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The New York Philharmonic orchestra opened its historic first concert in Hanoi this past October with a lilting rendition of the Vietnamese national anthem, Quoc ca Viet Nam (“Armies of Vietnam, Forward”), followed by the more spirited strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Standing at attention for both in an atmosphere that can only be described as electric, the audience of fashionably dressed Vietnamese and a few Americans could hardly fail to sense both irony and respect as the once-bitter adversaries came together in the grandiose Hanoi Opera House built by the French in 1911.
Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic’s new music director, was later asked what he had been thinking as he was conducting. “Well, of course, getting it right for a pretty big moment,” he said. “But also, I have to admit, there were a few mental flashes of pho.”
For three days, Gilbert and I, separately and together, had scoured dozens of stalls lining both the broad avenues and the tight back alleys of Hanoi, seeking out versions of the lusty beef noodle soup that is Vietnam’s national dish. We were joined intermittently by various orchestra members, including Gilbert’s Japanese-born mother, Yoko Takebe, who has been a violinist with the Philharmonic for many years. Between dodging motorbikes and cars that streamed unimpeded by stoplights—an amenity missing from the burgeoning capital—we slurped bowl after bowl of Vietnam’s answer to Japan’s ramen and China’s lo mein.
In his travels, the 43-year-old maestro has become quite a food buff. When I learned that he planned to spend time between rehearsals and master classes seeking authentic pho on its native turf, I asked to tag along. Both of us were aware of the culinary rage pho has lately become in the United States, as Vietnamese restaurants flourish across the country—especially in Texas, Louisiana, California, New York and in and around Washington, D.C. The noodle-filled comfort food seems well suited to the current economy. (In the United States, you can get a bowl of pho for $4 to $9.) As a food writer, I’ve had an enduring obsession with food searches. They have taken me to obscure outposts, led to lasting friendships around the world and immersed me in local history and social customs.
And so it proved with pho, as Gilbert and I went about this throbbing, entrepreneurial city, admiring restored early-20th-century architectural landmarks built during the French protectorate, when the country was called Tonkin and the region was known as Indochina. Gilbert willingly agreed to an ambitious itinerary, which we punctuated with dueling wordplay—“Phobia,” “It’s what’s pho dinner,” “pho pas”— as we sought out the most authentic, beef-based pho bo or the lighter, chicken-based pho ga. Alas, our puns were based on the incorrect American pronunciation, “foe.” In Vietnamese, it is somewhere between “fuh” and “few,” almost like the French feu, for fire, as in pot-au-feu, and thereby hangs a savory shred of history.
We chopsticked our way through slim and slippery white rice noodles, green and leafy tangles of Asian basil, sawtooth coriander, peppermint, chives and fern-like cresses. For pho bo, we submerged slivers of rosy raw beef in the scalding soup to cook just milliseconds before we consumed them. Pho ga, we discovered, is traditionally enriched with a raw egg yolk that ribbons out as it coddles in the hot soup. Both chicken and beef varieties were variously aromatic, with crisp, dry-roasted shallots and ginger, exotically subtle cinnamon and star anise, stingingly hot chilies, astringent lime or lemon juice and nuoc mam, the dark, fermented salty fish sauce that tastes, fortunately, better than it smells. It is that contrast of seasonings—sweet and spicy, salty, sour and bitter, hot and cool—that makes this simple soup so intriguing to the palate.
Gilbert gamely confronted bare, open-front pho stalls that had all the charm of abandoned carwashes and lowered his broad, 6-foot-1 frame onto tiny plastic stools that looked like overturned mop buckets. Nor was he fazed by the suspiciously unhygienic makeshift “kitchens” presided over by chatty, welcoming women who stooped over charcoal or propane burners as they reached into pots and sieves and balanced ladles of ingredients before portioning them into bowls.
In planning this adventure, I had found my way to the Web site of Didier Corlou (www.didiercorlou.com). A chef from Brittany who trained in France, he has cooked in many parts of the world and, having lived in Hanoi for the past 19 years, has become a historian of Vietnamese cuisine and its long-neglected native spices and herbs. Corlou and his wife, Mai, who is Vietnamese, run La Verticale, a casually stylish restaurant where he applies French finesse to traditional Vietnamese dishes and ingredients. I spent my first morning in Hanoi learning the ins and outs of pho while sipping Vietnamese coffee—a seductively sweet iced drink based on strong locally grown, French-brewed coffee beans and, improbably, syrupy canned condensed milk—in Corlou’s fragrant, shelf-lined shop, where he sells customized spice blends. The shop provides entry to the restaurant.
