{"id":14522,"date":"2012-12-04T01:12:17","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T01:12:17","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-10-15T11:50:54","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:50:54","slug":"julia-child-s-asian-alter-ego-kimmy-tang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=14522","title":{"rendered":"Julia Child\u2019s Asian Alter Ego: Kimmy Tang"},"content":{"rendered":"

Julia Child\u2019s groundbreaking cookbook, MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING<\/strong>, written with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle in 1961, made history, by introducing French cooking techniques to American home cooks. But it also made clear that the simplest recipes are the most difficult to prepare because they depend on impeccable ingredients and painstaking techniques. <\/p>\n

Before attempting even a humble cabbage soup, Child carefully studied the greatest cookbooks of her day and then contemplated what variety of cabbage would work best, what to put in the broth, how long to cook it and at what temperature. She said, \u201cI had to iron out all of these questions of how and why and for what reason; otherwise, we’d end up with just an ordinary recipe … I felt we should strive to show (our readers) how to make everything top-notch, and explain, if possible, why things work one way but not another. There should be no compromise!”<\/p>\n

That \u201cno compromise\u201d attitude is a rarity and it\u2019s why there are many good cooks but few great ones. Kimmy Tang is one of the great ones. Born in Vietnam four years after Child\u2019s book was published, she was already experimenting in her family\u2019s kitchen by the age of five \u2014 proof that the greatest chefs are born, not made \u2014 and by the time she had moved to Los Angeles, learned English, and dipped into Child\u2019s cookbook, she was almost single-handedly running her first restaurant, Michelia, a petite Euro Asian bistro with a Zagat rave and a star following.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Growing up in a country that the French colonized in the late 1880s and didn\u2019t leave for nearly a century, Tang was exposed to French-influenced dishes such as b\u00e1nh m\u00ec (baguette sandwiches); Vietnamese coffee (French presse brewed dark roast); b\u00e1nh cuon (stuffed fresh rice crepes) and, of course, ph? (noodle soup), Vietnam\u2019s national dish. There is no written history of the dish but the name is generally thought to have been adapted from \u201cfeu\u201d (pronounced \u201cfuh,\u201d as is \u201cph?\u201d), which is French for \u201cfire.\u201d The name \u201c9021Pho\u201d is a three-way play on words, which embraces its French and Vietnamese roots and plants them firmly in America soil.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chef Kimmy Tang gets down on PHO at her Vietnamese restaurant 9021PHO<\/strong>
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