A Death Anniversary in the Countryside
Posted: December 11, 2011 Filed under: change, family, Food and drink, Reflections, Stories | Tags: change, countryside, family 2 Comments »There’s a balance when it comes to wider family events, particularly the countryside ones.
I know behind the scenes my wife makes my excuses and we keep our appearances to a respectable minimum. It wasn’t that this one was especially important so much as we hadn’t shown our faces for a while. When my wife said it would take half a day I thought we’d be back by lunch. It turned out she’d meant it would be 12 hours door to door.
I recall in KOTO days, visiting the countryside homes of the poorest kids. Food was a struggle but the sheer newness and oddness of the situation made it unmissable. Later as the experience becomes less novel the food becomes proportionately less palatable too. Likewise the drinking, that it’s hard to duck out of, is now a chore rather than just a tale to be mentally filed away for future travel anecdotes.
That said, all things considered, yesterday was fun. No one now is either surprised or offended if I just pick at the food and then fill up on my own smuggled in snacks. The drinking was beer, whisky and rice wine before noon. Having written off the day in advance, being drunk before noon was no hardship. There’s a brief couple of hours of euphoria before the inevitable afternoon fug.
For all my caution when it comes to attending family events I’m proud to be a part of these people. My wife has favourites among them and those she’ll only politely acknowledge. Good people and bad people, family feuds and debts of gratitude from the past.
Their own stories set against this incredible pace of change could be a book on its own and, in that respect, I don’t suppose they’re any different to any other family in Vietnam. I noted that while the oldest members of the family are farmers, the youngest include TV producers, an artist and a cafe owner.
I snored home hungover and slept for three hours. A friend called round late yesterday and said I was still stinking of cheap booze. This morning I felt poisoned and wondered, for the millionth time, what other than rice was in the wine.
But during the day the sheer absurdity of me, sitting cross-legged, eating and drinking deep into the Vietnamese countryside with my Vietnamese family and wife, wasn’t far from my thoughts. A beautifully ridiculous situation that, against all odds, still somehow turns a chore into something genuinely life affirming.
Life these days is very very good. Recently I’ve felt just as much in love with Vietnam as I ever have.
Like this:
The Chicken Feet
Posted: December 4, 2011 Filed under: family, Food and drink, Stories | Tags: chicken feet, food, wife 3 Comments »My wife’s taste for chicken feet is, more often than not, something she indulges when I’m not around.
She knows not only can’t I stomach the things, I cringe just watching her eat them. With some Vietnamese food I feel the challenge of actually finding protein between skin, gristle and bone is more the point than actually filling your belly or even enjoying the taste.
Occasionally when chicken feet are craved, but I’m in the house, the concession is I get to ring for a pizza. The implied deal is she won’t mention the fact that it’s both expensive and unhealthy. Then we both silently stuff ourselves with our mutually-repulsive food.
One of my wife’s closest friends lives a few alleys down and she too is married to a Brit. Recently, when he was not around, they met, chatted and munched chicken feet without anyone to disapprove.
She came back with a tale of another Anglo Vietnamese union where the pair had moved to the UK. After several months the wife craved chicken feet so much she overcame her shyness and asked her local butcher if he could supply them.
“The butcher said she could have as many chicken feet as she liked,” she tells me, “for free!”
Truly a promised land.
Like this:
The Irish Stew
Posted: November 29, 2011 Filed under: family, Food and drink, getting married, Reflections, The Cart | Tags: cart, food, irish stew, wife 1 Comment »Earlier this week, The Cart specials popped up on my Twitter feed and I was happy to see, for the first time, Irish stew among the items on offer. It prompted the post below and the explanation of how it has come to mean more to me than the sum of its potatoes, carrots etc.
***
As a foreigner, before you can marry a Vietnamese national, you have to go through the kind of interview best known for its dramatisation in the movie Green Card.
Basically they want to check it’s not just a marriage of convenience.
Having seen the movie, I filled my head with lots of useless facts about her family and her favourite food, cosmetics, TV shows etc. In reality the interview was actually a lot more friendly than I’d imagined.
After a general chat they suddenly hit me with: “When did you realise that you had fallen in love with your wife to be?”
Had I prepared an answer then I may have come up with something that made me look a little less bad. Then again any other answer would have been a lie.
“When she made me Irish stew,” I said.
I’m not proud of it but there was some sentiment behind it rather than just my-wife-as-personal-chef. Honestly we both cook as much as each other.
You see I’d just spent a lonely year in rural Cameroon. A year which in many ways I had chosen to do after the break up of a pretty disastrous relationship.
In my new apartment in Hanoi I was still marvelling that hot water came out of the tap every single time I turned it on. I’d stand there grinning and shaking my head in wonder as the steam rose.
I had just met my now wife and I had cooked for her first. Some days later she told me that she would return the favour but wouldn’t tell me what she was making. I’m pretty good with Vietnamese food but feared it might be something I’d struggle with. Either way I was working down the other end of the studio flat as these amazing smells wafted by.
I kept asking what it was and she’d tell me it was a surprise.
Finally she relented and said: “It’s Irish stew”.
Still bruised from a previous relationship, still grateful for home comforts after Africa, I nearly burst into tears on the spot. Making me food was one thing, going to the effort of researching how to cook something so foreign moved me beyond words.
Now, just over a year into the marriage, I teasingly sometimes refer to the Irish stew moment as being “back then” when she’d do anything for me (and I for her).
“That was my trap”, she says, with a mock evil glint in her eye.
Living with The Cart Nghi Tam
Posted: November 13, 2011 Filed under: Food and drink, ho tay, nghi tam, The Cart | Tags: the cart, work 2 Comments »
So The Cart Nghi Tam has been open a week and we’re getting used to new customers, new tastes, new opening hours and new staff.
