ABSTRACT
The Vietnamese proverb ‘Enough food and warm clothing; delicious food and beautiful clothing’1 brings to mind the overall socio-economic transformation experienced in Vietnam since the Indochina Wars and the opening up of its economy in the mid-1980s. Whereas people relate the first part of the saying to the hardship of fulfilling basic needs during and in the aftermath of the wartorn decades, the second – ‘delicious food and beautiful clothing’ – can be read as representative of a societal longing for an improved quality of life, and the growing relevance of consumerism in the context of the country’s economic development. Accordingly, food and fashion have become expressions of taste and well-being and, fuelled by rapid economic growth and the modernisation of the country’s food system, as well as the resurgence of the urban middle classes and their appetite for ‘foreign’ food, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) has become a hotspot for eating out in Vietnam. More than just the financial capacity to purchase ‘delicious food’, eating at a diverse range of gastronomic locations – from indoor, air-conditioned, upmarket cafés to fast food outlets – demonstrates a person’s knowledge and command of up-to-date lifestyle trends regarding how to socialise and consume ‘properly’ (see Welch Drummond 2012) and, by extension, offers a means of expressing a modern, urban lifestyle and ‘middle-classness’ (Bélanger et al. 2012; Bitter-Suermann 2014; Earl 2014).
