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The New York Philharmonic orchestra opened its historic first concert in Hanoi this past October with a lilting rendition of the Vietnamese national anthem, Quoc ca Viet Nam (“Armies of Vietnam, Forward”), followed by the more spirited strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Standing at attention for both in an atmosphere that can only be described as electric, the audience of fashionably dressed Vietnamese and a few Americans could hardly fail to sense both irony and respect as the once-bitter adversaries came together in the grandiose Hanoi Opera House built by the French in 1911.
Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic’s new music director, was later asked what he had been thinking as he was conducting. “Well, of course, getting it right for a pretty big moment,” he said. “But also, I have to admit, there were a few mental flashes of pho.”
For three days, Gilbert and I, separately and together, had scoured dozens of stalls lining both the broad avenues and the tight back alleys of Hanoi, seeking out versions of the lusty beef noodle soup that is Vietnam’s national dish. We were joined intermittently by various orchestra members, including Gilbert’s Japanese-born mother, Yoko Takebe, who has been a violinist with the Philharmonic for many years. Between dodging motorbikes and cars that streamed unimpeded by stoplights—an amenity missing from the burgeoning capital—we slurped bowl after bowl of Vietnam’s answer to Japan’s ramen and China’s lo mein.
In his travels, the 43-year-old maestro has become quite a food buff. When I learned that he planned to spend time between rehearsals and master classes seeking authentic pho on its native turf, I asked to tag along. Both of us were aware of the culinary rage pho has lately become in the United States, as Vietnamese restaurants flourish across the country—especially in Texas, Louisiana, California, New York and in and around Washington, D.C. The noodle-filled comfort food seems well suited to the current economy. (In the United States, you can get a bowl of pho for $4 to $9.) As a food writer, I’ve had an enduring obsession with food searches. They have taken me to obscure outposts, led to lasting friendships around the world and immersed me in local history and social customs.
And so it proved with pho, as Gilbert and I went about this throbbing, entrepreneurial city, admiring restored early-20th-century architectural landmarks built during the French protectorate, when the country was called Tonkin and the region was known as Indochina. Gilbert willingly agreed to an ambitious itinerary, which we punctuated with dueling wordplay—“Phobia,” “It’s what’s pho dinner,” “pho pas”— as we sought out the most authentic, beef-based pho bo or the lighter, chicken-based pho ga. Alas, our puns were based on the incorrect American pronunciation, “foe.” In Vietnamese, it is somewhere between “fuh” and “few,” almost like the French feu, for fire, as in pot-au-feu, and thereby hangs a savory shred of history.
We chopsticked our way through slim and slippery white rice noodles, green and leafy tangles of Asian basil, sawtooth coriander, peppermint, chives and fern-like cresses. For pho bo, we submerged slivers of rosy raw beef in the scalding soup to cook just milliseconds before we consumed them. Pho ga, we discovered, is traditionally enriched with a raw egg yolk that ribbons out as it coddles in the hot soup. Both chicken and beef varieties were variously aromatic, with crisp, dry-roasted shallots and ginger, exotically subtle cinnamon and star anise, stingingly hot chilies, astringent lime or lemon juice and nuoc mam, the dark, fermented salty fish sauce that tastes, fortunately, better than it smells. It is that contrast of seasonings—sweet and spicy, salty, sour and bitter, hot and cool—that makes this simple soup so intriguing to the palate.
Gilbert gamely confronted bare, open-front pho stalls that had all the charm of abandoned carwashes and lowered his broad, 6-foot-1 frame onto tiny plastic stools that looked like overturned mop buckets. Nor was he fazed by the suspiciously unhygienic makeshift “kitchens” presided over by chatty, welcoming women who stooped over charcoal or propane burners as they reached into pots and sieves and balanced ladles of ingredients before portioning them into bowls.
In planning this adventure, I had found my way to the Web site of Didier Corlou (www.didiercorlou.com). A chef from Brittany who trained in France, he has cooked in many parts of the world and, having lived in Hanoi for the past 19 years, has become a historian of Vietnamese cuisine and its long-neglected native spices and herbs. Corlou and his wife, Mai, who is Vietnamese, run La Verticale, a casually stylish restaurant where he applies French finesse to traditional Vietnamese dishes and ingredients. I spent my first morning in Hanoi learning the ins and outs of pho while sipping Vietnamese coffee—a seductively sweet iced drink based on strong locally grown, French-brewed coffee beans and, improbably, syrupy canned condensed milk—in Corlou’s fragrant, shelf-lined shop, where he sells customized spice blends. The shop provides entry to the restaurant.
