The bloodline of a fish is a dark red muscle that runs along the animal’s spine. In the fine-dining kitchens where Chef Tu David Phu began his professional career, he was taught to throw the bloodline away. But at his parents’ house, his family kept it. In his new cookbook, The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Quốc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between, co-written by Soleil Ho, Phu connects his own life to a recipe for tuna bloodline tartare. He writes, “As a chef, the dream is to have at least one dish in your repertoire that can tell your whole story in just a few bites.”
In 2018, Phu co-produced and starred in Bloodline, a short documentary about his family’s origin story and his childhood in Oakland. The doc introduces many of the themes that run through The Memory of Taste. While narrating a sequence in which he chops up the bloodline of a fish in his parents’ kitchen, Phu says, “The bloodline—I serve it. The techniques I use are basically the same as what my mom and dad would use. A combination of Phú Quốc, the camps, Oakland.”
Phú Quốc is the Vietnamese island where Phu’s parents met and married. In the 1970s they left war-torn Vietnam and spent over a year in Thai refugee camps before securing asylum here and landing in Oakland. The Memory of Taste is both a collection of family recipes and an homage to the culinary traditions he inherited from them.
In an early chapter of the book Phu writes, “Fish sauce is our identity—and it contains multitudes.” The only two ingredients needed to make it are anchovies and sea salt. As an essential building block of Vietnamese cuisine, it’s made from the “merroir,” the oceanic territory there: From the fisherman who dive into the sea, to the salt and the caught fish, to the wooden barrels used to age the sauce. When the chef makes fish sauce here, he told me in a phone interview, “You just have to accept that it’s a different beast.”
Phu went on to connect that long-distance difference to the title of his book. The memory of taste travels with people as they migrate. But the recipes have to adapt in their new environments and ecosystems. In doing so, they undergo a transformation. “Ramen in Japan. Tempura in Baja California. Birria off the Gulf of Mexico. Those dishes? The roots of their ingredients come from somewhere else,” he said. “As cultural dishes travel, the heritage they bring with them evolves. That’s what I do with fish sauce here.”
Chapter five in The Memory of Taste is titled, “We Are Inauthentic as Hell.” In it Phu writes, “Vietnam might have been the blueprint, but the Bay Area was and is a major influence on how we ate.” When we spoke, the chef expanded upon the idea. “I identify as a person of Vietnamese birthright and identity,” he said. “And I have a different understanding or definition of authenticity—it’s an emotion.”
Phu wrote the cookbook to share his family’s stories with everyone who’s interested in making delicious meals, and not exclusively for the Vietnamese diaspora. “I want people to have this universal feeling of cooking with their family,” he said. “Where it becomes unethical is if you try to take it away, to create a concept to monetize the word ‘authenticity’ as part of your branding.”
Later in chapter five, the chef writes, “When you’re trying to nourish your family however you can, does it really matter if you’re using lemons instead of limes in your phở?… To me, anything that my parents cook counts as Vietnamese food.”
When I said I planned to make his recipe for caramelized pan-fried pork chops for dinner that night, Phu offered helpful suggestions. “I mentioned this in the cookbook but I want to reiterate, if you have a non-stick pan, that’s the easiest thing to do,” he said, adding, less oil is better. “I would say don’t go high heat on a gas burner. I go medium-high so we don’t burn it. And send me photos, please. I would love to see how that turns out for you.”
‘The Memory of Taste’ is available in bookstores everywhere. Chef Phu’s latest restaurant, Gigi’s Wine Lounge (@meetatgigis), is slated to open in San Francisco by the end of October. IG: @cheftudavidphu. cheftu.com
