food

If we meet up and don't eat together, I don't know what else to do. (Nguyet)

When we are less busy with the schoolwork, I want to invite the group to try food from different cultures around London on a bi-weekly basis. (Nga)

Food is the raison d'etre of the group. My digital archive for the project is flooded with food pictures. Most of the gathering would start by the question: "What should we eat?" via the Messenger group chat. Through close analysis of Vietnamese cookbooks, Phillips (2009) reveals the relationship between eating culture and Vietnamese diaspora:

"The pervasiveness of eating in Vietnamese culture means that food gestures toward every aspect of Vietnamese identity: as a daily offering to the ancestors, as the centerpiece of every celebration, and as a way of sharing love and binding the family. Cooking articulates Vietnamese culture as fluently as its language. The culture's focus on food underwrites the logic of cooking Vietnamese food and traveling to Vietnam as assertions of a sense of belong ing to Vietnamese culture." (Phillips 2009, 48)

According to the author, food can bond family - a word in which one interlocutor also used to describe the group. In Messenger, food discussion usually surges when the online conversations are about gathering, home-cooking, and nostalgia of Viet Nam.

gathering

As Nguyet mentioned in the beginning quote, food fuels a sense of togetherness. By food, I mean the collective activities related to it, such as preparing, cooking, eating, washing dishes, and relaxing after a meal.

Usually, the night before a gathering, interlocutors would talk about which food to buy and delegate the task to one or two people. Along the way to the assembling destination, the task deliverer might go with another member for fun or di cung cho vui if their journeys align. This can help distribute the heavy stocks one has to carry.

Then, the team would divide among themselves who took care of which ingredients. An cooks very well, and other participants would playfully assign her as the 'chief'; thus, she often took care of the main cooking.

I only cook because I enjoy it. If cooking becomes a responsibility, the enjoyment will fade away,

An once shared with the team, signaling her wish to switch the 'chief' role now and then. Moreover, late-comers or people who are less good at cooking would wash the dishes or rinse them over water before putting them into the dishwasher.

The food prepared is diverse. The feasts are mostly Vietnamese or East Asian, with sometimes little Western integration such as ham or salami. The video below shows a snippet of the preparation process. The montage at the end includes footage from Huyen's Instagram story.

Most would participate in food preparation. Huyen spent most of the time creating the atmosphere, from 'DJ-ing' the music with the latest Vietnamese hits to running around taking pictures for Instagram stories and memory archival. Tien would usually come later, so she often took charge of cleaning up.

During the meal, everyone would sit around, share food, and chit-chat. The feast often involved praxis of sharing. For example, hot pot or lau is always a go-to-dish for the team. To eat lau, people need to set aside some raw food on the table, including chopped-up vegetables, seasoned meat, fresh seafood, and a pot of broth putting on a portable gas/induction hob in the middle. Then, one turns on the hob to boil the broth, and when it reaches boiling degree, people will alternatively put the food into the broth with chopsticks or ladles. While eating lau, one can take the cooked food from the pot and give it to others as a sharing gesture. Other times, the group would eat Korean BBQ meat, in which someone would sit to grill the marinated meat for the rest.

To satisfy the craving for Vietnamese food, the team already cooked the famous bun cha (a Vietnamese dish of grilled pork and noodles), bun dau mam tom (a Vietnamese dish of vermicelli, tofu in crispy golden fried cubes, and shrimp paste), nem (spring rolls), and che (a Vietnamese sweet soupy dessert). Most of the ingredients come from London supermarkets specialized in Vietnamese/ East Asian food such as Longdan, Ly Trang, or Kiki & Miumiu. Below is footage of the group sitting on the floor eating together. They were teasing me because I could not join.

After the meal, people usually utter a Vietnamese proverb of cang da bung, chung da mat, literally translated as the belly skin stretches (feeling full after eating), the eye skin (eyelid) sags (feeling sleepy). For some, the time is for napping. For others, it is to relax, have idle talks, and share personal stories. An sometimes baked cakes and Tien made Nama chocolates as desserts to share.

home-cooking and nostalgia of viet nam

I combined the two sections because they both involved digital care of exchanging information via Messenger.

When they first moved to London, the community enthusiastically shared photos of home-cooking dishes in the group chat (see figure 8). Some cooked Western food and used the oven for the first time. Some tried to re-create Vietnamese dishes. The group exchanged recipes, cooking tips, good products and supermarkets.

Figure 8. A collage of home-cooked meals prepared by the students.

Furthermore, Nguyet posted pictures downloaded from her Facebook News Feed, sharing the craving for Vietnamese food with the whole team. Some express similar sentiments, indicating a collective nostalgia for Vietnamese food.

Figure 9. Nguyet's text.

During the 2021 Lunar New Year, Nguyet's university accommodation staffs offered each student a festive meal (see figure 9). She jokingly wished the school would give her banh chung (a type of sticky rice cake with pork and green beans as base wrapped in banana leaves, usually served in Tet - Vietnamese name for Lunar New Year) and gio (Vietnamese sausage). Tien responded that the university probably followed Chinese traditions. Lunar New Year is dominantly referred to as Chinese New Year, which is problematic and harmful to many East Asian and Southeast Asian customs regarding cultural diversity. Nguyet sighed, expressing her yearning for banh chung.

To the group, even though London has restaurants and supermarkets served Vietnamese cuisine, the flavor and taste could not compare to that in Viet Nam. In gatherings, methods of making Vietnamese food were a passionately discussed topic. The team would, in turn, shared about how to make different types of Vietnamese food. There are some standardized methods in making Vietnamese food to be considered tasty. However, the 'standard' criteria varies within different households and family's traditions so food can become a disputable topic. Therefore, such a detail-oriented mindset towards food enhanced the nostalgia for Vietnamese cuisine in particular and for Viet Nam in general. This brings us to the section of 'idle talk.'

bibliographies

Phillips, Delores B. "Quieting Noisy Bellies: Moving, Eating, and Being in the Vietnamese Diaspora." Cultural Critique, no. 73 (2009): 47-87. Accessed May 25, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25619837.