Cuisine and Social Status Among Urban Vietnamese, 1888–1926

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, upwardly mobile middle-class Vietnamese living in Indochina’s colonial cities acquired a taste for new foods. Eating or drinking in new ways allowed the well-to-do to highlight their cultural sophistication, wealth, and power. French- and Vietnamese-language newspapers promoted fine French wines; Munich beer; and Western liqueurs, as accompaniments to a cuisine which remained largely Vietnamese in its broad outlines. For special occasions, members of the rising middle class also splurged on Western-style banquets or hosted friends and colleagues in fine Chinese restaurants. Such conspicuous consumption and cultural borrowing elicited some criticism among their contemporaries. Asserting one’s social status through food thus proved a complicated part of colonial urban life. Archival materials, newspaper advertisements and travel reports, along with an early cookbook in Vietnamese, illustrate how middle-class Vietnamese adapted French, Chinese and Vietnamese regional cuisines to their own changing tastes and ambitions.