In 1979, seven-year-old Nam Quoc Nguyen and his family fled Saigon after the communists took over and established what eventually became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It was in Scandinavia where Nam began his culinary journey – from traditional Vietnamese food on the dinner table to fine dining cuisine at the Copenhagen Culinary Institute.
It was also during the 1970s when around 2,700 Vietnamese boat people sought refuge in the Philippines after the fall of Saigon. Heartbreaking tales aside, they also brought with them pho, Vietnam’s most famous noodle soup.
Had his family gone to the Philippines instead of Denmark, Nam could easily have been one of those refugees who have set up the earliest Vietnamese food joints in the country. Instead, he spent 20 years serving Western cuisine at premier restaurants and hotels in New York, London, Bali and Thailand before taking a leap of faith and starting his own NamNam Noodle Bar in Singapore in 2012. It would take him another four years before finally bringing Vietnamese street food to the Philippines, with the first Annam branch satisfying the appetite of Eastwood’s cosmopolitan crowd.
“I told myself that if I will open my own restaurant, it has to be Vietnamese. It is the least I can do to promote the culture of my people,” said the 44-year-old Chef Nam.
Nam’s chic noodle bar proved to be such a hit in Singapore and Jakarta where his seven branches serve 700 bowls a day to snake-like queues. “It is a good problem to have,” he said.
For Annam Noodle Bar, the brand’s first franchised outlet, Chef Nam had to make the noodle broth more tangy, intense and flavorful to satisfy the Filipino palate. The broth—either chicken or beef—is boiled for at least 24 hours. Served without MSG, it is light yet flavorful, and guests have the option to add condiments such as fish sauce, hoisin sauce and chili sauce.
Aside from the traditional chicken or beef pho, Annam also has noodle soup with wagyu beef slices or oxtail and beef balls, all garnished with fresh herbs and spring onions and topped with chili slices for an added kick. Its Saigon Fisherman’s Noodle Soup uses mouse-tail noodles instead of the usual flat ones, and if you can get past the odd-sounding name, you would enjoy a hearty bowl of chewy rice noodles topped with shrimps and slices of fish and squid.
The casual dining restaurant also serves French-inspired baguette called banh mi which are stuffed with chicken pâté, mayonnaise, hot chili peppers, pickled carrots, cucumber, fresh cilantro, and of course, savory meats such as sautéed lemongrass pork with cream cheese, caramelized five-spice pork belly, fried catfish, and chili sambal braised beef. It has several small plate choices for starters, including fresh spring rolls with prawns and pork served with peanut sauce, green papaya salad with beef jerky and fresh herbs, chicken wings caramelized with shrimp paste, and crispy squid with sriracha mayonnaise.
To complete the experience, Annam offers Vietnamese coffee from full-bodied Robusta beans as well as lotus tea, which would go well with traditional dessert choices of chilled dried longan with lotus seeds, water chestnut and seaweed strips; crispy fried banana with coconut sauce; and vanilla pudding with palm sugar caramel, among others.
Chef Nam, who won the Rising Chef award at the World Gourmet Summit in 2002, has expressed hope that Vietnamese cuisine will soon become a staple in the Philippines. In fact, he is confident of his Eastwood branch reaching the 700-bowl-a-day mark sooner than later that a second outlet in Resorts World Manila is already in the pipeline.
“As an Asian who grew up in the Western world, I really wanted to go back to my roots,” he said. “I’ve been away for so long, yet Saigon still feels like home, just as a bowl of pho feels like home.”
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