When Bryant Terry (Vegan Soul Kitchen, Black Food) launched 4 Color Books, an imprint of Ten Speed Press in Berkeley and Penguin Random House, his goal was to cultivate talented people who have historically faced roadblocks when navigating the publishing world.
“One of the things I’m committed to in addition to being an editor-in-chief, is being a mentor,” Terry said, adding that he felt lucky that he had many mentors who helped nurture his path in the publishing world.
Early on, he identified Oakland-raised Tu David Phu, a Top Chef alum, TedX presenter, film producer, and entrepreneur, as someone deserving a cookbook – and now Phu can add author to the list of hats he’s worn. The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Quoc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between, which Phu wrote with San Francisco Chronicle columnist and cultural critic Soleil Ho, will be released on Sept. 10.
The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Quoc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between
By Tu David Phu and Soleil Ho
Book release is Sept.10, 2024.
The Caffe in Oakland is hosting a book release party on Saturday, September 14, 2024 ($50 includes a copy of the book) from 11a.m. to 1 p.m. 1120 Broadway, Oakland, CA.
The Oakland Public Library and Oakland Asian Cultural Center has partnered together for a free event at 2 p.m. on November 9, 2024 with Tu David Phu and Soleil Ho.
Terry edited the new cookbook which also features stunning photos by Jeni Afuso and Dylan James Ho. Southeast Asian cuisine is growing in popularity in the United States, so it’s no surprise that the cookbook is coming out this year, focusing on “authentically inauthentic,” according to Phu, Vietnamese cooking. Phu includes many of his family’s recipes (seafood-heavy because his parents are from Phú Quoc, an island off of the southwest coast of Vietnam), recipes from his pop-ups, and the influence of being raised in Oakland in the midst of a produce-rich and seafood-abundant region.
Phu wanted to speak to his upbringing, as a son of refugees who grew up in a low-income family. Financial hardships are something many U.S. households with kids can relate to. In the United States, children have the highest poverty rate by age group, with more than 16% of kids under 18 living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau 2022 community survey and the Children’s Defense Fund.
“Beautiful things can come from unlikely places,” Phu said. “I want people to feel valued when they are cooking in their own homes. It might be a pantry full of canned goods from the food bank, even though it might be meat scraps from a fishmonger, take a look at your parents. It might not be the trending thing on social media. A meal is more than a meal when it’s made with love and care.”
Place has a central role in the book, as the title suggests. The book includes a list of Phu’s favorite Vietnamese places to eat in Oakland — including Banh Mi Ba Le, Pho King, and Tay Ho. He said the book is a love letter to both Oakland and his mom.
“When I think about the kind of true to the bone, down-home Oakland folks, Tu embodies that so well — folks who love the city, who are so proud of this place, and embody all the best values of what Oakland is,” Terry said.
Expanding Vietnamese cuisine
For years, most Vietnamese cookbooks focused on Southern Vietnamese cuisine, a reflection of the waves of refugees who arrived in the United States following the war. Now, a new generation of Vietnamese cookbooks is hitting kitchens with several coming out in recent years and more due out this year, including Dac Biet: An Extra-Special Vietnamese Cookbook by Nini Nguyen and Di An: The Salty, Sour, Sweet and Spicy Flavors of Vietnamese Cooking with TwayDaBae.
Phu’s The Memory of Taste is a welcome addition, and includes recipes for dishes that are not often seen in Vietnamese restaurants in the United States. There were dishes, for example, that Ho only ate for the first time when visiting Phú Quoc on a research trip for the book. One of the highlights was bún kèn, a curry seafood noodle soup with minced mackerel.
“One of the things that’s really exciting about how we think of immigrant cuisines is there’s a phase when everything is the same,” Ho said. “Indian food has had that — it’s all curry, which is obviously not true. You have books that have come out in the past couple of years that speak to that diversity. I’m glad that Vietnamese cuisine is having a moment like that.”
