Eastern high
A L O T O N H E R
P L A T E
London’s love affair with Vietnamese food has gone into overdrive –
something that makes Vietphile
Rosie Birkett
very happy indeed
Lighter and
more nuanced than any
Chinese cuisine and less
tongue-blitzingly spicy than
Thai, it was a revelation
0 9 9
V I E W P O I N T S
years ago,
when I lived in Leeds, my regular trips down to London
always involved a visit to the Kingsland Road in Shoreditch for a
Vietnamese meal. Lighter and more nuanced than any Chinese
cuisine, and less tongue-blitzingly spicy than Thai, it was a
revelation. The first time I ever tried it, at Song Que (
songque.
co.uk
),
one of the areas’ many cafés, I was blown away by the
contrasting flavours and textures of dishes, such as the delicious
chilli soft-shell crab and the crispy, turmeric-spiced
bánh xèo
(
savoury crêpes) filled with prawns and beansprouts.
A trip to Vietnam in 2010 all but ruined this pleasure for me.
Even though east London has, in recent years, become a hotspot
for the imported stuff, after you’ve travelled the actual country –
sampling the herbal, Chinese-influenced food of the north and the
spicy, sweet, Indian-inflected food of the south, it’s hard to go back.
It’s lucky then that, in the last couple of years, my adopted
home city has stepped up its game. Take Uyen Luu, a
Saigon-born Bethnal Green resident and blogger.
Since launching her supper club (
leluu.com
)
in 2009, she’s been cooking up colourful,
modernised dishes that have established her
small kitchen as one of the best places to eat
Vietnamese outside of Vietnam. She even
cooks my favourite Hanoian street food dish,
bánh cuôn
(
thin, rice-
flour pancakes filled with minced pork and black mushrooms, and
topped with crispy shallots): a must-try dish.
“
I started the supper club because I thought it would be fun to
meet new people and get them eating real Vietnamese food,” says
Luu, who’s writing her first cookbook, to be published by Ryland,
Peters & Small next year. “In London, it’s hard to come by really
authentic cuisine. I wanted to get people to understand new ways
of enjoying it too, like sharing a fried fish with rice and a healthy
bowl of mustard greens with ginger soup.”
For so long a neighbourhood secret in Hackney, the cuisine is
also now getting an airing in Soho, thanks to the central outpost
of Cay Tre (
caytresoho.co.uk
)
and Battersea, where unusual
ingredients like goat, eel and frogs’ legs, and artisanal, organic,
biodynamic wines are the modus operandi of Mien Tay (
mientay.
co.uk/battersea
).
Even in the south-east of the city, you’ll
find delicious
bánh mì
–
the Franco-Viet baguette
with barbecued pork and pickled daikon
–
thanks to the funky Panda Panda (
panda-
panda.co.uk
)
in Deptford.
It all makes even a Vietnamese purist like
me very happy.
