CHợ đêm event | A whole country in a roll

Two tables are barely enough to wear all the dishes ordered. Oli, the photographer, grabs his camera while Charles Nguyen tears his first lettuce sheet, adds a few chosen pieces and folds everything before soaking his roller in the sauce. “It’s very simple. We, the Vietnamese, ride everything, ”he says, between two bites.

There are these moments when the journalist is particularly happy not to be in the place of the interviewee. Tonight, for example. While Charles tells me how the Vietnamese food brings together a country torn apart by decades of wars and exiles, I have the opportunity to get worse from everything that the Lê Thuy Tâm brigade, the owner of the Montreal restaurant to you, prepared in the kitchen. (And it’s roughly good.)

Charles Nguyen is one of the founders of Chợ đêm, the “Vietnamese night market” which will be held in the Peel Basin in the Old Port of Montreal from Thursday. The event allows you to throw bridges between the Vietnamese community and its host society. But Chợ đêm also exists to fill ditches that have been widening for a few years between members of this community. Generational ditches, cultural ditches, historical ditches.

Besides, the choice of the restaurant where Charles Nguyen invited to us was not at random. T’ami is one of the few Montreal Vietnamese restaurants which offers cuisine of the three major regions of Vietnam.

Like the refugees who landed in Quebec in the 1970s and 1980s came mainly from the South, this gastronomy is the best known in Quebec. In recent years, the original port of newcomers has diversified, adding new flavors to the menu.

Like the “Bánh Tôm”, these fried shrimps typical of Hanoi, the capital, in the north of the country.

(That’s it, my notebook is already stained with fat.)

North cuisine focuses on the main ingredients of dishes, says Charles Nguyen. We also eat phở, this Tonkinese soup whose name is pronounced “fire”, because it would be a reinterpretation of the French “pot-au-feu”. “But in the north, the pHở tastes the broth of the beef. While in the south, where agriculture is more flourishing, we put lots of vegetables, herbs and herbs. »»

The center of the center is more arid. “There is less agriculture. The kitchen is more burning, more spicy, more fermented, “he said, serving Bún Bò bowls, a noodle soup with spicy beef as it is served.

(I greedily “slurpe” my noodles, and “sprouches” of broth macule my notebook. Oli, who posed his camera, tackles the dish of Bánh Xèo, a pork pancake and southern shrimp that we cut with the chisel before placing the pieces on the lettuce and soaking in the Nuoc-Mâ.))

The Vietnamese are not very demonstrative, known as Charles Nguyen. The affection of a parent for his child is expressed by food. “Among Vietnamese people, it was rare for our parents to give us hugs. We were told rather, “Are you hungry? I’m going to prepare something for you!”, He laughs. So eating something that someone has prepared for you is significant. »»

These second generation Vietnamese, who have little or not known Vietnam, grew up with traditional education in a much less strict host society. “We talk a lot about refugees and what they have experienced,” says Charles Nguyen. But we are very rarely talking about what I call the “disconnected generation”. A generation that wants to please her parents, but who wants to carry this culture, her traditions and his values in his own way. This generation is that of Charles Nguyen, born in France of Vietnamese refugee parents who then immigrated to Quebec. “My father was an engineer, he worked in James. My mother had to redo her studies in pharmacy three times: in Vietnam, then in France, and finally in Quebec, because we did not recognize the equivalences. »»

(At that moment, I raise the eyes of my umpteenth roll of lettuce-emothe-coriandre in preparation. I was trying to imagine what it could represent to redo his pharmacy studies for the third time, by raising a little boy alone, while the husband built dams in this country at the end of the world …)

“Refugees, boat peoplehave experienced terrible things by fleeing Vietnam, ”recalls Charles. During Têt celebrations, the Vietnamese New Year, the flags of the former southern Vietnam still float during the gatherings organized by the diaspora in Quebec. We do not see there an official Vietnam flag – red with the yellow star -, that is, the old flag of northern Vietnam which was adopted after the communist victory in 1976. “This flag from the South is a symbol of what happened. Refugees do not want history to be erased. »»

Thus, the older ones sometimes criticize the youngest for not being sufficiently interested in their history. In Chợ đêm, for example, “there is no flag,” says Charles Nguyen. “No new flag, no old flag, no flag. »»

Which does not please everyone. But the organizers also want the event to participate in reconciling the different waves of immigration. “Those who recently arrived from Vietnam and who have not known war, they are not all communists! So why create divisions instead of building bridges and enriching our culture with this diversity? »»

(Come on, hop !, Another roller of Bún ậu Mắm Tôm Tôm, a northern dish with meat pâtés and turning green rice. I grimace, the fermented shrimp sauce is very salty.)

No flags in Chợ đêm, therefore. But workshops, conferences, shows, music and a lot, a lot of food. Culture is lived as much through its traditions as its reinterpretations, says Charles Nguyen. “The glue between the two is the emotion that we communicate every day. Like when you cook and eat together. »»

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