Phu Quoc Fish Sauce

High up, out of sight of anyone standing on the floor below, lies a surface of white salt, round and perfectly flat. A few bars have just been wedged across it, pressing the salt down hard. This white will not stay for long.

The salt fills the mouth of a giant wooden vat, taller than a grown adult. Beneath the salt lie many tons of anchovies. Together, the fish weigh more than an elephant.

The vat does not stand alone. It stands in a house that families on Phu Quoc island build for one purpose only: making nước mắm, or fish sauce. Around it, in this vat house, stand a few dozen other big vats. Some vat houses on the island hold even more. Most vat houses lie around Dương Đông, and a few at An Thới.

The vat is made from dozens of planks, sawn from bời lời and vên vên trees in the forest. Two vat makers set the planks edge to edge, then bind them all around with rattan, by hand. The wood of both trees is soft, and that softness is just what the job needs. As each rattan hoop is tightened, the planks press closer, until not a single gap is left. Into every seam between the planks, they pack spongy bark peeled from the tràm tree to seal it tight. It takes the two makers about three weeks to finish one vat.

Once it is built, the vat is set up off the ground. People still hold that the wood of the vat adds its own share to the flavor of the fish sauce. Today, bời lời wood is hard to find. Some places have to bring in wood from Cambodia, while others use jackfruit wood instead.

The anchovies that go into the vat come in many kinds. Some are sọc tiêu, and some are sọc phấn. Others are phấn chì or cơm đỏ. There are cơm lép and cơm than as well. Their names speak of pepper, chalk and charcoal, yet every one of them is an anchovy. The finest fish sauce comes from two of them, the cơm than and the sọc tiêu.

Many vat houses keep their own fleet of fishing boats. In anchovy season, the boats usually go out in pairs, one keeping close to the other, following the schools of fish.

The moment the fish come aboard, the crew set to work. They scoop up seawater and sluice it over the catch until the fish are truly clean. Every stray fish of another kind and every scrap of rubbish gets picked out. They toss the fish to shake off the water, then measure them out basket by basket onto the deck. There is a lot of fish and far less salt. They scatter the salt on layer by layer, and after each layer, someone mixes it all evenly with a small wooden rake. When all is done, they push the whole catch down into the hold, sprinkle a layer of salt over the top, and seal the hold tight. The liquid that seeps out of the fish collects at the bottom of the hold. The crew draw it off and keep it, instead of pouring it away.

The salt mixed with the fish has come a long way to get here. It is shipped out from the mainland, from around Bà Rịa and Vũng Tàu. The grains are large and clean, with little sand among them. Even after it arrives, the salt is not used right away. The makers store it for a few months, so the grains turn less harsh and less bitter.

Salt is not the only thing that crossed from the mainland to the island. Before 1900, most of the people who brought fish sauce making to Phu Quoc came from central Vietnam. Once here, the craft took root and slowly grew into a tradition of the island. Many people believe it has been practiced here for more than 200 years.

In the 19th century, people on the island lived mainly by three kinds of work. They went out to sea to fish, went into the forest for whatever it offered, and made fish sauce. By the end of that century, fishing along the coast went hand in hand with fish sauce making on a large scale. Together, the two trades supported thousands of people on the island.

Like many vat houses, the home of the giant vat has its own landing. On the day the catch came in, the boats pulled up there, and the fish were carried up and tipped straight into the vat. A few days later, the workers drew off the liquid that had seeped from the fish and set it aside. They smoothed the layer of fish flat, then piled salt on top, thick and white. And today, they have just finished wedging the bars across the mouth of the vat.

Soon, the workers will pump the stored liquid back into the vat. It will rise and cover the salt completely, and the white at the mouth of the vat will sink out of sight for about a year. Through all that time, the vat holds nothing but fish and salt. No one adds anything. No one stirs it or mixes it, either. The liquid in the vat is only what seeps from the fish themselves. The batch just waits quietly for the day it is ripe.

Then a day will come when the liquid in the vat turns a golden brown, and a fragrant smell rises from it. At that sign, the workers know the batch is ripe, and that it is time to pull the plug at the foot of the vat.

Right at the mouth of the hole, the workers have already set a filter made of rattan. They gather strands of rattan into a bundle, wrap a pad around the outside, and tie it tight with one more strand of rattan. The bundle looks just like a broom.

The fish sauce slips through this broom, the chổi lù, and flows out slowly. The workers catch it, and keep catching it until the vat has run dry. Then they lift off the pressing rack and the bars that weigh it down, wash them clean, and wedge them back in place as before. They pump the fish sauce they have just collected back into the vat. Out it comes, and in it goes. Out again and in again, time after time. Little by little, the fish sauce turns a reddish brown, grows clearer, and comes to taste just right.

Not a single drop of water is added to this first run of fish sauce. The first run is called nước mắm cốt, and on the island some people also call it nước mắm nhĩ. It is clear and yet thick, as thick as honey.

Once the first run has been drawn, the workers stir salt into clean water, and keep stirring until no more salt will dissolve. They let this brine flow through the vat of fish many more times. The later runs of fish sauce taste milder than the first.

In the vat house, a few dozen other vats stand around the giant wooden vat, and each one keeps a batch of fish of its own. When the day comes to pull the plug, the first run of fish sauce to slip through the chổi lù will flow only from the heart of this very vat.