still the best day to visit, when Ha VL rolls out its peppery pork ball soup and spicy bun bo Hue while Rose VL serves its bright orange mi quang noodles, turmeric-laced chicken curry and a subtly sweet pork-noodle dish called cao lau.Of all the places to find good Vietnamese food across the United States, two particular hotbeds stand out - Houston, Texas, and the wide swath of Orange County in Southern California known simply as Little Saigon. ![]() ![]() ![]() Even now, under son Peter Vuong - William and Christina can still be found at Foster-Powell sister restaurant Rose VL - Ha VL continues to experiment, adding a seafood-passion fruit soup on Thursdays and a hearty beef stew on Wednesdays (most $11-$12). Eventually, Luu introduced a noodle soup, then two, then a dozen, with a pair of options served each day, six days a week. When it opened in 2004, William Vuong and Christina (Ha) Luu, immigrants reunited with their family here after years of separation following the Vietnam War, started with a basic banh mi menu. Portland’s best-known Vietnamese soup restaurant, which was named a semifinalist in the James Beard Awards’ Outstanding Restaurant category for the first time this year, has never really stopped evolving.
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