Features / cooking
Inside the class bringing Vietnamese food culture to Bristol
It’s a drizzly weekday evening in Redland when most people are hunkering down for the night.
Inside one restaurant though, the aromas of ginger and fish sauce and a concoction of fresh herbs are signalling that the night is just getting started.
Standing next to a kitchen laden with intriguing fresh produce, chopping boards and single stoves, Trung Trinh (known as TT to friends), is preparing to transport our group of 6,000 miles away to the markets of northern Vietnam, near the Chinese border where he grew up.
Gathered around a table with cups of fragrant tea infused with fresh ginger and lemongrass, the welcome speech marks the beginning of a cooking class which is as much about storytelling as it is about getting to grips with recipes.
Hidden behind the Saigon Kitchen is a herb garden where TT grows a variety of special Vietnamese herbs
TT is co-founder of the Saigon Kitchen. He moved to the UK almost a decade ago but his connection to Vietnam “runs deep”, he tells us.
After running two restaurants in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), he and his wife and business partner Vicky moved to Bristol and went on to open the much-loved Zetland Road restaurant.
TT now teaches classes from a room next door to the restaurant, having always wanted to increase awareness of Vietnamese cuisine and offering the chance for wide-eyed novices like me to gain a deeper understanding of the food and traditions of the much-travelled South East Asian country.
A far cry from his studies in Hanoi and work as a tour leader and television fixer in Ho Chi Minh City, the chef and entrepreneur tells us of how he grew up in a coastal community where families cooked over coal fires and shopped daily for fresh ingredients.
“There, everything we cook, we cook by coal,” he says proudly.
“You know, we don’t have inductions and anything fancy. We don’t have gas, we don’t have any restaurants.”
Each cooking station was organised by a helper behind the scenes
Issued with crisp branded aprons, we move over to our stations and are taught some basics.
“You only need one good knife,” TT tells us, showing different techniques for the array of colorful vegetables laid out in front of of us.
It proves useful advice. Our first dish is a set of fresh summer rolls, which requires carefully slicing and arranging ingredients including cucumber, peppers, tofu, herbs and ginger before wrapping them in delicate rice paper.
Next up is a fresh salad of cucumber, mango and pomegranate seeds. TT chats away as we diligently continue chopping, our confidence growing with every task.
“Everyone know how to cook at home,” he says. “Because it’s for family.”
“No one gets lost behind a chopping board,” the team say of the class
The class feels refreshingly relaxed, with no pressure or sense of failure if your skills are a bit wobbly.
And TT is patient throughout, even as he teaches the more squeamish of us how to prepare prawns for our main course of tôm sốt cà chua, a rich tomato dish.
“I love Bristol,” TT says as rain starts to audibly pour outside and condensation climbs up the windows. “The only thing I don’t like is the weather.”
At the end of the class, attendees come together to enjoy the meal
By the end of the evening, our aprons are splashed with evidence of our efforts and the table is full with the dishes we have prepared as a group.
We tuck into the feast over bottles of Saigon beer while listening to more stories from TT’s adventurous life, and share a little about ourselves in return.
And as we step back out into the Bristol rain, our bellies full, it feels as though we’ve travelled much further than the short cycle home.
For more information about cooking classes at the Saigon Kitchen, visit www.thesaigonkitchen.co.uk/cookery-classes
All photos: Betty Woolerton
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