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Graham Holliday

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Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table Kindle Edition

by Graham Holliday (Author), Anthony Bourdain (Foreword) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 155 ratings

Editors' pick Best Cookbooks, Food & Wine

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A journalist and blogger takes us on a colorful and spicy gastronomic tour through Viet Nam in this entertaining, offbeat travel memoir, with a foreword by Anthony Bourdain.

Growing up in a small town in northern England, Graham Holliday wasn’t keen on travel. But in his early twenties, a picture of Hanoi sparked a curiosity that propelled him halfway across the globe. Graham didn’t want to be a tourist in an alien land, though; he was determined to live it. An ordinary guy who liked trying interesting food, he moved to the capital city and embarked on a quest to find real Vietnamese food. In Eating Viet Nam, he chronicles his odyssey in this strange, enticing land infused with sublime smells and tastes.

Traveling through the back alleys and across the boulevards of Hanoi—where home cooks set up grills and stripped-down stands serving sumptuous fare on blue plastic furniture—he risked dysentery, giardia, and diarrhea to discover a culinary treasure-load that was truly foreign and unique. Holliday shares every bite of the extraordinary fresh dishes, pungent and bursting with flavor, which he came to love in Hanoi, Saigon, and the countryside. Here, too, are the remarkable people who became a part of his new life, including his wife, Sophie.

A feast for the senses, funny, charming, and always delicious, Eating Viet Nam will inspire armchair travelers, curious palates, and everyone itching for a taste of adventure.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Holliday writes with exhiliration…[his] loving, laddish descriptions will make gonzo gourmands salivate.” — The New York Times Book Review

From the Back Cover

“Graham Holliday is one of the great gastronauts, a charming and intrepid try-anything explorer who makes the rest of us food writers feel hopelessly inadequate (and woefully underfed). You’d be a fool to delve into Viêt Nam’s spectacular cuisine without him as your guide.”—Peter J. Lindberg, editor at large, Travel & Leisure A journalist takes us on a colorful and spicy gastronomic tour through Viêt Nam in this entertaining, offbeat travel memoir

Growing up in a small town in central England, Graham Holliday wasn’t keen on travel. But in his early twenties, he saw a picture of Hà Nội that sparked his curiosity and propelled him halfway across the globe. An ordinary guy who liked trying interesting food, he moved to the capital city and embarked on a quest to find real Vietnamese food. In Eating Việt Nam, he chronicles his odyssey in this enticing, unfamiliar land infused with sublime smells and tastes.

Funny, charming, and always delicious, Eating Việt Nam will inspire armchair travelers, those with curious palates, and everyone itching for a taste of adventure.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00L7WJWTU
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Anthony Bourdain/Ecco; Reprint edition (March 17, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 17, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4790 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 352 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #680,860 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #153 in Southeast Asian Cooking, Food & Wine
- #185 in Biographies & Memoirs of Chefs
- #311 in Gastronomy Essays (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 155 ratings

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Linda Dickson

Must read for any one who likes to travel to distant locations, or wish they could.

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2015

Verified Purchase

Most of us will not get a chance to travel to remote locations, if we did we would most likely look for anything familiar missing the whole purpose of the trip. In this book, we are not only invited to the taste and smell of another world, we are invited to sit right next to the author in small plastic chairs, as he gags and savors his way though local food shacks. You might wish you missed the section as he describes the texture of pig uterus, because you almost feel and taste it. Don't worry though, most of the time you will wish you were there as he describes the many pleasures of various soups like Pho and others too hard to spell here. This book is great because you get a first hand tour into the back ally's, the side streets, and the main drag food shacks you might avoid, places a tour guide would never take you.

If you ever do get a chance to travel to Vietnam read this book first. You will want to find as many small alley eateries you can because the author makes these places all too familiar. If you never go you will feel like you have been there. At a minimum, the flavors of American Vietnamese food take on a new dimension. You not only learn about what is in the food but also that there are differences between how the same dishes are prepared between Saigon and Ha Noi. Now that I have read this book I can't help but wonder now how close the Vietnamese food here is to what Graham Holiday was eating. Can I taste the difference between North and South? Perhaps I should just ask where they are from.

