Eating Viet Nam

Starred review from February 9, 2015
In this wry, entertaining food and travel memoir, journalist and “Noodlepie” blogger Holliday escapes a future career as an office drone by expatriating to Vietnam, where he makes his living as an English teacher. His true passion, however, is the quest for the best and most interesting street food in Ha Noi. At first, locals only point him to “big, fancy-schmancy” hotels “serving western, ‘Asian’—whatever that is.” But upon further digging, Holliday unearths the pleasures of street-stall bit tet—“A thin slice of beef comes with three (count them) potato fries, a token sprinkling of green onions, a fried egg, and a ball of peppery coagulated cow blood”—pho, and, of course, bahn mi, the Vietnamese baguette sandwich, which merits its own chapter. Holliday’s lively chronicle of the beginnings of his blog, Noodlepie, at the dawn of the blogosphere, sets the stage for his successful transition from English teacher to freelance writer. Writing in an inviting style with ample humor, and using his intricate knowledge of street food and life in Vietnam, Holliday keeps the pages turning with stories of food that is delicious—the search for the perfect bun cha, “the astounding lunchtime BBQ pork and noodles”—and more questionable: “As the pig’s uterus landed on the blue plastic table in front of me, I knew I’d made a mistake.”

January 1, 2015
A celebration of Vietnamese street food, with some offerings that will make readers squirm as much as the author initially did.This is the adventure-travel version of a food memoir, one that puts Vietnamese food in fresh perspective yet ultimately proves more repetitive than exotic. What began as a blog while Holliday was teaching English in Southeast Asia-living in Korea as well as Hanoi and Saigon-still retains some elements of that form, with a penchant for lists and a tendency to revisit the same themes and make the same points. Small restaurants and food stalls that serve only one dish tend to prepare it very well, and there's often an inverse correlation between the cleanliness of the preparation and the quality of the food. Ask a native Vietnamese for a recommendation, and he'll often tell you where tourists like to go, or what places are really popular, rather than divulging where he thinks the food is best. Eat and run is the expectation for uncomfortable street diners, since lingering hurts profits. Yet most of the cooks and proprietors, operating at the margins of legality, proved cooperative and helpful to Holliday, though almost uniformly, they had little idea how many bowls of pho they serve in a day. They know that they've made money when they've sold out and generally lost money when they have food left over. Though he initially shocks the reader with "boiled uterus" and " pig's intestine," he quickly explains this as "the unlikely beginning of a long-running affair with Viet Nam and Vietnamese food. It was just unfortunate that I'd gotten started at both the wrong end of the menu and the animal." Ultimately, he writes, "[s]treet food is a bit like smoking. It can seem somewhat disgusting at first, it takes a little time to get into it, but before too long, you're addicted." Readers are likely to run out of patience before the author has run out of pages.

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Starred review from February 15, 2015

Anthony Bourdain regularly proclaims his love for Vietnam, so it's no surprise that one of the books for his Ecco imprint should chronicle the foods of this country. When Holliday moved from England to Hanoi to teach English, another expat advised him to find a hobby, and the author realized his passion was discovering great food. But Holliday wasn't interested in eating at the restaurants Westerners frequented. His fascination was in the street fare that the Vietnamese ate. Holliday takes readers on a gastronomical tour of the many provisions on offer, from the relatively tame--pho and banh mi--to the more bizarre, such as cobra and pig's uterus, and advises readers on what to look for when choosing local food. VERDICT With a personal, often humorous tone, Holliday does an exceptional job of bringing the heat, noise, and plethora of scents and flavors of Vietnam to life, and this book will definitely spark the curiosity and appetite of all readers.--Melissa Stoeger, Deerfield P.L., IL

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