Bobby Chinn, the Egyptian-Chinese verbose, wise-cracking, globe-trotting chef-cum-comic-TV presenter, is reeling off ingredients.
"Fish sauce, sugar, water, a little garlic, chilli if you want it spicy..." And more: "Shisho, mint, cilantro, even dill."
He's describing the variety and complexity of flavours in his beloved Vietnamese cuisine, which he will be sharing in sessions with Dubai's foodies at this week's Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.
"I'll be cooking bun bo. It's one of my favourite dishes, because it really does exemplify Vietnamese food — its simplicity, its sophistication. You've got hot, cold, sweet, sour — it's just a quick, easy, simple mix of flavours that is just unparalleled."
It's an easy point to make, but I will make it: Chinn himself is an equally complex yet refreshing mix — a personality of contrasting cultures raised globally (born in New Zealand, educated in the US and UK) that's broken the mould of the earnest, syrupy TV chef. In his show World Cafe, Chinn served tart one-liners, a passion for eating and a travel show that didn't explore the ordinary. He cooks on a beach, then runs after bikini-clad girls to taste the food — managing somehow to be charming, not lecherous.
His easy manner belies the fact that he says he's most comfortable in his restaurant kitchen. I think he's still most comfortable telling stories, which he does with ease, and it's when his eyes light up most — just ask him about killing a catfish.
Stream of consciousness
That story is one that didn't make it to his cookbook, Wild, Wild East, which recounts his experiences learning to be a chef in Vietnam. In between the recipes for classic Vietnamese dishes (and his own pork-free updates) there are stream-of-consciousness tales that he honed by telling them at tables in his restaurant.
"It was very therapeutic, you know, looking back at your life. This was a great excuse to do that. I wrote the book in Kerala's backwaters. I woke up first thing in the morning, wrote all day, had lunch, no mobile phone and wrote for five days," he says, staring out over the marina at Dubai's InterContinental Hotel.
"The stories were always there. It was like a stream of consciousness, it just came out. There are a lot of stories that didn't make the book. They didn't like the F-word all over the place because it was a cookbook, but that's the story. Like, how cool was it to freeze a catfish to death? What am I gonna do? Lie and pretend we didn't freeze a catfish to death?"
He gives a throaty cackle and makes eye contact with the videographer, cracking her up. Everyone giggles when Chinn is around.
"When you tell a story you can ad-lib a little bit, so that's what I was doing, from table to table. ‘You wanna hear about my day? I'll tell you about my day!' All of a sudden I would get the laughter where the laughter was due, or wouldn't get the laughter, and would think, okay, gotta change that word."
While he learned the ups and downs (lots of them, he admits) of running restaurants in Vietnam, he credits his Egyptian background with his comedy.
"My Middle Eastern side is where I think I get my humour from. Because Egyptians are FUNNY! It's where I want to get buried. At least people will show up to my funeral."
The grandson of an Egyptian general jailed by Hosni Mubarak, Chinn's got an awareness and passion for the region, despite his food focus on Asia.
"I had a really wonderful upbringing, which was totally different from the States. I'm Egyptian-Chinese, so don't fit in with the whites, with the blacks, the Hispanics — there wasn't a peer group for me," he says of his early education in San Francisco. "Then I go to Egypt. There's guards, driver, table manners, and a family and extension of family and friends that are the children of your parents' friends. To be socially accepted was the most comforting thing for me," he says softly.
Venturing south
"My grandfather died the day before Hosni Mubarak resigned. He was Mubarak's boss. It was a magical time because Hosni sent him to jail. So to watch him go — bye, bye Hosni! I was going to a funeral but by the same token — he's gone."
Chinn will return to screens soon with two shows — including a continuation of his World Cafe, with stints in Zanzibar, Portugal, Sicily and the American Deep South (a "scary" prospect, he jokes, strumming a mock banjo) but nothing in the region, as plans for his dream location, Iran, were scuppered by the recent embargo, and Saudi Arabia and Yemen didn't come through either. "I'm very fortunate to have this TV show because... I get to see the most humble human beings providing the most unappreciated service of feeding people day in day out. All of a sudden I wonder, ‘who the hell am I to charge this much for a molten chocolate cake?' when you can eat an entire meal for a very cheap price. It's about that philosophy."