2 people found this helpful

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Garry

Great, But There's Another Book To Be Written

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2015

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As a Vietnam visitor beginning in 1996, and a former semi-expat there, I have huge respect for Graham's work and for his former blog Noodlepie. What a great thing he's done in uncovering the culinary delights of Vietnamese food and in particular, the "street food" of the (formerly) ubiquitous carts and streetside sellers of Saigon. (As an aside, in my early trips there, I always ate from the street sellers and sat on their teeny plastic stools without hesitation, and like Graham I was normally the only Westerner at any given cart or hole-in-the-wall restaurant. But in no way did I do this with the focus and determination that Graham did with Noodlepie.)

In any case, this book is a departure from those excellent exploratory missions. It's more of a story about how Graham came to develop the Noodlepie blog, and why. For me - a reader of the blog for years - it's an interesting background story and it may also be very interesting to those not familiar with Noodlepie. It's very well written, engaging, and provides a lot of insight into the cuisine of Vietnam, particularly what makes it so unique and so great.

Unfortunately - and as Graham anticipates in the book - most of the streetside food sellers of downtown Saigon have been pushed off the streets and sidewalks and into storefronts or restaurants if they're to be found anywhere at all. That's a shame - although Vietnamese of my acquaintance think it's a good thing and that ridding the downtown streets of Ma and Pa food carts makes the city more advanced and "sophisticated". Still, on a very recent trip I very much missed the early morning pho carts at the back of the Hotel Rex, and I couldn't find a decent streetside bahn mi anywhere in District 1. Truly disappointing, and something that Graham discusses in this book.

But all is not lost, and there's a good book or blog to be written yet again. Because outside of Saigon's District 1, and venturing further into the ex-urban and rural streets of Southern Vietnam, there remains a thriving and ubiquitous street food market that offers everything and anything formerly offered in Saigon, and much that is not. I kind of wish that Graham had ventured 20 kilometers outside of Saigon to write about those places, which as before are ubiquitous, awesomely good, and cheap. There is little question that the people of Vietnam still love excellent and tasty cuisine. I wish Graham had written a little more about those places.

9 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Fun book for foodies

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2024

Verified Purchase

My friends are foodies that are planning a vacation in Vietnam. This book was the perfect birthday gift to get them excited and prepared for the trip.

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maloneranger

Entertaining, Informative, Passionate.

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2016

Verified Purchase

Whether it is your first time in Viet Nam or your next time, this is a guide that can unlock some of the mysteries of Vietnamese street food. Entertaining, informative and passionate, the author does a wonderful job of boldly going down the alleyways and peeking under the pot lids that many are too intimidated to do themselves. I have traveled to Viet Nam and have been lucky enough to have patient and informative local guides to show me the good, the bad and the quintessential dishes of this vibrant culture. This book brought back amazing tastes, warm encounters and funny faux pas I have experienced over the years. For better and for worse, I am richer for the experiences and flavors of my travels in Viet Nam. I feel the same about this book. Thank you Mr. Holliday! I am going to Viet Nam this Fall with my wife and a niece who have never been there and I am re-reading the book to take notes on specific foods and locations in Hanoi. The places might change but I share the authors wish that the menu will be eternal. Chuc suc khoe!

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Amazon Customer

the storytelling is ok and the food descriptions are great. The problem is there's no real story arc

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2016

Verified Purchase

I started off really enjoying this book. During the first quarter, the storytelling is ok and the food descriptions are great. The problem is there's no real story arc. Instead, it is kind of just a flat line of him wandering down some alley way to find a new or best version of a delicious dish in a dirty kitchen, over and over again. By the end this formula gets kind of old. Still, I would recommend this book if you like travel and food, especially since there is a dearth of such writing. And I would give another one of his books a chance to see if the storytelling improved.

2 people found this helpful

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