Saigon girl searches all over Dubai to cook expensive Vietnamese meals

Living and working in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) for 8 years now, Hoang Mai Trang always tries to cook authentic Vietnamese meals every day.

The 33-year-old woman said that since moving to Dubai in 2016, she had encountered many difficulties in finding ingredients to cook Vietnamese dishes.

Unlike now, when Trang first arrived, the Vietnamese community in Dubai was not large and delivery apps were not yet developed.

“At first, when I couldn't find the necessary ingredients, I just cooked makeshift dishes with ingredients available in the supermarket.”

Trang often has to travel far from her home and search in many different supermarkets to get Vietnamese ingredients, sometimes at “exorbitant” prices. Whenever she sees any ingredients that can be used to cook Vietnamese dishes, she collects them and stores them to cook gradually.

“When I can't go shopping, I can only eat the company's employee meals.

The company's meals at that time were buffets with cuisines from the Middle East, India and the Philippines, sometimes not even jasmine rice but basmati rice (a type of rice popular in Indian and South Asian cuisine - PV).

Vietnamese people find it difficult to eat, so I usually choose to eat Filipino food because it has some similarities with Vietnamese food.

At that time, I worked as a hotel room attendant – a hard job. The food did not suit my taste, which made me stressed at times. I witnessed many of my fellow countrymen returning to Vietnam halfway because of the difficulty in eating.

Trang remembers that the first time she cooked a bowl of beef noodle soup, she had to gather ingredients for nearly 2 weeks, take the subway and walk a long way to buy the necessary ingredients at many different supermarkets.

“At that time, I was still living in a dormitory. There was only one electric stove, and no big pot. It was difficult in many ways, but I still tried to cook a pot of beef noodle soup to share with everyone in the house. The first bowl of beef noodle soup was not full, but it was incredibly delicious,” Trang shared.

In Dubai, the hardest things to find are probably fish sauce, pork, and vegetables. Trang said that there are many types of fish sauce in Dubai from Thailand, the Philippines, etc., but they are usually not as delicious as Vietnamese fish sauce, which affects the taste of the dish.

“The herbs here only include coriander, mint, dill, etc. While Vietnamese coriander, Vietnamese coriander, Vietnamese coriander, Vietnamese balm, and fish mint are mostly hand-carried from Vietnam or omitted from the dish.

Sometimes when I buy a bunch of Vietnamese coriander, I am very happy. I will use 200 grams of Vietnamese coriander to cook many dishes. Recently, I also tried planting the stems of the herb to be more proactive.

"Vegetables and fruits in Dubai are not as diverse as in Vietnam. It has been a long time since Trang has had watercress soup, squash soup, yam soup, stir-fried squash... These vegetables are very familiar in Vietnam but are very difficult to find here or have to be bought at a price that is more expensive than meat and fish," Trang said.

In addition, because this is a Muslim country, pork is not commonly sold and most of it is frozen. When she first arrived, she thought pork was not sold here at all. Later, Trang learned that there are supermarket chains that sell it and it is usually located in a hidden corner of the supermarket.

Now, Trang is much better at "hunting" for Vietnamese ingredients, to the point that her friends nicknamed her "Dubai native".

When gathering with friends to eat Vietnamese food, Trang is usually the one who searches for ingredients and cooks. “I buy both hand-carried goods from Vietnamese women and buy each item at different supermarkets. For example, to buy pork, I have to go to a Philippine supermarket; to buy noodles, chicken, and duck, I have to go to a Chinese supermarket.”

Because of the difficulty in finding ingredients, every time she returns to Vietnam and Dubai, Trang fills two suitcases with dried foods and Vietnamese spices. On her most recent return, she also brought a whole box of frozen foods, including: fish cakes, pork rolls, pate, rice noodles, dried pineapple fish,...

Currently, she cooks Vietnamese food 4-5 days a week. In addition, due to the nature of her job, she is also lucky to eat Vietnamese food regularly. Her job is human resources manager and food quality manager for a famous Vietnamese restaurant chain in Dubai.

Trang has also cooked Vietnamese dishes to invite friends from many different countries, such as: Philippines, India, Mexico, Egypt, Lebanon, South Africa, Colombia,... "Almost everyone loves Vietnamese food, especially pho and Hue beef noodle soup" - Trang shared.

Some Vietnamese dishes that Trang cooks during gatherings with friends: