10/05/2021
"We sell about 400 cups of Chè every night."
Chè or "Sweet Soup" is a popular Vietnamese dessert consisting of a range of ingredients from mung beans to tapioca and lotus seeds and all kinds of jellies and puddings. Typically one chooses a few of the ingredients in a cup and then adds ice for a sweet dessert. Huế in Central Vietnam is particularly well known for the sheer number of choices for your Chè. It's like the Ben & Jerry's of Chè if Ben & Jerry's made everything by hand.
Here, Truong chooses from 24 different options, under the Tràng Tiền Bridge on the banks of the Perfume River. With so many flavors to choose from it becomes a bit of a challenge and I was "forced" to eat a few cups to sample just a portion of the many flavors. It reminded me of visiting Thrifty's as a kid and trying to figure out which flavor of ice cream to get for my 35 cent cone. That typically ended up being rainbow sherbert because to 6-year-old me, it looked like a mix of all of the flavors and was so beautifully colorful.
For these 24 flavors, there's a lot of work involved. Each of the 24 pots must be specially prepared by hand. It's a job for 4 people. But as I dip my spoon through the various layers in my cup and try to guess what each of the ingredients is I don't think about all that hard work. I'm enjoying my Chè on a warm summer night along the banks of the Perfume River in the ancient capital of Vietnam. Although the "Perfume" part has me scratching my head, as it certainly doesn't smell like it.
Huế, Vietnam
Summer 2018
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