New staff at this point are limited to taking on handyman Tuan Anh who did such a brilliant job in getting the new place ready that we talked him into joining the payroll. His main job is selling Tet trees but there are few more seasonal vocations than that, so for the time being he’s helping us out on delivery. The man is a legend. At one point when fixing the electrics they blew and he climbed up a pylon on the other side of the street to fix it – despite our protestations.
I once saw my father in law do that when the lights blew at Tet – after several shots of whisky.
We’ve also added a local young student who studies morning and helps out in the afternoon and she’s slowly learning the ropes making drinks and cooking. The harder task is finding someone comfortable enough with customers so Loan can leave her front desk spot.
We worked round the clock to get the place open and now she’s working 12 hours a day seven days a week. I’ve got into the habit of getting up with her at six during the week and having my breakfast in the Cart. Then I’m at work well before eight. It means I can reasonably finish by five without any guilt and then I check she’s still standing on my way home before I get in and put the dinner on.
I spent this weekend feeling guilty as she is working while I’m off. She won’t let me work in The Cart so I’ve made myself busy fixing the website and taking photos for the Facebook page. I’ve also got some new shots ready for framing to decorate the place a little. Tonight I had a stirfry ready to go when she got in. Two hours later she’s asleep and I’m typing this. I should also mention sisters-in-law Trang and Huong. Trang regularly works nights elsewhere and days at The Cart. Huong has a very good job in the media but isn’t above helping out in the kitchens.
An incredible family.
But despite a little fatigue we’re delighted with the way the place has been received. There’s been a steady stream of customers and they’re learning about The Cart. In the first couple of days we have to send all the pies to the Au Trieu branch because nobody in Nghi Tam was buying them. Now they’re starting to sell quickly as people return day after day for pies for lunches and takeaway dinners.
Meanwhile my hunch that there was a decent bacon sandwich gap in the market has turned out to be accurate. Lots of Punto Italia coffee being sold too.
In the brief two hours I had with Loan tonight it was hard to switch off. More food options for veggies was discussed and a curried vegetable pie recipe was sought and found. Skyping my parents, my Dad suggested samosas. Great idea.
In one month we’ll be back in the UK for Christmas. We’re going to have to take some hard decisions about running the two outlets then. Right now it seems that staffing problems will mean we’ll close Au Trieu briefly and do all the delivery from Nghi Tam. Most of our customers will be overseas by then. We will lose the walk-ins but continue to keep up the office delivery.
But despite the stresses and strains Loan is smiling. Lots of compliments for her and hew new cafe and she can see that the masterplan is working. We’ve a bottle of champagne in the fridge we haven’t cracked yet. Sometime soon there’ll be a cafe lock-in for the family.
Thanks to all those who have come to eat or who just said hi and good luck. It’s nice to see some faces coming back for a second and third time. We really really appreciate it. Oh and if your local is Au Trieu not Nghi Tam then we do have plans to give the original location some love. Probably in the new year.
Thanks again. Life is tiring but it’s good.
The New Cart Nghi Tam is open (needs staff urgently)
Posted: November 7, 2011 Filed under: Food and drink, Hanoi, ho tay, News, nghi tam, tay ho, The Cart, Westlake | Tags: breakfast, cafe, coffee, nghi tam, staff, the cart 1 Comment »
Back at my desk doing my proper job following the excitement of the weekend. But yes, our big news is that The Cart Nghi Tam is now open.
Doubly brilliant for me is that we live round the corner so I picked up an already bagged up latte and muesli on the way to work this morning and had something of a luxurious breakfast while I waited for my computer to boot (it takes a while here).
Anyway this is just a quick in-my-lunch-hour post to say how chuffed/knackered we are in equal measures. The place actually looks better than we ever could have hoped and everyone is telling us what a great location it is and yet it’s also off the Xuan Dieu beaten track.
Chatting with Puku’s co-owner Daragh yesterday we mused on how incredible it is that you can open a cafe in Vietnam in under a month and on a fairly limited budget. Back home the paperwork would probably take twice and the cost would be prohibitive. However don’t ever think it is easy. On Friday night alone signs turned up in the wrong colour, menus turned up full of spelling mistakes suggesting our designs had been retyped in instead of just being printed. On Sunday when we were working towards opening we had three power outages lasting 20 minutes a time.
Right now, still trying to sort out our coffee cup conundrum I’m simoultaneously making enquiries about importing reuseable eco cups while also sounding out other coffee shops owners on the possibility of a collective that could order together in a bulk large enough to make decent paper cup manufacture worthwhile.
But by far the biggest problem is staffing. If I hadn’t heard the same problems voiced elsewhere then I’d be worried that it was us. Typical of our experience was a new recruit who turned up on his first day and then left after 15 minutes never to return again – not answering his phone when we’ve called him. No experience required – there has to be someone out there. If you know someone – get them to ring Loan.
We went out for dinner Thursday night after a quick stroll around our corner of the lake. It was doubley enjoyable because we have little time for each other recently. We both work long hours on our day jobs then spend the evenings on menu design, updating websites and generally working our way through a lengthy to-do list.
Either way it’s been worth it – the new place is great. The coffee is wonderful and we’re so glad we imported a decent machine. The food and drink is the same fresh mix of sandwiches, pies, pasties, cakes and juices – plus a new beefed up breakfast menu.
It’s phenomenally exciting and seeing the cafe open gives you a real sense of pride. I should also remind you that this is not my Cafe, it’s my wife’s. I just help out when I can but Loan’s hospitality experience stretches back well over a decade before we even met.
Our next break is Christmas (staff recruitment allowing) but until then it’s hard to imagine a break from a seven day a week , 12 hours a day cycle.
Luckily I know a great place to stock up on caffeine.
