Vancouver Sun
Annie Diem shows off two of her lemon grass dishes, which she serves at her Joyeaux CafPhotograph by: Ward Perrin, PNG
Reviewing Vietnamese restaurants has always been a bittersweet experience. I sense the backstories of sadness, loss, pain and tragedies of the people who run these family enterprises.
Sooner or later, I ask the question during a phone interview: How did the family come to be in Vancouver? The answer has almost always been the same: A terrifying escape from Vietnam on a boat, fleeing a country that had become too dangerous when the Communists took over.
For instance, the much-loved Vietnamese/Cambodian restaurant, Phnom Penh, is run by a family that not only escaped from Vietnam, but Pol Pot’s monstrous genocidal rule in Cambodia before that.
But slowly, time erodes the pointy ends of pain and loss. The next generation, the sons and daughters, is stepping into the kitchens, taking over from parents who are retiring. Some have histories in Vietnam, others know nothing of war.
In Metro Vancouver, the densest settlement of Vietnamese immigrants centres around the Kingsway/Fraser hub where pho, bahn mi (Vietnamese sandwiches), and Vietnamese restaurants and shops abound. The restaurant business was an easy choice because of lower startup costs and the fact that the whole family could pitch in. As rents escalate in Vancouver, more and more members of the community are dispersing to Surrey.
“In general, we’re looking at 35,000 to 40,000 Vietnamese immigrants,” says Lam Vang, a settlement officer at MOSAIC and a “boat person” himself. The last Vietnamese from a refugee camp was processed in 1994; the camps themselves stopped accepting refugees in 1986. After that, they were sent back to Vietnam. The majority of Vietnamese immigrants to Metro Vancouver today come under the re-unification program, but some in the community are visiting students.
Lang says many Vietnamese restaurants have tweaked their food to suit the local population. For example, the pho is often made to suit Chinese palates since they represent a huge customer base. So instead of a strict beef-based stock, they might use pork or chicken.
Some of his favourite “authentic” Vietnamese restaurants are Au Petit Cafe (Main Street), Song Huong (Nanaimo Street) and Pho Tau Bay (Surrey).
The next generation of Vietnamese food is nowhere more evident than at Chau Kitchen and Bar, where a Canadian-born daughter of refugee parents takes Vietnamese food up a notch from the homestyle to casual fine dining.
“My parents never wanted me to get into this business because of the hardships and work,” says owner Maria Huynh. “They did it because it was the only way to support the family, but I felt for some reason, there’s comfort in food. It’s a way of discovering my roots and keeping alive the legacy my parents built up. It’s part of my story, too. Why not embrace the Vietnamese side of me? My mother always refers to the blood, sweat and love when she talks about her business. It’s about being proud of who we are through food. A lot of the Vietnamese community is judged because of the stories of [illegal] drugs, but my mother always stresses being proud of who we are, not forgetting our roots through food and sticking together as a family.”
These are but some of the stories behind the small restaurants, run by tight-knit Canadian Vietnamese families.
PHNOM PENH 244 East Georgia
The Huynh family is a blend of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Chinese. They have run Phnom Penh on East Georgia Street since 1985 and have consistently been praised. The butter beef is exquisite; a grandmother’s recipe for garlic squid is a winner, as is the crispy frog’s legs. A new dish, fresh lotus stems with garlic and fish sauce, has really taken off. A grandfather, who was a well-known chef in Cambodia, invented their crab roll, wrapped in tofu paper, and stuffed with jicama, crab and pork with a hoisin chili sauce.
Solange Huynh, a daughter, says the family of eight hid in the Cambodian jungle for a month and a half before crossing over, in 1975, to Vietnam where her mom Van Hoa Huynh was born. The family survived by selling Cambodian-style noodles on the streets and eventually opened a small noodle restaurant.
After the fall of Saigon, they paid (in gold) more than once for the eldest son to escape to Malaysia, but he was caught, thrown in jail and had to bribe his way out each time. In 1979, he survived a weeklong crossing to Malaysia on a fishboat where some had died from dehydration and sickness.
Solange is forever grateful to a Canadian immigration officer who put the rest of the family on a fast track for visas to Canada. “I still remember him. Mr. Rene [his first name] from Montreal,” Solange says.
Once here, they ran a noodle shop in a Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian community centre, but were shut down after two years for operating without a permit. That’s when they opened Phnom Penh (originally in the space next door to the current spot) with money borrowed from friends. That was 23 years ago.
“For two years, we had no salary. We worked very hard to repay loans,” Solange says. Expo 86 was a breakthrough year, she recalls. “We were packed and getting famous.”
Over the years, Phnom Penh has consistently been rated the best Vietnamese restaurant. But these days, the parents are retired and Solange, a sister and brother-in-law work in the kitchen. A brother runs the front of the house.
The only sibling who’s not there is the eldest brother, the one who first made it to Malaysia. “He died a couple of years ago in Vietnam, where he was on business. He got malaria and died within three, four days,” Solange says. “My mom suffered a lot.”
mstainsby@vancouversun.com
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