As a child of Vietnamese immigrants, I’ve always been intrigued when people say that America is a “melting pot.” Ingredients always being added in, continually becoming more and more diverse. I’d never really understood the full weight of the description, even as my family was considered one of the ingredients in this Red, White, and Old Glory Blue stew1. We’d probably be nước mắm, which is Vietnamese for fish sauce. It’s potent, complex, and an acquired taste, increasingly permeating everything around us without always fully being seen or understood. Sorry to all my Thai (nam pla), Laotian (nam pā), Cambodian (tik trei), Filipino (patis), and Burmese (ngan bya yay) brethren, but the Vietnamese own nước mắm. It is the lifeblood of Viet cuisine. Grilling pork? Use nước mắm as a seasoning and sauce. Soup? Nước mắm. Even pasta? Nước mắm.
Being a first-generation2 Viet-American is one thing, but living in Las Vegas practically adds another generation. Sin City was a desert of Vietnamese restaurants when I was younger. Try craving your favorite dish, but you have to make a four-hour drive whenever you want a quality version of it. Making that semi-monthly drive to and subsequent weekend in Irvine and Westminster, California, was my strongest connection back to my parents’ homeland. Looking out the car window, I’d see Viet restaurants for miles and miles with a seemingly infinite line of phở restaurants, all somehow staying profitable. It was hypnotizing. Every weekend, I devoured my familial fare: xôi lạp xưởng3, cơm tấm gà nướng4, phở tái5. However, even though it was the 2010s, Viet food in California was stuck in the 70s6. Viet food is my connection to my homeland, from when I was born to today.
Back then, my understanding of Vietnamese cuisine was steeped in childhood nostalgia: warm bowls of phở, the sizzle of chicken over broken rice. However, with age came with a new lens and a new question: how is Vietnamese food evolving in America today? As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gained a greater understanding of the situation that my parents and fellow immigrants went through, and as someone who is twice-removed from my cultural homeland, it’s also been captivating to witness the modernization and possible overmodernization—connotatively dubbed “millenialization”7—of Vietnamese food in America. This shift is led by new-age millennial and Gen Z chefs reimagining the culinary canon of many cuisines through artistic plating, bold fusion, and reinterpretation.
With the generation of those who lived escaped during the Vietnam War aging, the new generation of young Viet-American chefs is rising. Viet food in the US is evolving in front of our very eyes. At restaurants like Irvine’s NEP or San Francisco’s Lily, dishes like sticky rice cubes or phở French dip sandwiches exemplify this transformation. Exemplified by abstract plating and influence from other cuisines, this “millenialized” Vietnamese cuisine has slowly but surely separated itself from its old roots. New-age Viet-American chefs now attempt to push the boundaries in the supposed name of innovation. While some say they’re bringing Vietnamese cuisine into the modern age, others boil it down as simplification and blandization for an uncultured American audience. But that’s the whole point. It’s the reaction to today. This progression of Viet food comes from the need of a younger audience; it’s balancing on the slackwire between assimilation and acculturation. The tensions between honoring heritage and adapting to a changing food culture sits at the heart of this culinary evolution.
The older generation of Vietnamese immigrants sees this influx of new restaurants as an infection of the bastion of Viet restaurants. The diversity of Vietnamese food is vast, yet many traditional dishes are being left in the dust as the new generation focuses on different palates. Those “weird” dishes are staying with the aging population. It’s a cliché seen in cultures far beyond Vietnam: cuy (Andean guinea pig), sundae (South Korean blood sausage), hvalbiff (Norwegian whale steaks), or basically any other part of an animal that isn’t considered “meat” in the western world8. Cuy, for instance, might shock most Americans, but in Peru and Ecuador, it’s a delicacy cherished for its crispy skin and succulent meat. The same goes for sundae, a staple of Korean street food. These foods aren’t grotesque—they’re cultural markers.
As I watch Vietnamese cuisine evolve from nước mắm-scented road trips to salted egg yolk pasta served on ceramic plates, I see myself reflected in this metamorphosis, caught between reverence and reinvention. Do you abandon the old ways for survival in the modern age9, or stick to your roots? That’s up to the youngins. But it is their responsibility to continue our traditions, our culture, our food. They are the new trailblazers, but they shouldn’t forget the origins of the path they tread upon. The future of Vietnamese food in America may look different, but if it still speaks to our roots while daring to say something new, then perhaps this millenialization isn’t dilution. It’s a reimagining.
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1 In reality, that stew would probably be disgusting.
2 Second-generation culturally, really. My parent escaped from Vietnam to the US during the Vietnam War when they were eight and thirteen. Living four-fifths of your life somewhere else will undoubtedly cause some cultural estrangements.
3 Sticky rice with Chinese sausage. Absolutely try it if you have the chance.
4 Broken rice with grilled chicken. A Vietnamese classic, and personally my go-to whenever I really crave comfort food.
5 Rare beef noodle soup. Another classic and a great entry point into the expansive universe of phở.
6 As a result of the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of Southern Vietnamese escaped to the US, with many settling down in SoCal. Vietnam was split for 21 years, and with that relatively short period of time, noticeable rifts in food, music, and even language formed. In the US, South Vietnamese immigrants wanted to have a reminder of home, so they cooked South Viet comfort foods. As cities like Garden Grove and Westminster, CA, became bastions of Southern Vietnamese immigrants, America was only exposed to South Viet dishes and kept on only being exposed to South Viet dishes as the years and decades passed.
7 Truly a word that is a product of the 2020s. It’s often tacked on to American restaurants, specifically burger joints. Shareables, $15 fries, “gourmet” burgers…all things epitomizing the new age of mass consumerism.
8 For brevity’s sake, I’ve decided to cut out the specifics. But beef tongue, pig’s blood, chicken’s feet, beef tripe, etc. are all delicious and worth venturing out for. Try the unknown!
9 It’s survival of the fittest. Or rather the tastiest.
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