Chef Corlou regards Vietnamese cuisine as one of the most original and interesting he has experienced; he values its ingenuity with humble products, its emphasis on freshness, the counterplay of flavors and the harmonious fusion of foreign influences, most notably from China and France. The pho we know today, he told me, began as a soup in and around Hanoi just a little over 100 years ago. “It is the single most important dish,” he said, “because it is the basic meal of the people.”
Pho bo is an unintended legacy of the French, who occupied Vietnam from 1858 to 1954 and who indeed cooked pot-au-feu, a soup-based combination of vegetables and beef, a meat barely known in Vietnam in those days and, to this day, neither as abundant nor as good as the native pork. (Corlou imports his beef from Australia.) But just as North American slaves took the leavings of kitchens to create what we now celebrate as soul food, so the Vietnamese salvaged leftovers from French kitchens and discovered that slow cooking was the best way to extract the most flavor and nourishment from them. They adopted the French word feu, just as they took the name of the French sandwich loaf, pain de mie, for banh mi, a baguette they fill with various greens, spices, herbs, sauces, pork and meatballs. Vietnam is perhaps the only country in the Far East to bake Western-style bread.
“The most important part of the pho is the broth,” Corlou said, “and because it takes so long to cook, it’s difficult to make at home. You need strong bones and meat—oxtail and marrow-filled shinbones—and before being cooked they should be blanched and rinsed so the soup will be very clear. And you must not skim off all of the fat. Some is needed for flavor.”
The cooking should be done at an almost imperceptible simmer, or what cooks sometimes describe as a “smile.” (One instruction advises that the soup simmer overnight for at least 12 hours, with the cook staying awake to add water lest the broth reduce too much.) Only then does one pay attention to the width (about a quarter-inch) of the flat, silky rice noodles, and to the combination of greens, the freshness of the beef and, finally, to the golden-brown knots of fried bread, all added just moments before the pho is served. Despite his stringent rules, Corlou is not against the variations of pho that come with distance from Hanoi; in Saigon, far to the south, it’s closer to the pho usually found in the United States, sweetened with rock sugar and full of mung bean sprouts and herbs, both rarely seen in the north.
A tasting dinner that night at La Verticale included Philharmonic president Zarin Mehta and his wife, Carmen; Gilbert and his mother; pianist Emanuel Ax; and Eric Latzky, the orchestra’s director of communications. We were served about a dozen French-Vietnamese creations, including two haute phos, a rather mild one based on salmon with an astringent hint of coriander and another enriched with superb local foie gras, black mushrooms and crunchy cabbage.
The next day, Corlou guided a group of us through the teeming, winding aisles of the Hang Be market, close to willow-rimmed Hoan Kiem Lake, a habitat of Sunday strollers and early-morning practitioners of tai chi. He pointed out various fruits—among them seed-filled dragon fruit and russet, spiky-skinned rambutans—and introduced us to banana flowers, the pale mauve blossoms and creamy-white slivers of trunk shaved from newly sprouted banana trees. Dark gray, spotted snake-like fish swam in tanks, hard-shelled crabs writhed in their boxes, slices of pork sausages sizzled on grills and live rabbits and chickens plotted escapes from their cages. As lunchtime neared, market workers stretched out on cloths they draped over crates and mounds of produce and snoozed, their conical straw hats shielding their faces from light and flies. Hanging over all was the almost stifling fragrance of ripe tropical fruit, cut flowers and pungent spices, sharpened by the nose-twitching scents of nuoc mam sauce and medicinally sour-sweet lemon grass.
I sought pho recommendations from United States Ambassador Michael W. Michalak and his wife, Yoshiko. During a reception for the orchestra at the U.S. Embassy, a villa in the 20th-century palatial style, they introduced us to Do Thanh Huong, a local pho buff who owns two fashion gift shops named Tan My. With her recommendations added to Corlou’s, we expected easy success in our forays, and, when it came to pho ga, we had no problems.
But looking for pho bo at midday proved a mistake. Hungrier by the minute, we searched out such recommended pho redoubts as Pho Bo Ly Beo, Pho Bat Dan, Pho Oanh and Hang Var, only to find each shuttered tight. Thus we learned the hard way that the beefy broth is traditionally a breakfast or late-night dish, with shops opening between 6 and 8 a.m. and again around 9 or 10 at night.
