Rice and Baguette

The once-obscure cuisine of Vietnam is a favourite of many people from East to West. After millennia of adaptation and innovation with a pervasive Chinese influence, today’s Vietnamese food is, surprisingly, a mixture of Vietnamese and French dishes, with the baguette the most cherished part of the French culinary legacy. Introduced into Vietnam in the mid-nineteenth century, the baguette is now second only to rice, the wonder grain the Viêt discovered thousands of years ago and made their staple food. Drawing on archaeological evidence and a wealth of oral and written history, Rice and Baguette reveals the journey Vietnamese food has traversed through history to become a much-loved cuisine today