The Way to My Heart is Through My Stomach

Thirty years after the fall of Saigon, Tuyet Huynh remembers a childhood in Viet Nam and Minnesota.

By Tuyet Catrina Huynh

After waking up to one of my dad’s records – Louis Armstrong, Connie Francis, Marlene Dietrich singing “La Vie en Rose,” tango or cha-cha – my day began with helping my mother prepare breakfast. We made Phô, my favorite Vietnamese dish. It was always a big production. First, boil the beef bones in a large pot of water. Add salt, black pepper, fish sauce, sliced ginger and onions, rice cooking wine, a spoonful of sugar and dried star anise. Let it brew. When the broth is ready, pour it over thinly sliced raw beef and cooked rice noodles. The hot broth will cook the raw meat. At the table, squeeze lime, add bean sprouts, chives, basil leaves, cilantro, hot chili paste and a spoonful of Hoisin plum sauce into the bowl.

“Viola, bon appetite,” my mother would say.

Though I had become “Americanized”—I spoke English effortlessly, ate everything on my plate, and liked American boys—Vietnamese cuisine brought me to a place that I longed to remember and loved. The country, not the war, is what I desperately tried to recall—the scent of jasmine, the sound of firecrackers during the Tet celebration, and the outdoor movie theaters that screened American classics. I was almost four years old when I left Viet Nam with my parents and older sister. As we waited inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon on April 30, 1975, the day that Saigon fell to the Viet Cong, my dad hunted the grounds in search of food and drink for the day. We had no idea that hours later we would be airlifted out of the embassy gates by helicopter. Those goods dad scored would aid us in our survival aboard the massive cargo ship packed with refugees sitting shoulder to shoulder and headed for Guam.

My dad once said that the food of a people defines a place and its people. As one travels from southern to central to northern Viet Nam, the dishes distinguish the customs, tradition and dialect of the region, much like hosting fish fries in the south of the U.S. or eating lutefisk in Minnesota or clam chowder in New England. In Viet Nam it would be customary to find Phô sold on the streets in Hanoi, Bún Bò Huế noodle soup in the old imperial city, and Banh Mi, a French-style baguette sandwich filled with pâté and hot peppers in Saigon.

Just the smell of Phô cooking gave me great comfort, particularly when I was tired, sick, and especially during the bitter cold winters in Minnesota, where we eventually settled after spending time in Guam, the Philippines, and Florida refugee camps.

The kitchen was the heart of the home in our 25-year-old subsidized Minnesota house that my father had won from a HUD raffle. Just about everything took place in our kitchen. We entertained dinner guests there, since we had turned the dining room into a bedroom. The church donated the wooden table with metal legs and matching chairs to us when we arrived from Viet Nam.

The back door opens directly there, and as I entered, regardless of the time of day, there was my father to greet me and ask me if I would like something to eat. A distinct smell prevails throughout the house. When we went outside this odor followed us, clinging to our clothes and hair. I’ll never forget the time my boyfriend leaned towards me to give me a goodnight kiss, and he said, “Hmm… you smell like food.” I was mortified.

Sometimes, however, the kitchen was not such a pleasant place. It was also used for disciplinary purposes. When we got into trouble my father would make us kneel on the hard floor, with our arms folded across our chests for as much as an hour at a time. We weren’t allowed to lean back on our heels, for if we did he would extend the length of our punishment. This form of reprimand was common practice in Viet Nam. We learned all too quickly that it wasn’t worth disobeying our parent’s wishes.

The kitchen was, and still is, “communication central.” The only phone is there and it also holds the family’s archives – thirty years of my parents collecting documents, notes, letters and articles on each of their three daughters. To the left of the stove hangs a poem I wrote in the third grade, now faded and covered in grease stains. To the right of the back door is an article displaying my older sister in her ball gown and tiara after winning the title of St. Paul Winter Carnival Princess. On another cupboard door hangs a letter congratulating my younger sister for her outstanding artistic abilities and winning first place in a local coloring contest. This makeshift wallpaper included even mundane notes like, “Fuddy duddy, will be home around 9:30. Love you, Be’ba,” and “Mom, thanks for the money. You’re the greatest. Miss you guys. Luv, Be’hai.” As a teenager, I used to be so embarrassed by my father’s “collection,” but now, as an adult, I feel, perhaps as my father does, a sense of pride and love for my family, our hardships, perseverance and successes as I read each word.

Today, I commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the Viet Nam War and the start of our new life in the States and remember my childhood as I transitioned from one place to another. I remember my parents describing all of us flying over the city of Saigon that final day and my dad realizing that it would be the last time he would see the lights of his beloved city. And the girl next to me on the ship to Guam who got sick all over my bag—the one cherished item that made me feel safe at a time of chaos. I recall my mother weeping at the thought of never having said “goodbye” to her mother and sister when we hastily left Viet Nam, and the offerings of food and tea made to my deceased paternal grandmother a year later after receiving news of her murder by a grandson. I remember the apartment complex bully who taunted us on the playground, and hearing the racial slur “chink” for the first time. I remember the excitement surrounding the birth of my younger sister, family picnics in the backyard of our new home, huge cucumbers that we grew and entered in the county fair, and the snow castles we built the first time we got twelve feet of snow. I recall standing in front of my family during dinner and pretending to be an opera star, singing at the top of my lungs. I can hear my father now calling each of us daughters by our pet names, in order of birth (baby 2, 3 and last), to come into the kitchen as he prepared to serve the soup, “Be’hai, Be’ba, Be’tu, Phô xong roi.” Breakfast was ready.

Tuyet Catrina Huynh works at the Close Up Foundation as Associate Producer for the weekly public affairs show "Close Up on C-SPAN". She majored in Environmental and Media Studies at Wellesley College. Born in Viet Nam, Tuyet (meaning "snow") grew-up in a bi-racial (Vietnamese-French), bi-religious household (Buddhist-Catholic). She lives in Washington, DC and is a freelance writer for the online Vietnamese-American paper, Nguoi-Viet.