The next day, Gilbert and I were disappointed by a pallid, salty and inept pho bo at a much-recommended branch of a slick, trendy Saigon chain, Pho24; we dubbed it McPho. For the rest of our days in Hanoi, we rose early to find excellent pho in the stalls that had been closed to us at lunch. We also discovered Spices Garden, a very good Vietnamese restaurant in the restored Sofitel Metropole Hanoi, the historic hotel once patronized by Graham Greene, W. Somerset Maugham and Charlie Chaplin. There a verdant, abundant pho bo is part of the lunchtime buffet (no surprise, since Didier Corlou was the chef at the hotel for 16 years, until 2007). On the second and final night of the Philharmonic’s engagement, the audience included a large number of children whose parents had brought them to hear the Brahms Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, with featured violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann. Tetsuji Honna, the Japanese music director of the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra, explained to me that the violin is the most popular instrument for children in Asia to learn.
After the concert, Honna and one of his violinists, Dao Hai Thanh, invited me to try some late-night pho in the old quarter of Hanoi around Tong Duy Tan Street. Here young Vietnamese gather at long tables at a variety of stalls where meats and vegetables are cooked over table grills or dipped into hot pots of seething broth.
Our destination was Chuyen Bo, a pho stall with stools so low that Honna had to pile three atop one another for me to sit on. The choice of ingredients was staggering: not only eight kinds of greens, tofu, soft or crisp noodles, but also various cuts of beef—oxtail, brisket, shoulder, kidneys, stomach, tripe, lungs, brains—plus cooked blood that resembled blocks of chocolate pudding, a pale pink meat described to me as “cow’s breast” (finally decoded as “udder”) and a rather dry, sinewy-looking meat that one of the workers, pointing to his groin, said was “from a man.” I was relieved to learn that the ingredient in question was a bull’s penis. I opted instead for a delicious if conventional pho of oxtail and brisket. But later I worried that I had missed an opportunity. Perhaps udder and penis pho might have made a more stirring, not to mention memorable, finale to my quest. Maybe next time. Pho better or pho worse.
