Chad Kubanoff introduces bun cha. Video provided by the character
The first time he ate spring rolls and pho in a restaurant in Pennsylvania (USA), Chad Kubanoff decided to travel to Vietnam, but unexpectedly was kept here for 6 years.
The American chef described his trip to Vietnam in 2008 as "like coming to a new world ". Everything from the traffic, people, cuisine, culture were very different from the places he had lived and visited.
"I love the feeling of sitting on a plastic chair, enjoying dishes that cost only a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of dong in small alleys in Ho Chi Minh City," Chad recalls.
Chad Kubanoff's restaurant specializing in Vietnamese street food in the US was once featured in an article by the culinary website Eater. Photo: Character provided
Bun bo was the first dish that impressed Chad because although it did not have any special ingredients, the flavor was outstanding. Each soft noodle and rich broth, combined with aromatic herbs, made him exclaim as he ate.
As a chef, Chad felt and evaluated the ingredients in the bowl of noodles himself. However, due to his limited Vietnamese and traveling alone, he could not ask the restaurant owner, so he had to learn more on YouTube. Many other dishes such as pho, hu tieu, banh xeo also made the young chef eager to find out how to cook them. Therefore, instead of traveling for a few days as originally planned, he decided to stay longer.
Chad applied to be a chef at a Vietnamese restaurant serving foreign guests. He had never cooked Vietnamese food before, but he used what he observed and tasted to find his own recipe. The first Vietnamese dish he made was banh xeo, with a thin, golden crust and soft, fragrant filling, combining pork, shrimp and bean sprouts.
To make the crust, he had to watch the instructions on YouTube many times, then get instructions from Thuy Kubanoff (his lover, later wife) on how to buy the ingredients.
When it came to making banh cuon, he failed because he couldn't roll the cake nicely. Chad spread a very thin layer and gently inserted a bamboo stick to support it. He was instructed to apply both gentle and firm pressure on the stick to avoid tearing and losing its shape. He had to sit in the kitchen for hours and try again and again before he could successfully roll the cake. Mixing the fish sauce properly was also a challenge as this young man had to adjust the vinegar and sugar many times to create the desired flavor.
Bun bo Hue is considered by Chad to be the "most difficult of all difficult dishes". Although he consulted many cooking channels, he could not make the same flavor as in the restaurant. After many times of researching and tasting, Chad discovered that when stewing bones, if you want to add more water, you must use hot water, if you use cold water, the bones will not be sweet anymore. In addition, to have a delicious bowl of noodles, the timing and dosage of adding shrimp paste and sugar are also very important.
"Vietnamese dishes seem simple, but they require meticulousness and timing to produce delicious flavors. It's an art," the American chef concluded.
Chad Kubanoff loves to experience motorbikes, weaving through the streets of Saigon and neighboring provinces to find delicious street food, learn and cook it. Photo: Character provided
After having succeeded with a few difficult dishes, Chad decided to quit his job and travel across Vietnam with his girlfriend, hoping to enjoy more delicious dishes throughout Vietnam. He tried to remember the flavors he had enjoyed, recording them in notebooks and on his phone so that when he returned, he could cook them himself based on his own feelings.
He said that one stormy night, the two of them passed through Quang Ngai and found the only restaurant still open. They thought they would just have a quick bite to satisfy their hunger, but the Quang noodles there left the chef stunned. "The broth was rich in flavor, the noodles were soft and chewy, very appetizing," Chad recalled. From this experience, the American guy concluded that in Vietnam, there are delicious dishes everywhere, whether the restaurant is on the sidewalk or in remote places that few people know about.
After the trip, thinking that too few Americans had the same interesting experiences in Vietnam as he did, Chad opened a travel company specializing in organizing motorbike tours to take foreign tourists to enjoy the street food that he considered the best in Saigon.
In 2013, Chad brought his wife and children back to the US to open a restaurant specializing in Vietnamese street food such as beef noodle soup, pho, beef rolls with betel leaves, and grilled pork noodle soup. To have all the ingredients, he had to travel far to buy fish sauce, shrimp paste, and herbs. If there weren’t enough spices, he would remove the dish from the menu in an effort to maintain the most authentic Vietnamese flavor.
After 10 years in the US, Chad's longing for Vietnam has never faded. His wife, Thuy, said that every time someone mentioned Vietnam, "his eyes lit up, as if he was meeting a relative after a long time." In 2022, when the Covid-19 pandemic had just subsided, the couple decided to return to their mother's hometown.
"After two years of the pandemic, I realized that life is so unpredictable. Now is the right time to return to this country to do the work I love," said the 36-year-old man.
This time in Vietnam, Chad became a culinary content creator, specializing in reviewing street food stalls as well as cooking hundreds of delicious Vietnamese dishes to introduce to friends around the world. On his personal page with more than 25 million likes, the American man treats viewers to homemade Vietnamese dishes such as stuffed bitter melon, braised pork with shrimp paste, watercress soup, stir-fried crab vermicelli, vermicelli with meatballs, and pate sandwiches.
For over a year, Chad has been traveling around Saigon and several provinces, reviewing street food stalls and cooking Vietnamese dishes himself and posting them on his personal page. He has now cooked nearly 700 dishes, some of which retain the traditional cooking method, while others are creatively added to create something new. The chef is also not afraid to prepare challenging dishes such as congee and blood pudding, while also aiming to learn how Vietnamese people make fish sauce, fish sauce, shrimp paste, sour shrimp, or how to make traditional dishes such as banh chung, banh moon, and gio cha.
"Vietnamese essence" has permeated Chad so deeply that no matter what dish he cooks, it must be put through a "Vietnamese filter", for example, Italian dishes will always include pickled chili or lemon and fish sauce.
"Vietnam has changed the way I cook forever," the American son-in-law shared.
Chad Kubanoff is passionate about cooking Vietnamese food as well as adapting it to create new dishes based on ingredients available in Vietnam. Photo: Character provided.
The new job not only satisfies his passion but also helps Chad receive a lot of love, including foreigners and overseas Vietnamese. Many people share that watching his clips makes them miss home. Especially young people born in the US but still feel connected to Vietnamese culture, feel proud of their roots.
Chad is learning Vietnamese to better understand the lives and cooking of the locals. "When I master the language, I will make videos in Vietnamese," he said.
Vnexpress.net
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