VIET PEOPLE IN EUROPE

On the spring break arts and culture trip, everyone had their own goals: whether it was to catch up on the latest fashion trends, to learn about their own heritage, or to indulge in the nightly shows. For me, I reinterpreted the trip’s art mission as the art of Vietnamese cuisine. While I have been to Vietnamese restaurants on other vacations, this trip was the first time that I stepped foot into two countries with significant Vietnamese populations, allowing me to engage in conversations in a way that I couldn’t before.

The narrative of overseas Vietnamese in Prague vastly contrasts that of Vietnamese Americans. From a conversation with a massage shop owner in Prague, Vietnamese people here have continually emigrated to Prague since the Vietnam War for vocational reasons compared to Vietnamese-Americans, who for the most part, immigrated to the US as refugees in a single 1975 wave. Vietnamese people in Prague, being the country’s third largest ethnic minority, also speak the northern accent and dominate the "Thai massage" and restaurant industry to the point of the latter being on almost every block and recommended as “local Czech restaurants.” Vietnamese prevalence is also highlighted with the Nguyen surname being Czechia’s 9th most common surname.

Elevated Vietnamese cuisine is also executed better than in the US. In two restaurants I went to, I stated my purpose of wanting to see Vietnamese cuisine in other countries and asked if they had Czech-Viet fusion cuisine, kết hợp việt-Séc, and both said that they explicitly only serve authentic Vietnamese food.

Younger Vietnamese people I've spoken to additionally prefer to speak in English which is a seemingly universal overseas Vietnamese preference compared to other ethnicities, probably due to the language's association with our parents. People in Vietnam also make elevated Vietnamese cuisine as well, compared to only being made by second-generation Vietnamese in the US. Without a need to conform to the local cuisine, deal with any generational trauma, or have values from almost half a century prior, elevated Vietnamese cuisine flourishes in Prague, while it struggles to find its place in the US.

Authentic Vietnamese cuisine is also truer to modern trends in Vietnam. Vietnamese cuisine in the US largely reflects the cuisine of pre-1975, held down by family tradition and conservatism while having more leeway in Vietnam, giving a nostalgic yet antiquated flavor to Vietnamese Americans like me.

Elevated cuisine is also not as stigmatized in Europe as it is in the U.S. While fusion cuisine is often looked down upon, I’d like to offer a different perspective: you can find an authentic bowl of pho almost anywhere.

A good bowl of pho can come from anywhere, but a bowl of pho made differently reveals the local preferences and interaction with diaspora that the former cannot. A Vietnamese restaurant being a chain in itself shows the prevalence of Vietnamese cuisine in the Berlin psyche.

Jax Tran