Mimi Sheraton has been a food writer for over 50 years. She has written more than a dozen books, including the 2004 memoir Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life.
参考译文：
去年10月，纽约爱乐乐团第一次在越南河内举办演奏会。开场曲目是轻快的越南国歌《进军歌》，之后是雄壮的美国国歌《星条旗永不落》。观众席上衣着讲究的越南人和几个美国人肃立聆听国歌时，难免怀着出乎意料和彼此尊重的心情。两国一场恶战多年以后，双方的国人在宏伟的河内歌剧院内又坐在了一起。
爱乐乐团的新音乐总监阿兰•吉尔伯特被问到演奏时在想什么的时候，回答说“嗯，确实，那是个非常伟大的时刻。不过，我不得不承认，演奏时还想着河粉。”
我和吉尔伯特或单独或一起，历时3天，走遍了河内大街小巷几十家小吃摊，想尝尽越南“国菜”——牛肉河粉的各种风味。不时有乐团其他成员加入我们，其中包括吉尔伯特的母亲——洋子武部勤，洋子在日本出生，多年来一直是乐团的小提琴手。这个蓬勃发展的首都城市没有红绿灯，我们穿过川流不息的车流，津津有味地喝下一碗又一碗这种和日本拉面或中国捞面有些相像的越南美食。
43岁的吉尔伯特是著名的指挥家，在到处巡演的过程中，对美食产生了浓厚的兴趣。得知他要在排练和授课的空余寻找最地道的越南米线时，我要求和他同行。作为美食作家，我痴迷于寻找美食，也因此深入偏远地区。我和世界各地的人建立了持久友谊，也深深沉浸于那些地方的历史和风土人情。
在河内寻找最美味米线的历程再次给了我这样的体验。20世纪初越南是法国的保护国，那时西方人称越南北部为“东京”，而包括其在内的广阔地区就是“印度支那”。我和吉尔伯特行走在这个富有生机而蕴含着希望的城市，对重建后的历史性地标建筑赞叹有加。而吉尔伯特仍念念不忘如何找到一碗完美的越南河粉。
越南河粉的主料是用大米粉制成的细滑“面条”，配以罗勒、香菜、薄荷、细香葱和水芹。牛肉河粉中的牛肉是切成薄片的生牛肉，点餐后用沸汤烫熟。鸡肉河粉通常还会在沸汤里打一个鸡蛋。牛肉河粉和鸡肉河粉中都有的配料是新鲜蔬菜、干葱姜、很辣的干辣椒、异国风味的肉桂和八角、带着涩味的青柠檬或柠檬汁，佐料是一种以鱼、虾为原料发酵而成的调味酱汁——鱼露。一碗河粉汤里融合了多种味道——酸、甜、辣、咸、苦，加上各种或凉或烫的食材，都使一碗看似平常的河粉蕴含着强烈而富有层次的味觉冲击。
露天的河粉摊简直就是个废弃的洗车场，小塑料凳就像倒扣的拖把桶。不过吉尔伯特毫不介意，身材高大的他还蜷坐到了小矮凳上。摊主都是热情健谈的妇女，他们俯身越过煤炉或煤气炉，用长柄勺从盆或筛中挖出汤料，匀到各个碗里。吉尔伯特对这貌似很不卫生的后厨谈定自若。
开始越南之行前，我就浏览了Didier Corlou的网站。Corlou是来自法国布列塔尼的厨师，去过全世界很多地方。过去19年里他一直在河内，妻子——越南人阿麦经营一家时尚休闲餐厅 La Verticale。Corlou对越南饮食和长期被人忽视的越南香料、香草有深厚的研究，把传统的越南菜式和精致的法式烹饪天衣无缝地融合到一起。我到河内后的第一个早晨就一直呆在Corlou的香料店，向他打听河粉的方方面面，同时享受着越南咖啡。这种咖啡是用越南本地种植的法国咖啡豆冲泡而成的甜味冷饮，可能还会加入罐装的浓缩牛奶。
香料店的货架上摆满了Corlou自制的香料调味包，香料店最里面就La Verticale餐厅的入口。Corlou认为在他体验过的所有世界美食中，越南饮食是最奇特最有趣的之一。Corlou非常推崇越南饮食廉价却不失精致、看重食材的新鲜、调和相反的味道、和谐融合以中国、法国为主的外国元素。他告诉我，我们现在所知的越南河粉是100年前才出现在河内的一种汤食。现在却是最重要的饮食，因为河粉已经成为越南民众的基本食物。
