'Thankfully, a sea change during the last 10 years, led by premium brands such as Red Boat, has brought more nuoc mam from the motherland to our shores,' writes Andrea Nguyen.
There wasn’t a trade agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam after the war ended, so, along with our compatriots, we were forced to depend on producers in Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines for our most important pantry staple. Their renditions of the umami-laden condiment were serviceable, but we pined for bona fide VietThankfully, a sea change during the last 10 years, led by premium brands such as Red Boat, has brought morefrom the motherland to our shores.
Within my collection , Son Fish Sauce is a favorite. Compared with other fish sauces, Son has a pure flavor that’s intensely savory, so much so that I use about 30% less than usual.It’s great for defining Viet dipping sauces, as well as for injecting cross-cultural umami into bloody marys, Caesar salad dressing and guacamole. Son, produced on tiny Hon Son Island in the Gulf of Thailand, is a friendly MVP in my kitchen.
Unable to find the bottles at my regular Little Saigon grocery haunts for months, I asked owner Danny Tran for the lowdown. We’d emailed over the years and I assumed that he was the scion of Khon Van Pham , the legendary fish sauce maker mentioned on the company website, who pioneered the industry on Hon Son.
But when we met, Danny, 35, immediately introduced me to his 27-year-old wife, Albee, the person with trueDNA. She is Pham’s great-granddaughter, the fourth generation to work in the fish sauce trade, and her willowy grace belies a steely determination. Albee and Danny’s story is neither a refugee nor a diaspora narrative. They are young, hyper-entrepreneurial Vietnamese transnationals who move fluidly back and forth across the Pacific.
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