The colonial era of Vietnamese history shapes the nation to this day. Different parts of Vietnam were affected in different ways, but none more so famously than Ho Chi Minh City, aka Saigon. This gave rise to a unique culinary environment, with French dishes being mixed with Vietnamese ones. Today we explore the french dishes you must try when visiting Ho Chi Minh City;
A Mix of Cultures
During colonial times, food was one of the most important vectors of control. Colonial officials used the pseudo-scientific idea that “bread and meat make us strong, fish and rice keep them weak” as a guiding principle in matters of nutrition and culinary culture.
Farmers were encouraged to try and grow wheat, butchers started preparing french-style charcuterie (cold cuts) to supply the local demand, which grew to a point that required regular importation of costly Western foods from Europe. When World War I broke out in Europe and caused the closure of international shipping lanes, the local colonists had to adapt.
Being previously reluctant to try or mix with Vietnamese food culture, the French had to adapt. Bread dough was cut with rice flour, to make up for the limited availability of wheat. Butter became bo, made from oil and eggs in the absence of milk and cream. Café au lait became ca phe sua, the fresh milk being replaced by condensed milk. From this wartime struggle was born a whole new cuisine, a unique hybrid of French and Vietnamese dishes. While some have faded in obscurity, others are still popular in France and Vietnam today.
Must-try French Dishes
French food is readily available in Saigon. The city features a large French expat community, with plenty of restaurants and cafés to cater to their culinary needs. Here’s a list of dishes worth trying and where to find them.
Both France and Vietnam are part of the few cultures worldwide that celebrate and consume duck meat. Richer and fattier than other birds, it’s ideally suited to roasting or slow-cooking. In France, it is often enjoyed as confit : the duck is butchered, and allowed to simmer for hours (sometimes days) in a bath of it’s own fat. The result is an incredibly tender, fatty and flavourful dish.
An ingredient essential to every banh mi, paté is originally a French dish. It’s still widely popular in France today, but is quite different from the Vietnamese variety. In France, paté (often called paté de campagne) is prepared with the meat scraps left after butchering a pig, by cooking and pressing them into a mould with plenty of rendered fat. In Vietnam, paté has a much more spreadable consistency, being made from pig livers and most often used as a flavour base in banh mi, rather than a standalone dish.
The French brought $coffee plantations to Vietnam in the late 1800s. Since then, the local industry has flourished, and Vietnam has become one of the biggest producers of coffee worldwide. While production was focused initally on quantity, recently farmers have shifted to a more speciality coffee style of growing, ensuring each batch is carefully cultivated for the best quality. From ca phe sua da to ca phe trung or even ca phe dua, there’s countless ways to enjoy local Vietnamese coffee.
