It is street food, market food and the food of the masses because it is cheap, readily available and easy to eat.
These days, bun rieu is a hot topic on social networks because of a "unsanitary bun rieu space" in the eyes of a foreign tourist visiting Hanoi. Sadness and regret are probably 2 common feelings of many people when encountering that information at bun rieu.
Bun rieu is clearly not a luxurious or expensive dish, but it is a beautiful dish in the minds of Vietnamese people. Beauty is not an exaggeration, because clearly, an original bowl of bun rieu has a brilliant, vivid beauty in color.
The golden color like the evening glow of the riêu water, the reddish-brown color of the sliced tomatoes, the golden brown color of the crab roe, the tender green color of the plate of Thai lettuce only create a rustic culinary picture imbued with the soul of Vietnamese countryside. Seeing that, why is there such horror!?
Bún riêu cooked from crabs, crustaceans who prefer to live in clean fields. Fields are vast throughout Vietnam, so field crabs are also present throughout the country. And then bowls of bún riêu are everywhere, from rural markets to city sidewalks.
There are Hanoi bun rieu, Hue bun rieu, Saigon bun rieu, and also Pleiku bun rieu, Buon Me Thuot. Everywhere there is a bowl of golden, fatty, sour bun rieu for us to savor a delicious, nutritious, cheap and never boring dish.
Bun rieu is present everywhere not only because crabs are readily available but also because it is easy to cook. Few noodles are as simple in processing as bun rieu. Perhaps, the most time-consuming thing is making crabs. Untangling crabs, washing them, peeling off the plaster, separating the gill, picking bricks, pounding and filtering the crab broth... but only those stages, acquaintances quickly finish in about ten minutes.
Then boil crab broth, add tomatoes, season to make the broth just clear, just sour enough, steam with pork fat to enhance the color and you're done. From the time of setting the pot to cook to the time of bringing the bowl of vermicelli to eat, perhaps it doesn't take more than 30 minutes. So simple, why can people still cause a scandal!?
Don't say it because the times are different now, so the bowl of vermicelli soup has also changed its color. It is true that the fields are increasingly shrinking, causing the amount of field crabs to decrease. It is true that the demand for crabs has increased, causing crabs that are only slightly larger than a thumb to be caught, and crab prices have nearly doubled the price of pork.
That is the reality that makes the bowl of bun rieu no longer as cheap as in the old days, making those who want to eat cheap bun rieu have to accept being mixed with tofu and crab meat (brick). Then to compensate for the amount of genuine crab lost, they add all sorts of indiscriminate things to the bowl of bun rieu such as sausage, ear sausage, fish cake, rare beef, even balut, making the bowl of bun rieu a mixed hotpot.
It's all due to the heart of the cook and the ease of the diner. Cooking is a profession that requires "professional ethics" at a high level because it affects the health and joy of others. It requires a clean, meticulous, and careful awareness in processing, cooking, and creating a space for enjoyment, not supremacy of profit.
A noodle soup stall in the market, a noodle soup shop on the sidewalk, or even a noodle soup restaurant, everywhere should (or must) meet the minimum requirements but cook with the traditional flavor, cook cleanly, hygienically, and safely. Only then can the aroma of the dish and your talent be preserved and preserved.
In the essay "Hanoi 36 streets and wards", writer Thach Lam gave a very subtle comment. The main idea is that Vietnamese people are hardworking, hardworking but often careless, creating delicious dishes but when they become famous, they are negligent, not caring about the quality of the dish, leading to decline.
That comment is very reasonable, still true to this day. We have witnessed many times the sloppiness and leniency that caused the restaurant to close, causing the dishes to be distorted too far from the original flavor. It is a pity that bun rieu is a typical example.
It is not accidental that the phrase "homemade" appears more and more and becomes a guarantee of the quality of dishes. "Homemade cake, home-cooked vermicelli, mother-cooked rice" is the most effective advertisement for dishes, because only "homemade" may ensure the criteria of deliciousness, nutrition, and safety instead of being cheap.
Therefore, now, if you want to eat bun rieu, it is best to cook it yourself. Also because bun rieu is easy to cook, it only takes a little time and money to have a delicious pot of bun rieu, standard for serving the family, true to the saying: "If you want to eat, roll into the kitchen".
But we still crave the space to enjoy a bowl of bun rieu on the sidewalk on a day at the end of January as in nostalgia. A bowl of bun rieu will become more delicious not because it is cooked with a batch of field crab that is just right for the fat, but because it "has a delicious seat".
In the cold weather of Spring, after the New Year's Eve parties full of protein, nothing is better than sitting on the sidewalk watching the Indian almond leaves bloom in fresh green and raising a bowl of vermicelli soup "as beautiful as the sunset" to enjoy the mild sour taste and the buttery and fatty taste of pure crab roe, then gently whispering to tears because of the spicy taste of chili peppers.
That is the delicious taste of the old days, when bun rieu still had a pure country flavor!