牛肉河粉来源自法国菜中的蔬菜牛肉浓汤。法国人1858年到1954年占领越南期间用蔬菜和牛肉熬制这样的浓汤，那时的越南人甚至很少听说过牛肉，即使到今天，牛肉在越南也很少，品质还不如当地猪肉。Corlou餐厅所用牛肉都是从澳大利亚进口。越南的很多饮食都源于法国，就像美国奴隶用厨房的剩菜创造出现在仍为人追捧的“灵魂食物”，越南人从法国占领者的厨房里捡拾剩菜后，再用慢火细炖以使其味道和营养最完全地释放。著名的越南Banh mi三明治的渊源是法国的长棍三明治，越南人在Banh mi三明治里加入各种蔬菜、香料、香草、猪肉和肉丸作为馅料。越南也许是远东地区唯一烘焙西式面包的国家。
Corlou说：“河粉最重要的就是汤。因为肉汤是用牛尾和充满骨髓的棒子骨长时间煎熬制而成，一般家庭很难自制。熬制之前，牛肉要焯水，这样熬好的牛肉汤才会澄清。牛油千万不能完全去掉，不然汤里一定不能少了牛油的味道。”
餐馆的服务员往装好河粉和配料的碗里倒入熬制好的牛肉汤
熬汤时，火要尽可能小。厨师的建议是通宵熬制至少12小时。为防止熬干，中间要加水。这样的一锅牛肉汤才是吸引食客的关键，宽而滑的河粉、丰富的绿色菜蔬、新鲜的牛肉、都是点餐放到碗里，然后浇入牛肉汤。Corlou的要求很苛刻，不过他并不反对其他地方的河粉和河内的有所不同。越南南部城市西贡的河粉就和美国国内越南餐厅里的差不多，放入冰糖调味，而且配菜全是绿豆芽和香草。北方就很少看到这种做法。
Corlou为乐团成员准备了品尝晚宴。菜品有十几种法式越南菜，其中有两种高级河粉。搭配三文鱼的河粉口味比较清淡，带着一丝香菜的苦涩；另外一种就很丰盛，配料有上好的当地鹅肝、黑蘑菇和脆脆的卷心菜。
第二天，Corlou带领我们一群人参观了还剑湖北边的Hang Be Market，一个有很多曲折拥挤小巷的菜市场。Corlou给我们介绍了很多水果——果肉里全是种子的火龙果、果皮上长满软刺的红毛丹......Corlou还带我们认识了香蕉树上浅紫色的花和从刚发芽的香蕉树上砍下来的乳白色枝条。暗黑色带有斑点蛇一样的鱼在水箱里游来游去，硬壳蟹在箱子里上下翻腾，猪肉肠在烧烤摊上滋滋冒油，不时还有活鸡、兔子从笼子里跑出来。临近午饭时间，市场的工人躺在覆盖货物的布上小睡，把锥形凉帽盖在脸上，遮挡阳光和苍蝇。市场里弥漫着成熟的热带水果、鲜切花和辛辣香料几乎令人窒息的香味，还有鱼露刺鼻的酸味和柠檬香茅酸甜的药味。
我和乐团团员拜访了美国大使迈克尔•W•米卡拉克，想从他那里得到些关于河粉的推荐。大使和夫人芳子在美国大使馆——一栋20世纪宫殿式风格的别墅里接待了我们。我向大使和夫人征求他们对越南河粉的建议时，他们推荐了当地一个河粉师傅——开了两家Tan My时尚礼品店的Do Thanh Huong。
有了米卡拉克大使和Corlou的推荐，我想我们寻找河内最美味河粉的计划一定会成功。不过好事多磨，事实证明中午出去吃牛肉河粉就是个错误。饥肠辘辘的一群人冲向大使和Corlou推荐的每家河粉店——Pho Bo Ly Beo、 Pho Bat Dan、 Pho Oanh 和Hang Var，无一例外吃了闭门羹。我们终于明白了：牛肉河粉一般是早餐和夜宵时间才有，河粉店早上6点到8点营业之后要到晚上九十点钟才会再次开门。
第二天我和吉尔伯特探访了一家西贡河粉连锁店——Pho24，整洁明亮的店面里，咸而乏味、毫无风味的牛肉河粉实在让人大失所望。接下来在河内的四天里，我们每天早早起来，去巷子里寻找美味的河粉，因为到中饭时间它们就全部收摊了。我们还在重建后的河内索菲特大都会酒店里发现一家一流的越南餐厅Spices Garden，这里的午间自助餐提供丰盛的牛肉河粉。爱乐乐团在河内的第二场也是最后一场演出时，听众里有很多儿童，父母带他们来欣赏勃拉姆斯的D大调小提琴与管弦乐协奏曲。首席小提琴演奏家是弗兰克皮特齐默尔曼。越南国家交响乐团的音乐总监，日本著名指挥家本名彻次告诉我们：亚洲的孩子最热衷于学习的乐器就是小提琴。
演奏会结束后，本名彻次和越南国家交响乐团的一个小提琴手Dao Hai Thanh邀请我们去河内旧城区Tong Duy Tan 街道的夜间大排档吃河粉。很多越南年轻人正围坐在各种摊位前的长条桌边，把肉类或蔬菜放到自助烧烤架上或浸入沸腾的火锅汤底里。
我们要去的摊位是Chuyen Bo，这个河粉摊的凳子很矮，本名彻次不得不把三个凳子叠在一起让我坐。河粉里的配料出奇的丰富，除了八种绿色蔬菜、豆腐、米粉，还有各种牛肉和牛杂——牛尾、牛胸肉、牛肩肉、牛腰子、牛肚、牛百叶、牛肺、牛脑、巧克力布丁样的熟牛血；他们告诉我一种淡粉红色肉片其实是“牛乳房”，还有一条很干燥、满是肌腱的肉。伙计指着自己下面比划说这是公牛身上的肉。我一下就明白了，这条肉其实是牛鞭。我要求老板给我换了一碗传统的牛尾牛腩河粉。虽然这碗河粉也很美味，不过后来我怀疑自己是否错失了一次机会。以一碗牛尾牛腩河粉结束我的寻找河内最美味河粉之旅也算难忘，不过或许一碗牛乳房牛鞭河粉不止是难忘，而是令人心潮澎湃呢。下次，无论如何，一定要尝尝那碗撩人的河粉。
原文链接：http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/Searching-for-Hanois-Ultimate-Pho.html?c=y&page=1