Chef Corlou regards Vietnamese cuisine as one of the most original and interesting he has experienced; he values its ingenuity with humble products, its emphasis on freshness, the counterplay of flavors and the harmonious fusion of foreign influences, most notably from China and France. The pho we know today, he told me, began as a soup in and around Hanoi just a little over 100 years ago. “It is the single most important dish,” he said, “because it is the basic meal of the people.”
Pho bo is an unintended legacy of the French, who occupied Vietnam from 1858 to 1954 and who indeed cooked pot-au-feu, a soup-based combination of vegetables and beef, a meat barely known in Vietnam in those days and, to this day, neither as abundant nor as good as the native pork. (Corlou imports his beef from Australia.) But just as North American slaves took the leavings of kitchens to create what we now celebrate as soul food, so the Vietnamese salvaged leftovers from French kitchens and discovered that slow cooking was the best way to extract the most flavor and nourishment from them. They adopted the French word feu, just as they took the name of the French sandwich loaf, pain de mie, for banh mi, a baguette they fill with various greens, spices, herbs, sauces, pork and meatballs. Vietnam is perhaps the only country in the Far East to bake Western-style bread.
“The most important part of the pho is the broth,” Corlou said, “and because it takes so long to cook, it’s difficult to make at home. You need strong bones and meat—oxtail and marrow-filled shinbones—and before being cooked they should be blanched and rinsed so the soup will be very clear. And you must not skim off all of the fat. Some is needed for flavor.”
The cooking should be done at an almost imperceptible simmer, or what cooks sometimes describe as a “smile.” (One instruction advises that the soup simmer overnight for at least 12 hours, with the cook staying awake to add water lest the broth reduce too much.) Only then does one pay attention to the width (about a quarter-inch) of the flat, silky rice noodles, and to the combination of greens, the freshness of the beef and, finally, to the golden-brown knots of fried bread, all added just moments before the pho is served. Despite his stringent rules, Corlou is not against the variations of pho that come with distance from Hanoi; in Saigon, far to the south, it’s closer to the pho usually found in the United States, sweetened with rock sugar and full of mung bean sprouts and herbs, both rarely seen in the north.
A tasting dinner that night at La Verticale included Philharmonic president Zarin Mehta and his wife, Carmen; Gilbert and his mother; pianist Emanuel Ax; and Eric Latzky, the orchestra’s director of communications. We were served about a dozen French-Vietnamese creations, including two haute phos, a rather mild one based on salmon with an astringent hint of coriander and another enriched with superb local foie gras, black mushrooms and crunchy cabbage.
The next day, Corlou guided a group of us through the teeming, winding aisles of the Hang Be market, close to willow-rimmed Hoan Kiem Lake, a habitat of Sunday strollers and early-morning practitioners of tai chi. He pointed out various fruits—among them seed-filled dragon fruit and russet, spiky-skinned rambutans—and introduced us to banana flowers, the pale mauve blossoms and creamy-white slivers of trunk shaved from newly sprouted banana trees. Dark gray, spotted snake-like fish swam in tanks, hard-shelled crabs writhed in their boxes, slices of pork sausages sizzled on grills and live rabbits and chickens plotted escapes from their cages. As lunchtime neared, market workers stretched out on cloths they draped over crates and mounds of produce and snoozed, their conical straw hats shielding their faces from light and flies. Hanging over all was the almost stifling fragrance of ripe tropical fruit, cut flowers and pungent spices, sharpened by the nose-twitching scents of nuoc mam sauce and medicinally sour-sweet lemon grass.
I sought pho recommendations from United States Ambassador Michael W. Michalak and his wife, Yoshiko. During a reception for the orchestra at the U.S. Embassy, a villa in the 20th-century palatial style, they introduced us to Do Thanh Huong, a local pho buff who owns two fashion gift shops named Tan My. With her recommendations added to Corlou’s, we expected easy success in our forays, and, when it came to pho ga, we had no problems.
But looking for pho bo at midday proved a mistake. Hungrier by the minute, we searched out such recommended pho redoubts as Pho Bo Ly Beo, Pho Bat Dan, Pho Oanh and Hang Var, only to find each shuttered tight. Thus we learned the hard way that the beefy broth is traditionally a breakfast or late-night dish, with shops opening between 6 and 8 a.m. and again around 9 or 10 at night.
