Wraps and Rolls: Fast foods Vietnamese style

Some local foods are quick and easy, delicious and healthy. A former Miss Sport has slotted some popular dishes into the international fast food family.

The term “fast food” is well known around the world and conjures up visions of American hamburgers and hotdogs.

The popular catch phrase has got a new meaning now.

Kim Oanh’s Vietnamese fast food outlet in HCMC is known as the Wrap & Roll Restaurant, and the beautiful ex-model is promoting her local food to the world.

Kim Oanh prepares a dish of Vietnamese
fast food at her clever concept Wrap
and Roll restaurant in HCMC

The restaurant is a definite response to Western fast food but with a clever slant.

It’s a recipe for success and she is determined to popularize Vietnamese dishes in the West the same as Sushi is known internationally as a Japanese dish.

“It’s a pity,” Oanh says.

“Vietnamese cuisine is good enough for the whole world to enjoy and admire, but we have yet to do it. We should build a trade name for Vietnamese cuisine before a foreigner does it.”

“Frankly, I called it Wrap & Roll because I wanted international guests to know that Vietnam also has dishes which are dynamic and modern like fast food in Europe and America, but also very traditional. Goi (wrap) and cuon (roll) has been around for a long time. The ‘roll’ culture is very Vietnamese.”

She said, “Many customers said they were afraid to eat goi and cuon dishes sold on the streets, but when they tried it at Wrap & Roll Restaurant, they even got addicted to mam nem (anchovy fish sauce).

She says many foreign customers are not used to the strong taste of Vietnamese fish sauce, especially mam nem – the strong variety, so she made 23 different kinds of sauces to suit the tastes of everyone.

She has heard customers in her restaurant tell her many times to open a place like Wrap and Roll in New York.

“We should choose a particular feature. From the wide variety of dishes, we must make something prominent. When talking about Japanese food, for example, people often say Shusi, Korean food has Kim Chi (pickled vegetables), and Thai food is well-known for Tom Yum Kung.”

“In my opinion, Pho (beef soup), bun (vermicelli) and cuon (roll) dishes can make a difference for Vietnamese food, but it is bad that we haven’t thought of building a trade name for it.

Pho 24 is doing exactly that, andwe need more restaurants like it,” Oanh says.

Wrap & Roll Restaurant is in an expensive area on Hai Ba Trung Street in District 1, HCMC.

There are good western restaurants around, and the rent of the place is high, but Oanh says that is the secret to get foreign visitors’ attention.

"We shouldn’t be ashamed of ourselves and lose out to fast food from developed countries," Oanh says.

"Their meals are just made better. And we don’t need to compete with them; we can grow along side them."

Trading in food is difficult, especially serving specialties like goi and cuon dishes.

Furthermore, the competitiveness in a city with a reputation for being a food lover’s paradise is fierce; but Wrap & Roll has 6,000 customers a month.

Fresh and fast

From the northern coastal city of Hai Phong, Oanh substituted for another girl in the first 1993 Miss Sport Vietnam beauty contest in Hanoi - and won at only 18 years old.

In 1998, she moved to Saigon.

She always held on to a dream of doing something for herself.

She said, “I talked to my husband about my plan to open a restaurant. My husband liked my idea, but he said I should think carefully before getting started.”

She and a chef traveled from south to north studying how to make banh cuon (‘savory rice rolls’ pan cakes) and the Wrap & Roll restaurant was born.

The restaurant has over 50 recipes for goi and cuon dishes from all three regions - north, central and south - but in new styles.

Goi (wrap) and cuon (roll) - Gỏi cuốn

She explains goi and cuon refers to something simple and fast.

Vietnam is now on the road to global accession, and we have begun to pay attention to this.

The food is simple and fast to make, but it must contain sufficient nutrition, and it must be clean and green.

Goi and cuon meets those requirements because it has different shapes, tastes, ingredients and colors.

It contains pork, shrimp, fish, crab, starch (soft white noodles, pancakes); and most importantly, it has lots of green vegetables.

Reported by Khanh Khoi

Source : Thanh Nien Daily