Terry adds that the market for Asian cookbooks is growing — 4 Color Books will be publishing a cookbook by Nite Yun, who opened Lunette in San Francisco’s Ferry Building in June and was the chef of Nyum Bai, a Cambodian restaurant in Emeryville and later in Oakland. “I love that we’ve moved beyond general Asian cookbooks,” Terry said. “People are celebrating regional cuisines and we’re seeing so much excitement about cookbooks that are uplighting Asian cuisine.”
Phu is Vietnamese, Khmer, and Chinese. The story is that his parents met at a fish market. Phu calls the book a “celebration of scarcity.”
Phu recalls how his mother baked desserts in a small countertop toaster oven lined with foil to catch grease. “She was able to make the most amazing lady finger banana bread, made from Costco croissants,” Phu said. The Memory of Taste includes a banana bread pudding recipe inspired by this dish.
Cookbooks are also vessels that convey rich stories. Phu’s voice is prominent — Bay Area lingo is peppered throughout his essays, and Phu’s voice provides entertaining and insightful reading. Ho said it was “a good challenge, writing in someone else’s voice. I figured it would be really fun, and it was.”
“One of the things I love about Tu so much is he’s a very talented chef, and he keeps it real,” Terry said. “He’s not interested in trying to code switch to make people feel comfortable.”
“Gill-to-fin” recipes
Ho interviewed Phu and rewrote the recipes he drafted, helping to explain the logic behind the techniques. “He would be on WhatsApp interrogating his aunties for me,” Ho added, saying it was a necessary step to explain the cooking techniques to a general audience.
There were also tears during the more personal interviews, as Phu looked back on his childhood and family history. “[Soleil] humbled my family’s story in the most beautiful way,” he said.
In one essay about Phu’s views on sustainability, he recalls this story of cooking for his mom.
“When I was in culinary school, I thought I was really doing something when I decided to show off by cooking my mom a meal. She was horrified when I presented her a perfectly pan-fried fish filet. ‘What about the rest?’ she asked, pointing at what I’d left in the sink. The fish wasn’t endangered or anything, but it didn’t matter: I had let so much of it go to waste. In that moment, the gap between our perspectives couldn’t have felt wider.”
Phu’s lineage also includes generations of free divers who rely on the abundance of the sea, and his family is also connected to a fish sauce company in Phú Quốc called Hung Thanh.. The book emphasizes “gill-to-fin” eating, a nod to his parents’ values when it comes to not wasting any part of the fish. Sustainability, he said, should be built in as “a necessity, not a luxury.”
Phu’s mom worked as a seamstress. She also tended to a small gardening area in their apartment complex, planting chayote, lemongrass, mint, and chiles. His father, a fishmonger, would bring back fish scraps that would otherwise be thrown away.
One of Phu’s favorite dishes growing up is rice paper spring rolls, or gỏi cuốn. His dad would bring home tuna and cut it into sashimi-sized pieces. “We rolled it into a summer roll with rice paper, lettuce, herbs,” Phu said. “And we’ll make it fat because we’re doing it at home and because we were overzealous with our eyes, and dip it in seasoned fish sauce, nuoc cham, and take big bites of it.”
The Memory of Taste ranges from easy to mildly difficult recipes — including chefy, irreverent creations like a lobster boba recipe.
The ones closest to his heart are the ones made in his home. Canh chua, a Vietnamese sour soup typically made with pineapple, tamarind and tomatoes, is a dish Phu learned to love as an adult. His parents would cook the salmon head in the boiling broth, akin to hotpot or shabu-shabu.
Phu said he used to be creeped out by all the fish heads his dad brought home — it looked nothing like what families on TV ate or what his friends ate at school. “I find out later it has the most delicate meat — the cheeks, the nose, the meat behind the eyes, the forehead and even the brain with all this gelatinous beauty,” Phu said. “I ate it with shame, but over the years, learned to appreciate it.”
