A Fat Purple Fig

I once spent valuable time with a person who believed the sole purpose of life is to ‘work out who you are’. I’m not sure if I’m achieving that, but I do know I spend at least as much time thinking about everything I do, as I spend actually doing it. This is never more apparent than when I am alone, and have a pre-conceived idea of who I should be in in that particular moment. Who, for example, visits restaurants that have a Michelin star?

Not me (according to me).

Anan Saigon has been awarded Ho Chi Minh City’s first and only Michelin star. It is virtually around the corner from where we are staying, in Quan 1, and I have a long-booked reservation. I notify them early that I will be dining alone, and nervously locate the narrow gap in the wet-market alleyway that leads to its glass front doors. The interior is everything that unsettles me; dim, elegant, sophisticated. I am fortified by having done everything right.

I have arrived punctually for the Chef’s Tasting Menu; the ‘Homage to a New Vietnam’, the ‘culinary journey from North to South’, the ‘fake fusion Vietnamese’ (Hieu, 2023). To be clear, this meal is a big deal for me. I am investing in an experience that isn’t generally a part of my world (if you don’t count cooking shows and pithy quotes about food being art). Art, it undoubtedly is. However, this elevation can be accompanied by a sense of inaccessibility for the over-thinker (and the under-financed). Perhaps the roots of aversion spring from misplaced, historical respect for the gentry.

God forbid I should use the wrong fork.

I am bustled into a lift with a server carrying two bowls of dark beans, from whose centres delicate, edible, cylinders protrude. I don’t feel smart casual, I worry that I don’t have a backup credit card, and I am perspiring. I am given a choice of stools around a small dining area, lit with a colour-changing sign that reads ‘Pot Au Pho’, and choose poorly under pressure. For the next section of time, my mind does little else but rehearse my request for a change. Ah, well. The benefit of being near the doorway is that I am also near this chef, who maintains a trio of simmering pots on an incongruous, electric stovetop. I sneak photos of him in my spare time.

Someone soon appears with my very own bowl of dark beans, complete with its own delicate, edible cylinder. I taste thoughtfully, attempting to detect the rice paddy herbs in my Saigonese amuse bouche, but the cohesion allows me only an almost-undetectable moan. It’s like eating a miniature, tuna ice-cream cone, but way better than that sounds.

I am determined to achieve RELAXATION (forget about the fucking seat!), which will undoubtedly assist me me in distinguishing flavours. Alas, I forget to photograph the second course (a spring roll of sorts), and can only tell you that it was ‘yummy’. I feel like Andy Allen.

This salmon banh nhung is the pick of the night…if being pretty, delicious, and slightly-stressful-to-eat are the criteria. My thoughts right now?

‘F*ck, I like salmon.’
‘F*ck, I like dill.’
‘F*ck, I hope it doesn’t break and fall from my mouth.‘

Someone takes the seat I have been coveting. I feel better about my not-smart casual, having detected that a nearby guest is wearing shorts, and that they and their dining companion vape on the balcony between courses. I feel better about losing the seat, too, but only because it has ceased to be an option.

Lack of choice + wine = steadily-increasing calm. The chef-on-show is lovely, so I relax into surreptitious observation of his process.

The next course is accompanied by this cover of Kylie Minogue’s ‘I Cant Get You Out Of My Head’. It is positively sultry, which likely contributes to the almost-faux-pas to come. I am instructed to eat one end of the La Petit Be Banh Mi, freshen my palate with the carrot, then approach the meat section, no holds barred…not in so many words.

I am on a food adventure – I bite (is anyone checking?), nibble the carrot (is this actually for eating?), then launch into its wagyu centre.

It is so good, I lick my fingers, then gaze at the tiny bit of cream left on the paper, desperate to scoop it up with my fingertip.

It has become the new chair.

‘Artichoke’ rounds out the first half of the meal. I love one-word course names. ‘You can eat the leaves,’ the server tells me, ‘but not all of them.’ Pray tell, sweet server, where is the line? I’m not getting sprung munching inedible leaves, so I abstain. Later, in the elevator, I strike up a conversation with a fellow diner, who declares ‘the mussels’, immediately after being asked his favourite course.

The vegetables always get shafted.

The change from white to red wine comes a cropper when the server asks if I would like to try [insert unpredictable red wine here]. I must have looked mortified, because she soon abandoned that suggestion, and brought me the Grenache Syrah recommended for the second half of the menu. The curve balls, they just keep coming, don’t they? I freshen my palate with a glorious little ball of sorbet, sip my Syrah, and mind my business.

Stand By Me is playing as the server delivers me a singular wonder, in the guise of food. ‘Bun Cha Bourdain’ is accompanied by a shot of cold jasmine beer in order ‘to enjoy the experience in a similar way Bourdain and Obama did when they visited Hanoi in 2018.’ It is the pick of the night, if the criteria is ‘I’m about to cry, but I’m not sure why.’

It isn’t my affection for media-packaged emotion, by the way…or the wine.

It’s the human-ness of it all.

I eat the next course, the black cod, listening to Karen Carpenter singing Close to You A correlation has sprung up between the combination of wine and music, and my preparedness to eat with enthusiasm. This is the first course for which I spiral into heavy breathing and spoon tapping, in an effort to scrape up every bit of that vibrant green. It occurs to me that it’s too late for delicacy anyway. I mean, I’ve just wiped away tears while toasting Anthony Bourdain over a beer shot.

‘Bring it on,’ I think to myself.

It’s time for the one-bite pho.

I have read about it. After all, you can’t place a single spoon before someone and call it ‘pho’ without attracting attention. It arrives beneath a cloche, removed at the table, with a theatrical, smoky, flourish. What a show off. I gaze at it for a little while, before lifting the spoon and sliding it into my mouth.

This is where things go awry.

For some reason, I bite down on the one-bite pho, as opposed to recognising (like anyone who has human thought) that this wobbly bauble has a liquid centre. Consequently, it spurts out of my mouth, spattering droplets over the menu, the bench, and, I suspect, the resident chef. Thank goodness I laugh. Any earlier in the experience, and I might have just crept home.

The Australians make an appearance in the final savoury course of the night, Lamb Gia Cay Style. It takes me ages to eat, because I become committed to coating each carefully-cut piece of lamb with all three of the ‘sauces’ on my plate, and lifting it to my mouth WITHOUT dripping.

I am truly living on the edge.

Give me a choice between dessert and another savoury course, and I will go the savoury, each and every time. I have long suspected that this is because I hate final episodes. I’m always in the market for more; another course, another taste, another glass. I like to keep my options open.

I enjoy this little coconut mouthful of loveliness, but it is the petit fours that capture my imagination. My server instructs me to eat them as follows: ‘the strawberry, the gooseberry, the chocolate, then the macaron.’ Aha, another adventure!

I taste them, one after another.

When I arrive at the macaron, I take a final image of my hand, holding it. It is divine. I plan to ask about the flavour, because I know the taste, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like eating a memory.

I decide not to ask. After all, it’s all about the moments.