Van Cu, the Pho Village

Those feet walked all the way up to Phú Thọ and out to Hải Phòng. They walked as far down as Thanh Hóa.

Across their shoulders lay a bamboo pole, heavy with goods at both ends. With every step, the carrying pole creaked. At one end hung a round clay pot with a piece sawn out of its side, so it could serve as a stove. On that stove sat a copper pot of broth, cooked from crab or meat for pouring over noodles and rice sheets. At the other end hung firewood, along with pork that was already cooked.

They went that far to sell to festival crowds, and some festivals went on for five to seven days.

An elderly villager who knows many stories of the past still tells how this elder's own grandparents once carried such loads. That village, where those long walks began, is called Vân Cù.

Vân Cù is a country village in the Nam Trực area. It lies in the land of Nam Định, which is now part of Ninh Binh province. Beside it are two more villages, Giao Cù and Tây Lạc. People call all three together the homeland of Nam Định phở.

Long ago, this area had many country markets and many festivals. A busy market needed food and drink. For drink, there was green tea. For food, the elders cooked bánh đúc and sold it to people who did hard work. The village had made bánh đa for a very long time, and noodles too. Rice batter was spread into thin sheets, then laid out in the sun to dry.

The people of Vân Cù are spoken of as the first to carry phở around for sale in Nam Định. After them, people from Giao Cù and Tây Lạc took up the carrying pole too.

The elders do not all tell the same story of how the village's phở trade began.

Some elders say it began on drizzly winter days. The air was damp, and the sheets of bánh đa lay out for days without drying. The fine rain kept drifting down, and the sheets stayed soft. With no other choice, the villagers took the fresh sheets into town to sell. To their surprise, customers in town liked that softness and that supple bite. Little by little, people cut the sheets into thin strands for convenience, then cooked them with broth simmered from bones. In this way, the sheets that refused to dry became phở noodles.

Other elders say it began in the city of Nam Định, when the French built a textile mill there. In the slack farming season, when the fields needed less work for a while, villagers carried their loads up to the city to sell breakfast to the workers. At first, the loads held bánh đa with crab, and noodles in broth. Later, to please their customers, the sellers slowly changed the way they cooked, and beef phở was added. The loads found their way to factories, boat landings, harbors and railway stations across the province.

One account has rice sheets that would not dry in the drizzle. The other has a breakfast load beside the textile mill. Both have bánh đa and a pot of broth, and both lead to a load of phở. Neither account has to give way to the other.

According to the elders, the pot of broth had a path of its own too. At first, the broth was cooked with crabs from the rice fields. One elder says those crabs were not always there to be caught, so people switched to pork. Only later came beef bones, which made the broth more fragrant and richer. Crab, then pork, then beef.

Outside the village, people point in different directions when asked about the roots of phở. Some think of the land of Nam Định. Others think of Hanoi, where phở sold from carrying poles was already on the streets in the early years of the 20th century. Still others look for it in other dishes. There is a French beef stew, and the Vietnamese buffalo dish bún xáo trâu. There is also the Chinese dish ngưu nhục phấn, a kind of noodles eaten with beef. But no one has yet been able to point to the place where the very first stove was lit to cook phở.

The debate is far from settled, but the feet of Vân Cù took to the road long ago. More than 100 years ago, they were already carrying phở all around the nearby areas, and on up to Hanoi. By the 1920s and 1930s, quite a few people from Vân Cù had made their names in Hanoi with their phở.

One villager managed to open a workshop for making phở noodles right in Hanoi. The workshop was also a shared home for villagers who came up to the city. Newcomers lodged there, and from there they went out selling phở from their carrying poles. Those who arrived first looked after those who followed, because they all came from the same village.

In those days, by five in the morning, each phở seller had already lifted a stove onto one shoulder, its fire glowing red. Along with the stove went a pot of broth, 5 liters at the least and 10 at the most. Noodles, meat and spices went on the load too, with a stack of bowls that had small bases and flared rims. It was still a stove on the shoulder, just as in the days when the grandparents walked to the festivals.

Around nine in the morning, everyone drifted back to the shared house to get ready together for the afternoon. When afternoon came, they carried their loads back out into the streets, selling until nine or ten at night before they rested.

On every load, the noodles and the broth were each made in the village's own way.

The noodles begin with grains of rice. The rice is soaked for just long enough, then ground into a very fine, runny batter. The batter is spread thin over steam and cooked into sheets. The sheets are cut into strands by hand. Good strands are soft and silky, yet still a little chewy.

The broth, though, needs time. Large beef bones full of marrow are washed clean, then blanched to get rid of the scum. Then come hours of slow simmering over a low fire. The cooks toast star anise, black cardamom and cloves until fragrant, then drop them into the pot. Each pod of star anise fans out its points like a tiny star. Ginger, cinnamon and shallots add their scent as well.

That pot is never without fish sauce. An elder over 70, whose family has made phở for four generations, says every pot of Vân Cù phở shares one thing: its drop of fish sauce. The fish sauce is first tamed to soften its sharp smell, then added in just the right amount, so the broth slowly grows sweet.

Here, the craft of phở has unwritten rules for choosing the rice, making the noodle sheets, simmering the bones and blending the spices. In many families in the trade, the secrets usually pass to the sons, from one generation to the next. A phở recipe is never put up for sale, and no one may buy one.

In 2024, this kind of knowledge was added to Vietnam's national list of intangible cultural heritage, as the folk knowledge of Nam Định phở.

Wherever the people of Vân Cù go, the secrets go with them. They have taken the craft to Hải Phòng, Quảng Ninh and Hanoi, and as far away as Ho Chi Minh City. Some have even carried phở abroad.

Yet in Vân Cù itself, a visitor sees few phở shops with crowds going in and out. When villagers want phở, they often have to go into town for it.

But the tenth day of the third month is the day of the village festival. Then, people from Vân Cù who have built their lives in many places often come home to compete at cooking phở. On that day, the secrets that followed them everywhere meet once again.

In the grandparents' day, the stove rode on a shoulder, walking with its owner all the way to festivals in other places. Now, for their own village festival, the children and grandchildren travel the other way. That day, phở stoves glow red right at home. Feet that once walked so far turn back into the village.