Bún Mắm: Vietnamese Seafood Gumbo

Bún Mắm: Vietnamese Seafood Gumbo

By Sarah Baird

No matter where you travel around the globe, there’s a specific type of delicious beauty found in dishes that are firmly rooted in place: those creations that pull so directly from close-to-home sources and the bounty of local land and sea that it’s practically impossible to untangle what you’re eating from your surroundings. This sort of culinary osmosis gives deeper meaning to each bite, and in South Louisiana, is perhaps best embodied by gumbo. Whether you’re gobbling up a bowl of Creole-leaning or Cajun-style gumbo, the oysters might’ve been harvested just miles from where you’re dining — and your mealtime companion may very well have trolled for the behemoth shrimp hiding in the dish’s dark roux broth. Similarly, in the Soc Trang province of Vietnam south of Ho Chi Minh City, bún mam is a dish that completely envelopes the richness and bounty of the Mekong Delta in a bowl, creating a splendidly layered and textured soup that embraces the gastronomic fertility of its birthplace with vigor.

Often referred to as “Vietnamese gumbo” for its complexity of flavors and diverse mouthfeel, bún mam’s foundation begins with bún, a thin vermicelli noodle made from rice flour, and the all-important, everpungent mam: fermented fish paste that gives the soup its distinctive aroma and murky, slightly sour broth. Yes, the wafting scent of mam can be arresting at first sniff for the uninitiated, but it is the tangy, funky cornerstone ingredient of the meal. Mam holds the umami key.

When served, there’s a veritable forest of greens and garnishes available to top the bún mam: water spinach, cabbage, banana blossoms, lime, bean sprouts, water lily shoots, chives, and a garden’s worth of fresh herbs and blanched vegetables just waiting to add a light, vegetative quality to the swirling density of funky intensity. (If you’re feeling the need for extra heat, a fish pastestuffed chili is an option for taking the heady soup up yet another notch.)

“Bún mam is a delicacy, and something that’s mostly eaten when family gets together around holidays, like when we’re celebrating the new year. Not everyone from Vietnam knows how to make this dish, though, because it comes from one region in the South,” says Trinh “Lilly” Vuong, owner of Lilly’s Café in New Orleans.

Lilly’s husband, Keit, is from the area of Vietnam where bún mam originates, so he helms the kitchen when cooking the dish at home. “It takes a long time to cook — a lot like gumbo — and it feeds a lot of people!”

Lilly notes that while many types of fish that are traditionally used for the dish might be nearly impossible to find outside of Vietnam, there are plenty of good substitutes. She recommends using salmon head or tilapia, as well as squid, in any bún mam preparation made stateside.

“The dish is usually served a lot like a hot pot,” she explains, “so you drag your shrimp or calamari through the serving pot in the middle of the table to cook it, then bring it back to your bowl to eat.” This ensures that the seafood doesn’t get overcooked in a dish where the remaining ingredients benefit from a lengthy time in the pot.

Be forewarned, though: Bún mam isn’t an easily discovered staple at most Vietnamese restaurants along the Gulf Coast. Unlike bún bò hue (a sweet-and-salty beef shank and rice noodle soup), bún riêu cua (a tomatoand pork-based soup with crab and rice noodles) and, of course, the many variations on pho, bún mam hasn’t found the same kind of slurp-worthy ubiquity across the region.

Don’t worry, though — the relative scarcity of bún mam on menus simply means you’ll have the thrill of seeking it out: maybe in travels to the bustling Vietnamese markets of Houston or even in the Mekong Delta itself. Closer to home, why not ask Vietnamese friends or neighbors if they’d help you learn how to make the dish, perhaps even swapping gumbo-cooking tips for bún mam pointers that have been passed down through your respective families. Because, at their core, both dishes are about staying delectably — and distinctively — grounded in culinary tradition, no matter how far away from home you might be.