The next day, Gilbert and I were disappointed by a pallid, salty and inept pho bo at a much-recommended branch of a slick, trendy Saigon chain, Pho24; we dubbed it McPho. For the rest of our days in Hanoi, we rose early to find excellent pho in the stalls that had been closed to us at lunch. We also discovered Spices Garden, a very good Vietnamese restaurant in the restored Sofitel Metropole Hanoi, the historic hotel once patronized by Graham Greene, W. Somerset Maugham and Charlie Chaplin. There a verdant, abundant pho bo is part of the lunchtime buffet (no surprise, since Didier Corlou was the chef at the hotel for 16 years, until 2007). On the second and final night of the Philharmonic’s engagement, the audience included a large number of children whose parents had brought them to hear the Brahms Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, with featured violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann. Tetsuji Honna, the Japanese music director of the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra, explained to me that the violin is the most popular instrument for children in Asia to learn.
After the concert, Honna and one of his violinists, Dao Hai Thanh, invited me to try some late-night pho in the old quarter of Hanoi around Tong Duy Tan Street. Here young Vietnamese gather at long tables at a variety of stalls where meats and vegetables are cooked over table grills or dipped into hot pots of seething broth.
Our destination was Chuyen Bo, a pho stall with stools so low that Honna had to pile three atop one another for me to sit on. The choice of ingredients was staggering: not only eight kinds of greens, tofu, soft or crisp noodles, but also various cuts of beef—oxtail, brisket, shoulder, kidneys, stomach, tripe, lungs, brains—plus cooked blood that resembled blocks of chocolate pudding, a pale pink meat described to me as “cow’s breast” (finally decoded as “udder”) and a rather dry, sinewy-looking meat that one of the workers, pointing to his groin, said was “from a man.” I was relieved to learn that the ingredient in question was a bull’s penis. I opted instead for a delicious if conventional pho of oxtail and brisket. But later I worried that I had missed an opportunity. Perhaps udder and penis pho might have made a more stirring, not to mention memorable, finale to my quest. Maybe next time. Pho better or pho worse.
