Twelfth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

In 2010, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam finally published a much-anticipated work by author Vũ Bằng, named Delicacies of Hanoi (Món ngon Hà Nội). First published in Saigon in 1960, the book is a love letter from the Northern-born and raised author to Hanoi after his departure to the South in the 1954 Operation Passage to Freedom. Barely reached the shelves, the newly printed books were already pulled off to be sent to the censorship authority for further examination. Vũ Bằng’s dream of unification and the complexities, contradictions, and controversies in his life and work urged this project to look at the transformation of Vietnamese food through the legacy of the Operation Passage to Freedom. What does it mean to eat like Northerners/Southerners? What does it mean to eat like a North 54 in the South? How can Vietnamese identity, through food, be understood as negotiation and association between different regions, tastes, and ingredients? – This is a constellation of questions at the heart of this project. As the first cultural investigation of its kind, this paper argues that through the legacy of Operation Passage to Freedom, Vietnamese regional food became an expression of belonging, articulating the Northern, Southern, and ultimately cultivating the modern Vietnamese identity.