“It’s ultimately all about taste. It must have the elements of sweet, sour, hot, salty, but don’t forget textures!”
Chef and business woman Trinh Diem Vy (aka Ms Vy) is chatting from her hometown, Hoi An in central Vietnam, about her trip to Melbourne this week for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, and a special dinner she’s involved with at The Langham Hotel in the city.
Melbourne is a second home to Ms Vy. She has a gaggle of businesses in her home town – four restaurants, as well as a cooking school and hotel - but in 2015 she open her only restaurant outside Vietnam in Victoria’s capital. Why? The answer is family, and the fact that “work is fun!” she says.
Ms Vy’s Melbourne outpost, House of Hoi An, is in the south-eastern suburb of Windsor and she opened the restaurant after a few years of visiting her daughter in Melbourne and getting to know the city. “It’s a great way to mix family and business,” she says.
Work is very much a part of family life as Vy has worked in kitchens and restaurants in Hoi An since she was 10 years old. “I had to,” she laughs, “first for my grandmother and then in my parents’ restaurants. It gave me great habits to work hard.”
In Hoi An, all her venues are within walking distance from her home and every morning she visits her central kitchen first and then all her other businesses. She drops in to check on the staff and each operation, “there may be some training to be done or guidance in cooking,” she says.
"Work is fun," says Ms Vy. Source: Maison Vy
But, when it looked like her daughter was here permanently she took her love of work and turned every visit to Australia into a working holiday of sorts. “I love to visit my daughter and the variety of ingredients you can get in Melbourne is really great. The Vietnamese culture is very strong and I love to work, so this can mix family and business.”
For her latest visit, Ms Vy is excited to bring her food to The Langham for a dinner on Thursday March 30 (a few seats are still available), and she adds that she’ll be on-hand if people want to talk to her about her work and her cooking.
“Balance in Vietnamese cooking is so important,” she says, “but it’s ultimately all about taste. It must have the elements of sweet, sour, hot, salty but don’t forget textures - there’s crispy, soft and chewy.”
She’ll show off her skill with balance in flavours and textures with a menu of four dishes: goi cuon, pork and prawn summer rolls; goi buoi, pomelo, chicken and prawn salad; thit heo ngu vi voi xoi dua, spiced pork belly with sticky rice; and vem xao sa ot, which is mussels in aromatic spices.
One of the keys to Vy’s success is the evolution of her approach to her country’s cuisine - a cuisine heavily steeped in history and tradition. “I am very passionate about keeping the heritage of Vietnamese cooking so it’s important to make it interesting to younger people,” she says.
Vy presents dishes differently to how they may be traditionally presented. The combinations of flavours are there, always, but she’ll put dishes on contemporary flatware, giving a pad Thai a vibrant look and styling rice paper rolls, that makes them pretty and appealing to a social media savvy audience while being always balanced and traditional in flavour.
“The roots of the dishes have to be the same, you must create balance,” she says. “Vietnamese food is complex and very unique so you must remain true to it but present it differently to keep younger generations interested in it.”
It’s tourist season at home, so Vy won’t have a chance to bring along any of her chefs - she has a staff of 380 across all her businesses, “it makes my hair white!” she laughs - but coming to Melbourne for her two loves, work and family, is something she will happily continue to do.