Mimi Sheraton has been a food writer for over 50 years. She has written more than a dozen books, including the 2004 memoir Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life.
參考譯文：
去年10月，紐約愛樂樂團第一次在越南河內舉辦演奏會。開場曲目是輕快的越南國歌《進軍歌》，之后是雄壯的美國國歌《星條旗永不落》。觀眾席上衣著講究的越南人和幾個美國人肅立聆聽國歌時，難免懷著出乎意料和彼此尊重的心情。兩國一場惡戰多年以后，雙方的國人在宏偉的河內歌劇院內又坐在了一起。
愛樂樂團的新音樂總監阿蘭•吉爾伯特被問到演奏時在想什么的時候，回答說“嗯，確實，那是個非常偉大的時刻。不過，我不得不承認，演奏時還想著河粉。”
我和吉爾伯特或單獨或一起，歷時3天，走遍了河內大街小巷幾十家小吃攤，想嘗盡越南“國菜”——牛肉河粉的各種風味。不時有樂團其他成員加入我們，其中包括吉爾伯特的母親——洋子武部勤，洋子在日本出生，多年來一直是樂團的小提琴手。這個蓬勃發展的首都城市沒有紅綠燈，我們穿過川流不息的車流，津津有味地喝下一碗又一碗這種和日本拉面或中國撈面有些相像的越南美食。
43歲的吉爾伯特是著名的指揮家，在到處巡演的過程中，對美食產生了濃厚的興趣。得知他要在排練和授課的空余尋找最地道的越南米線時，我要求和他同行。作為美食作家，我癡迷于尋找美食，也因此深入偏遠地區。我和世界各地的人建立了持久友誼，也深深沉浸于那些地方的歷史和風土人情。
在河內尋找最美味米線的歷程再次給了我這樣的體驗。20世紀初越南是法國的保護國，那時西方人稱越南北部為“東京”，而包括其在內的廣闊地區就是“印度支那”。我和吉爾伯特行走在這個富有生機而蘊含著希望的城市，對重建后的歷史性地標建筑贊嘆有加。而吉爾伯特仍念念不忘如何找到一碗完美的越南河粉。
越南河粉的主料是用大米粉制成的細滑“面條”，配以羅勒、香菜、薄荷、細香蔥和水芹。牛肉河粉中的牛肉是切成薄片的生牛肉，點餐后用沸湯燙熟。雞肉河粉通常還會在沸湯里打一個雞蛋。牛肉河粉和雞肉河粉中都有的配料是新鮮蔬菜、干蔥姜、很辣的干辣椒、異國風味的肉桂和八角、帶著澀味的青檸檬或檸檬汁，佐料是一種以魚、蝦為原料發酵而成的調味醬汁——魚露。一碗河粉湯里融合了多種味道——酸、甜、辣、咸、苦，加上各種或涼或燙的食材，都使一碗看似平常的河粉蘊含著強烈而富有層次的味覺沖擊。
露天的河粉攤簡直就是個廢棄的洗車場，小塑料凳就像倒扣的拖把桶。不過吉爾伯特毫不介意，身材高大的他還蜷坐到了小矮凳上。攤主都是熱情健談的婦女，他們俯身越過煤爐或煤氣爐，用長柄勺從盆或篩中挖出湯料，勻到各個碗里。吉爾伯特對這貌似很不衛生的后廚談定自若。
開始越南之行前，我就瀏覽了Didier Corlou的網站。Corlou是來自法國布列塔尼的廚師，去過全世界很多地方。過去19年里他一直在河內，妻子——越南人阿麥經營一家時尚休閑餐廳 La Verticale。Corlou對越南飲食和長期被人忽視的越南香料、香草有深厚的研究，把傳統的越南菜式和精致的法式烹飪天衣無縫地融合到一起。我到河內后的第一個早晨就一直呆在Corlou的香料店，向他打聽河粉的方方面面，同時享受著越南咖啡。這種咖啡是用越南本地種植的法國咖啡豆沖泡而成的甜味冷飲，可能還會加入罐裝的濃縮牛奶。
香料店的貨架上擺滿了Corlou自制的香料調味包，香料店最里面就La Verticale餐廳的入口。Corlou認為在他體驗過的所有世界美食中，越南飲食是最奇特最有趣的之一。Corlou非常推崇越南飲食廉價卻不失精致、看重食材的新鮮、調和相反的味道、和諧融合以中國、法國為主的外國元素。他告訴我，我們現在所知的越南河粉是100年前才出現在河內的一種湯食。現在卻是最重要的飲食，因為河粉已經成為越南民眾的基本食物。
