The food wasn’t the first thing that caught my attention. It was the smell of Hoi An’s harbor at five in the morning; it was briny, sharp, and slightly sweet, as if something living was being unpacked from the sea at my feet. Indeed, it was. Women wearing conical hats were hauling baskets of squid that were still twitching in the lamplight, while wooden boats with sun-bleached and chipped blue paint were pushing against the dock. Before tourists arrive, a fish market has a certain silence that is only broken by the wet slap of fish on plastic and fast, clipped Vietnamese that I couldn’t understand.
I had believed for years that I understood seafood. Restaurants in New York, a short stint at a culinary program, dinners with chef friends who could break down a turbot blindfolded. I was unprepared for what a woman by the name of Co Hai demonstrated to me, using a knife and a flat stone, to gut a mackerel in less than thirty seconds without ever looking down at her hands. She gave no explanation. She simply worked. As I watched her, it dawned on me that the majority of what I had been taught about seafood had been translated by someone else—the chef, the fishmonger, or the textbook. There was no middleman in this situation.
| Reference Card | Details |
|---|---|
| Subject | A first-time culinary journey through coastal Vietnam |
| Region Covered | Hoi An, Da Nang, and the Mekong Delta |
| Style of Cuisine | Street-side, market-driven, family-run |
| Core Ingredients Observed | Fresh herbs, fish sauce, lime, chili, and day-caught seafood |
| Cultural Influence | Generational knowledge passed from fisherwomen to home cooks |
| Notable Comparison | More instructive than most formal cooking programs |
| Reference Voice | Anthony Bourdain, who called his first Vietnam trip life-changing |
| Recommended Read | Reflections from travellers in Vietnam |
The fish on the coast of central Vietnam tastes different. That isn’t romanticism. It’s close. No matter how much they spend, most diners in the West never experience a fish that is caught at four in the morning, sold at six, and grilled over coconut husk charcoal at noon. When I was eating a whole snapper rubbed with turmeric and lemongrass at a plastic table six inches off the ground in Da Nang, I realized that every upscale restaurant version of this dish I had ever paid for had been chasing something it could never quite catch.
I believe that many professional kitchens have lost the humility of Vietnamese seafood cooking. The star isn’t the cook. It’s the fish. Each diner adjusts the sauces at the table, adding a little more lime, a little more chili, or a smaller pinch of sugar until it tastes just right for them on that particular afternoon. It’s possible that most cooking schools completely overlook this. They teach you how to manage flavor. You learn to listen to it in Vietnam.
During that trip, Anthony Bourdain was on my mind a lot. At the time, I thought he was being a little dramatic when he wrote about Vietnam getting under his skin and how it sucked him in and never let him go. He wasn’t. Eating clams steamed in rice wine while watching a grandmother yell at her grandson across the alley can cause you to reevaluate your priorities. I’m not sure if I’ll ever prepare seafood in the same manner. I’m not sure if I would want to.
More than any one meal, it was the trust that stayed with me. Trust in the boat that brought it in, trust in the woman who cleaned it, trust in the simple seasonings that had been working for centuries before anyone thought to write them down. Over the course of ten days, it was difficult to avoid feeling as though the most costly lesson I had ever paid for had been subtly undone by a nation that just does it better.
