Food Culture Between Vietnam and America

Around the globe there are many different types of unique and delicious food. In America it’s extremely diverse, people around the world come to America to share and spread their cultural food so that Americans can enjoy. There are several Vietnamese restaurants in America that Americans love to visit once or twice every week. Vietnamese food are usually defined as inauthentic in America. Vietnamese food in the U.S are highly different than the ones in Vietnam. In Vietnam, the food texture, taste, and color are authentic because the ingredients are freshly made. Moreover, in America the spices and recipes are not like the original ingredients. The taste and color of the food is exceedingly essential because if people come in and eat, they wouldn’t want to pay for foods that are plain boring, colorless, and tasteless. That would be awful.

One of the important parts of Hmong culture is their food. The Hmong staple food is white rice. Their diets consist of a variety of vegetables, fish, meat and traditional

America and Vietnam are two opposite countries with many differences. These countries are on completely different continents so of course they both will be completely different from each other. Their differences are what shows how America is a better country to live in. But on the other hand, Vietnam may not be a good country to live it, it is a lovely place to visit on a vacation. There are several similarities and differences between both America and Vietnam to show why America is the better place to live in.

The first noticeable difference are the kinds of foods. Some of american foods are, burgers, hotdogs, and more others. Then the most popular cambodian foods are, pho, spring rolls, and rice with different flavored soups. A normal american breakfast would be something like, pancakes, and eggs with bacon. Traditional cambodian breakfasts are, pho and a liquid rice soup with dry fish called, babawl. Most americans eat steak, burgers, and rice with chicken for dinner. While cambodians eat curry in banana leaves called amok, and the most popular food kuy tieu, which is a noodle soup which meats and vegetables. Now my favorite, the desserts. There’s the american desserts like, ice cream, cake, and cookies. But cambodian desserts are much different. There’s this sweet juice with noodles that are similar to spaghetti, there’s taro ice cream, then my personal favorite is the mochi ice creams. They are shaped in a circle, with dough wrapped around the ice cream.

Being Chinese-Vietnamese American, I have always seen myself as being very unique. In addition to celebrating the Western holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day, my family celebrates our mixture of Chinese and Vietnamese cultures with two other big holidays: Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. Although many cultures celebrate holidays differently, one thing is always consistent in most of these celebrations: the important role of food.

After doing all my research on the Vietnamese food, I now want to travel there and try it all!! In the 1800’s, during the Nguyën Dynasty, the French established a colony in Vietnam and they brought along their own food, which shortly became a huge influence on the Vietnamese cuisine. Foods like carrots, potatoes, lettuce, and others are all a few of the ingredients the French introduced to the Vietnamese that they now use on a daily basis in their cuisines. Coffee and baguettes are two of the mostly influences foods introduced by the French, along with several others (Wiens, Mark, 2013).

     Vietnam has a very rich and cultural diverse background dating all the way back to 1066 when William the Conqueror invaded and paved the way for English colonization.

The emergence of the Vietnamese people can be traced to the fifth or sixth millennium B.C. The Vietnamese or Kinh ethnic group was formed in a region that is now northern Vietnam and southern China, which is the main ethnic group in the country, accounting for about eighty six percent of the Vietnamese population. Modern day Vietnam was established through French colonialism which led to an outburst of problems between the French and Vietnam. When the French left Vietnam in 1954, numerous Vietnamese people migrated to France. North Vietnam began a policy to forcefully reconcile the country with South Vietnam. However, conflict arose which introduced America to fight against Vietnam in the 1960s. As a result of the division between North and South Vietnam, nearly

Three quarters of Vietnam is made up of mountains and hills, and densely forested highlands, with level land covering no more than 20 percent of the area.(Vietnam) Vietnam is an “S” shaped country stretching over 1,000 miles. It is divided into four geographic regions the highlands and the Red River Delta in the north, the Truong Son Mountains form the Central Highlands running almost the full length of Vietnam along its borders with Laos and Cambodia, the coastal lowlands, and the Mekong River Delta in the south.(Vietnam) The geographical aspects of Vietnam allowed for physical and mental exhaustion, fear of location, and fear of safety in the The Things They Carried .

Another big difference of both countries is food. Vietnamese foods include: rice or noodles, meat, and vegetables in every meal. Almost every Vietnamese meal is sit down rather than grab and go. Vietnamese cuisine mostly focuses on varieties of vegetables and herbs in every dish. A Vietnamese dinner normally includes white rice, a small plate of typical sauce, a bowl of soup, a dish of vegetables, and two dishes of animal meat, which could be pork, beef, fish, and chicken. The vegetables can be made with plenty of different methods: boil, steam, fry, grill, or sometimes we eat raw. The main spices Vietnamese people use to make their food are garlics, peppers, sugar, monosodium glutamate, chicken bouillon, and fish sauce. That makes a harmonious mixture of sweet, spicy, salty taste.

The traditional view the Vietnamese have on their social duties dervies on more a folklore explaining the origin of Vietnam. “The mountain-meet-ocean geographical characteristic of Vietnam is significant to the cultural identity of Vietnamese women, because the culture associates mountains with fatherhood and the ocean with motherhood…Vietnamese associate their myth of origin with the reconciled conflict of a divorce, where Mother, whose nature was that of water, took the form of a bird and flew to the mountains, and Father, whose nature was that of the mountains, took the

This paper will discuss the multifaceted relationships among food, and culture. I will be looking at the relationships people have with food, and explore how this relationship reveals information about them. Their food choices of individuals and groups, can reveal their ideals, likes and dislikes. Food choices tell the stories of where people have travelled and who they have met along the way.

Vietnam has variety types of food for every occasion, from an everyday meal to New Year’s festivities food. The flavor of the Vietnamese food varies from sweet, sour, salty, and spicy. However, rice, the

On one hand, Vietnamese gastronomy is not just about Vietnamese food; the gastronomes can try Chinese, Thailand, French food and many other dishes from different countries in the world right here in the Vietnamese restaurants. It is really a paradise of food bringing tourists to Vietnam. On the other hand, many Vietnamese restaurants located abroad contribute to present the image of Vietnamese gastronomy to the world. Misses Wendy Chan, an expert from Definity Marketing assumes that Vietnamese food is the most fashionable choice for the Americans.

For many people in Thailand today, food has become a very important aspect of any holiday celebration and special occasions. In the American western cuisine today, a regular restaurant quality meal consists of appetizers, followed by the main course, and ends with a serving of dessert, where each person would order his or her own food. In Thailand it’s the complete opposite to the American cuisine where they would never have any structure in their meals like beginning with appetizers and ending with dessert. In Thai cuisine the number of dishes is based on the number of people there are around the table, so for example if there are ten people, then ten dishes would be order. One interesting aspect about Thai cuisine is that everyone sitting around the table would equally share their food, so that no one would get stuck with eating the same plate of food, everyone gets the opportunity to enjoy the unique flavors of all the different dishes. The main reason that the Thais share their food is because they believe that it is bad luck for them to eat alone and they see that each meal is a big celebration of social and friendly interactions.