Nhà Tôi (My Home)
My first memory of food was in our first home in El Paso, TX. I was maybe 3 years old, and apparently registered the fact that whatever my dad was eating was tasty from the way he nodded in approval. It was then with much pleading that I was able to score one of the thin, shiny green things with a peculiar stem on top. I remember my mum and dad staring at me intently but unsure why. All I remember from the first bite was that I was running circles around the dining room table until Dad tackled me and Mum force-fed me water. Maybe it was because I was three years old, but I cannot recall what the Thai chili tasted like… Which probably explains why I have an odd habit of tasting peppers in any dish set in front of me out of curiosity. I’ve yet to learn my lesson.
The food that recalls the most memories is a dish called hủ tiếu ắp chảo in Vietnamese. Steaming plates of brown sauce, stir-fried, wide, flat rice noodles with beef bring to mind the noise and bustle of Orange County, CA where we lived as a little family of three. Back then, my only toys were the McDonald’s Happy Meal ones. In Houston, TX, Mum and I would order this from the Chinese take-out spot next to the nail salon and bring it home to Dad, who also had a long day looking after my baby sister. As we shared the meal straight out of the round, plastic, black, takeout container, he would tell me how he learned Cantonese to survive as a refugee in Hong Kong.
Today, I live in Washington, DC. I eat Thai chilis in Cambodian-Taiwanese cooking over at Maketto, the hip authentic fusion hybrid cafe of my dreams, and ho fan at Da Hong Pao, the only passable cart service dim sum place in the District. Those dishes were shared with coworkers, friends, and strangers as we discussed dating apps and childhood traumas. As I reflect on how much I’ve come to love my new home away from home, I’m reminded of the following excerpt from Homecoming by Jin Kim:
So for now, I think home is not a place or a memory but a certain emotion, and if I had to put a specific detail to it, the exact emotion I feel and the one I see in my mom’s face whenever my brother and I fly in to visit her or whenever she flies out to visit us and the three of us lock eyes in the baggage claim of the airport.
I felt this truth when I first read these sentences, two years ago when I was preparing to move away from my hometown. Now, I’ve come to understand the breadth of this emotion. It is the connection of this feeling of home with food, however, that I would like to introduce an experimental dinner series named Nhà Tôi (nyah ttoi). Unsurprisingly, my dearest friends have become home to me through our discussions of the concepts of home over meals and drinks. Inspired by my friends’ supper clubs (hi Elaine! thank you for First Supper Club, now @soloclub), cooking (hi Andrew and Victor! thank you for @aiyadc), and hospitality (hi Seda and Les, thank you for @shopkeepersdc @samasamaart), I just want to introduce another space for you to kick back and enjoy someone’s story of home, as told through their food. That’s right, Andrew and Victor, I’m voluntelling y’all to be the first guest chefs for this. 🙂 ❤️ love, your front-of-house manager.
For updates and first tickets, fill out the form here: https://www.thudawin.org/nha-toi. For interest in telling your story as a guest chef, or supporting the vision by donating drinks or venue space, please also reach out through the form.
P.S. Nhà Tôi means “my home” in Vietnamese. I don’t plan on being exclusively Asian American in theme, as home is shared by all people, but I do plan on using language that feels like home. If that means menus are in Mandarin (with romanizations) or French with translations, so be it.
P.P.S. Nhà technically means “house,” like the physical shelter you live in. Which is wrong for what I mean by home, but correct when you think about a place to gather and eat.