A portion of Bun Cha at Huong Lien restaurant on Le Van Huu Street in Hanoi where former U.S. President Barack Obama used to stop by for dinner. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Trang
For
seven happy years, from 2003 to 2010, I lived on Tran Hung Dao Street, Hanoi.
Right behind our elegant French villa, within a few blocks, there was a food
paradise. The area to the south was full of wonderful eating places, from grand
restaurants to sidewalk cafés.
I
loved the oceanic taste of stir fried squid, the freshness of rice-paper spring
rolls, the strength of beef in black pepper sauce… But perhaps my biggest
favorite was bun cha, which we used to purchase from a little restaurant on Le
Van Huu Street, to eat at home on Sundays.
Renowned
chef Anthony Bourdain once wrote: “You don’t have to go looking for great food
in Vietnam. Great food finds you. It’s everywhere. In restaurants, cafes,
little storefronts, in the streets; carried in makeshift portable kitchens on
yokes borne by women vendors.” I was not at all surprised that the little
restaurant on Le Van Huu Street where we used to buy our Sunday bun cha was the
place where Anthony Bourdain took President Obama for dinner.
If
fact, the quality of the meals one can get sitting on small plastic stools on
Vietnamese sidewalks can easily make the offerings of many posh western
restaurants pale by comparison. Which is why I felt so disturbed when reading
in a recent New York Times article that Vietnam is one of the countries with
the fastest penetration of fast food in the world.
Among
the 54 countries considered in the article, only Argentina saw a speedier
growth in sales between 2010 and 2015. I could not refrain from wondering
whether the tasty and healthy Vietnamese cuisine I had so much enjoyed while
living in Hanoi could end up being displaced by bland and fatty fast food.
The
Vietnamese craze for fast food seems to have become stronger since this New
York Times article was published in the fall of 2017. Youngsters queued in line
for hours to grab their hamburgers, French fries and sodas when the first
McDonald’s outlet opened in Hanoi, in December 2017. And many Vietnamese
children seem by now hopelessly addicted to deep fried chicken, the Kentucky
way.
Nothing
could be more different from fast food, the American way, than the traditional
Vietnamese diet. Fast food is bountiful in saturated oils and industrially
processed inputs. Vietnamese cooking, on the other hand, relies on natural
ingredients, with minimal use of dairy and oil, and an abundance of herbs and
vegetables. Everything is fresh in
Vietnamese cuisine, almost nothing is in fast food.
While
Vietnamese cuisine is considered one of the healthiest worldwide, fast food is
a global source of obesity. And obesity is indeed ballooning in Vietnam.
According to Professor Le Thi Hop of the National Nutrition Institute, about
1.2 million children already suffer from it. In HCMC, the share of children who
are obese increased from 3.7 percent in the year 2000 to 11.5 percent in 2013.
The share is probably higher nowadays.
By
now the paradox is obvious: Vietnam is a country of beautifully slim moms with
sadly overweight children. And Dr. Huynh Hanh, of the University of British
Columbia, believes that the opening of fast food chains is a major cause of
this disturbing trend.
There
is another reason to be concerned about the penetration of fast food in
Vietnam.
Food
is culture, and it is often said that there is no great civilization without a
great cuisine. Of course, the cuisines most people have in mind are the French,
the Turkish, the Chinese, the Indian… But Vietnamese cuisine is arguably in
that top tier of the world food league. And one of the great cuisines of the
world being displaced by bland fast food would no doubt amount to a loss for
mankind.
Vietnamese
cuisine involves a subtle combination of fragrance, taste and color. Five
elements come together and balance each other: spicy, sour, bitter, salty and
sweet. The refinement of their combinations was pushed to new heights under the
Nguyen Dynasty, when the 50 best chefs from all over the kingdom were selected to
serve the emperor.
Later
came the French influences, from new ingredients such as potato and asparagus,
to new dishes such as banh mi pate or banh xeo. Pho, the quintessential Hanoian
dish, was arguably influenced by French onion soup, and its name is said to
derive from pot au feu, a traditional French broth.
In
my eyes, the cuisine of Vietnam is much better than that of its neighbors: too
spicy towards the west, too complex towards the north, too heavy towards the
east…
Alas,
the prospect of seeing Vietnamese cuisine being displaced by industrial fast
food may seem quite real at times. By some accounts, there are already 207
Lotteria outlets, 140 from KFC and 100 stores by Jollibee. Other chains are
following suit, and are massively investing to enter the Vietnamese food
market.
And
yet, my concerns could well be overstated. Some of the western fast food chains
are struggling. Burger King invested $40 million to expand its chain, but it is
still grappling to gain a foothold in Vietnam. McDonald's had targeted 100
restaurants after 10 years in the country, but it still has only a few in HCMC,
and just one in Hanoi. Some of the successful entrants in the fast food market
are Korean and Japanese, and their offerings are more suitable to the eating
habits of the Vietnamese, with rice as the main staple.
Meanwhile,
young people in Vietnam still love local food. Market research firm Decision
Lab reckons that the generation born in the 1990s collectively spends about
VND13 trillion ($568.1 million) per month eating out. For many young Vietnamese
men and women, monthly spending reaches VND2-3 million. These young people eat
sticky rice, fried corn, baked banana… and pho, of course! They drink mango
shake, milk tea and Vietnamese coffee. And in continuing the tradition of their
elders, they make Vietnam the global capital of “real” fast food, in its
sidewalk version.
Even
among western countries, food trends can be very different. Fast food, the
American way, seems to have taken over the planet, but in parallel a strong
“slow food” movement has emerged. Founded in Italy in the 1980s, in reaction to
the arrival of fast food chains, it promotes the use of fresh ingredients, from
farm to table, and celebrates taking time to cook and share the food with
family and friends. The 2000s saw the emergence of the global chain Eataly
(from “eat” and “Italy”), where large food halls host a variety of small
restaurants and counters selling ham, cheese, olive oil and other fresh
ingredients. Looking like market places, Eataly stores are thriving, from Sao
Paulo to London and from New York to Tokyo.
The
history of Vietnam provides some reassurance. French colonialism exposed the
country to western influences for the first time. Unlike the current opening up
of the country to foreign trade and investment, globalization back then was
imposed. And yet, the Vietnamese culture was strong enough to only absorb the
best that western civilization had to offer. From the new poetry movement to
the Romanized Quốc Ngữ script, from neo-impressionist paintings to the ao dai
dress, the finest French influences and local traditions were mixed back then
to generate what we now see as distinctly Vietnamese cultural products.
Food
is culture too, and based on the country’s previous experience with
globalization, it is difficult to believe that fatty, American-style fast food
has much future in Vietnam.
By Martin Ram/ VNE
*Martin
Rama is the chief economist for the South Asia region of the World Bank. The
opinions expressed are his own.