牛肉河粉來源自法國菜中的蔬菜牛肉濃湯。法國人1858年到1954年占領越南期間用蔬菜和牛肉熬制這樣的濃湯，那時的越南人甚至很少聽說過牛肉，即使到今天，牛肉在越南也很少，品質還不如當地豬肉。Corlou餐廳所用牛肉都是從澳大利亞進口。越南的很多飲食都源于法國，就像美國奴隸用廚房的剩菜創造出現在仍為人追捧的“靈魂食物”，越南人從法國占領者的廚房里撿拾剩菜后，再用慢火細燉以使其味道和營養最完全地釋放。著名的越南Banh mi三明治的淵源是法國的長棍三明治，越南人在Banh mi三明治里加入各種蔬菜、香料、香草、豬肉和肉丸作為餡料。越南也許是遠東地區唯一烘焙西式面包的國家。
Corlou說：“河粉最重要的就是湯。因為肉湯是用牛尾和充滿骨髓的棒子骨長時間煎熬制而成，一般家庭很難自制。熬制之前，牛肉要焯水，這樣熬好的牛肉湯才會澄清。牛油千萬不能完全去掉，不然湯里一定不能少了牛油的味道。”
餐館的服務員往裝好河粉和配料的碗里倒入熬制好的牛肉湯
熬湯時，火要盡可能小。廚師的建議是通宵熬制至少12小時。為防止熬干，中間要加水。這樣的一鍋牛肉湯才是吸引食客的關鍵，寬而滑的河粉、豐富的綠色菜蔬、新鮮的牛肉、都是點餐放到碗里，然后澆入牛肉湯。Corlou的要求很苛刻，不過他并不反對其他地方的河粉和河內的有所不同。越南南部城市西貢的河粉就和美國國內越南餐廳里的差不多，放入冰糖調味，而且配菜全是綠豆芽和香草。北方就很少看到這種做法。
Corlou為樂團成員準備了品嘗晚宴。菜品有十幾種法式越南菜，其中有兩種高級河粉。搭配三文魚的河粉口味比較清淡，帶著一絲香菜的苦澀；另外一種就很豐盛，配料有上好的當地鵝肝、黑蘑菇和脆脆的卷心菜。
第二天，Corlou帶領我們一群人參觀了還劍湖北邊的Hang Be Market，一個有很多曲折擁擠小巷的菜市場。Corlou給我們介紹了很多水果——果肉里全是種子的火龍果、果皮上長滿軟刺的紅毛丹......Corlou還帶我們認識了香蕉樹上淺紫色的花和從剛發芽的香蕉樹上砍下來的乳白色枝條。暗黑色帶有斑點蛇一樣的魚在水箱里游來游去，硬殼蟹在箱子里上下翻騰，豬肉腸在燒烤攤上滋滋冒油，不時還有活雞、兔子從籠子里跑出來。臨近午飯時間，市場的工人躺在覆蓋貨物的布上小睡，把錐形涼帽蓋在臉上，遮擋陽光和蒼蠅。市場里彌漫著成熟的熱帶水果、鮮切花和辛辣香料幾乎令人窒息的香味，還有魚露刺鼻的酸味和檸檬香茅酸甜的藥味。
我和樂團團員拜訪了美國大使邁克爾•W•米卡拉克，想從他那里得到些關于河粉的推薦。大使和夫人芳子在美國大使館——一棟20世紀宮殿式風格的別墅里接待了我們。我向大使和夫人征求他們對越南河粉的建議時，他們推薦了當地一個河粉師傅——開了兩家Tan My時尚禮品店的Do Thanh Huong。
有了米卡拉克大使和Corlou的推薦，我想我們尋找河內最美味河粉的計劃一定會成功。不過好事多磨，事實證明中午出去吃牛肉河粉就是個錯誤。饑腸轆轆的一群人沖向大使和Corlou推薦的每家河粉店——Pho Bo Ly Beo、 Pho Bat Dan、 Pho Oanh 和Hang Var，無一例外吃了閉門羹。我們終于明白了：牛肉河粉一般是早餐和夜宵時間才有，河粉店早上6點到8點營業之后要到晚上九十點鐘才會再次開門。
第二天我和吉爾伯特探訪了一家西貢河粉連鎖店——Pho24，整潔明亮的店面里，咸而乏味、毫無風味的牛肉河粉實在讓人大失所望。接下來在河內的四天里，我們每天早早起來，去巷子里尋找美味的河粉，因為到中飯時間它們就全部收攤了。我們還在重建后的河內索菲特大都會酒店里發現一家一流的越南餐廳Spices Garden，這里的午間自助餐提供豐盛的牛肉河粉。愛樂樂團在河內的第二場也是最后一場演出時，聽眾里有很多兒童，父母帶他們來欣賞勃拉姆斯的D大調小提琴與管弦樂協奏曲。首席小提琴演奏家是弗蘭克皮特齊默爾曼。越南國家交響樂團的音樂總監，日本著名指揮家本名徹次告訴我們：亞洲的孩子最熱衷于學習的樂器就是小提琴。
演奏會結束后，本名徹次和越南國家交響樂團的一個小提琴手Dao Hai Thanh邀請我們去河內舊城區Tong Duy Tan 街道的夜間大排檔吃河粉。很多越南年輕人正圍坐在各種攤位前的長條桌邊，把肉類或蔬菜放到自助燒烤架上或浸入沸騰的火鍋湯底里。
我們要去的攤位是Chuyen Bo，這個河粉攤的凳子很矮，本名徹次不得不把三個凳子疊在一起讓我坐。河粉里的配料出奇的豐富，除了八種綠色蔬菜、豆腐、米粉，還有各種牛肉和牛雜——牛尾、牛胸肉、牛肩肉、牛腰子、牛肚、牛百葉、牛肺、牛腦、巧克力布丁樣的熟牛血；他們告訴我一種淡粉紅色肉片其實是“牛乳房”，還有一條很干燥、滿是肌腱的肉。伙計指著自己下面比劃說這是公牛身上的肉。我一下就明白了，這條肉其實是牛鞭。我要求老板給我換了一碗傳統的牛尾牛腩河粉。雖然這碗河粉也很美味，不過后來我懷疑自己是否錯失了一次機會。以一碗牛尾牛腩河粉結束我的尋找河內最美味河粉之旅也算難忘，不過或許一碗牛乳房牛鞭河粉不止是難忘，而是令人心潮澎湃呢。下次，無論如何，一定要嘗嘗那碗撩人的河粉。
原文鏈接：http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/Searching-for-Hanois-Ultimate-Pho.html?c=y&page=1