His second show, for Discovery Channel, is much more personal, and follows the challenges in his ongoing attempt to run Restaurant Bobby Chinn in Hanoi, after the closure of his earlier restaurants in Saigon.
"It's a little bit of daily life. They try to get into my head. I just try to continue to be as unbalanced as I am, but be happy. I challenge myself to either face my fears or push myself to new depths. Going down!"
Understanding Vietnamese cuisine
We're so familiar with Asian cuisines — there's a conveyor belt sushi or Thai restaurant on every street, from Cape Town to St Petersburg and everywhere in-between — that it's refreshing to discover there are corners of cuisine we've yet to discover (and bastardise, depending on your point of view). Vietnamese food is one such cuisine. Dubai now has two high-end Vietnamese restaurants (Hoi An and Voi) but like other Asian styles, it's at its best in its street cooking. Bobby Chinn doesn't have a Vietnamese background, but he fell in love with the country's fresh, flavourful style, and is sure you will too.
What interested you about Vietnamese cuisine?
I was captivated by Vietnam by the fact that they threw everyone out. I was interested in the fact that here's a country that's been isolated for 25 years by a US embargo. I discovered a wonderful country without all the garbage that capitalism brings. It was untouched, it was pure to me. And when I spoke to a lot of chefs about what they knew about Vietnamese food, these very knowledgeable chefs about Japanese, Thai, with a litany of ingredients that they knew, knew nothing about Vietnamese food. I thought, I'm gonna go check out the food. What I discovered is a cuisine that's unique in South East Asia.
How is it different?
Thai food is driven by spices. The Vietnamese are influenced by what are — as far I am concerned — the two major contributors of modern cuisine in the East and West: French and Chinese. They have borrowed techniques and made their cuisine their own. And they've done it really well. Now we're all sustainable, local, we want light and fresh, and raw. They've been doing that for 1,000 years.
What will you be cooking at your session?
Bun Bo. It's one of my favourite dishes because it really does exemplify Vietnamese food — its simplicity, its sophistication. It's a cross between a salad and almost soupy-like.
The quintessential recipe in Vietnam would be nuoc cham, which is a fish sauce, sugar, water, a little garlic, chilli if you want it spicy. Across Vietnam they serve these big bowls of salad and a mixture of herbs — shisho, mint, cilantro, even dill, then a mound of rice noodles. Then they take a little beef and sear it, then I take the nuoc mam sauce and deglaze it and I got instant sweet and sour beef jus, then I dump it on top of the noodles, so you've got hot cold sweet sour and then you garnish with pickled carrots and green papaya, peanuts and deep fried shallot and you mix it all together.
Lit fest for foodies
The Emirates Literary Festival has plenty for foodies; in addition to Bobby Chinn, food writer Ariana Bundy will launch her Persian-cuisine book Pomegranates and Roses; Josceline Dimbleby, author of 17 cookbooks, will be discussing her works; local chef Suzanne Hussaini returns; and Italian chef Giorgio Locatelli (of Ronda Locatelli at Atlantis) will also make an appearance. All events are at the InterContinental Dubai Festival City.
Bobby Chinn: The Foodie Panel, with Giorgio Locatelli and Suzane Hussaini, Saturday 10am. His Friday cookery demonstration is sold out.
Ariana Bundy: Book launch and cookery demonstration, Friday 1.30pm; Literary tea with Josceline Dimbleby, Saturday 4.30pm.
Josceline Dimbleby: In conversation, Friday, 3pm.
Giorgio Locatelli: Italian cookery demonstration, Saturday, 12.30pm.
Suzanne Hussaini: Cookery demonstration, Saturday, 3pm.
Buy tickets online at tickets.emirateslitfest.com.
