Appetite Check: What Are You Hungry For?
On cravings, chefs, and the clues we keep missing.
📬 Welcome to Snacks and Spirals — No. 1
A weekly dispatch from Your Hungry BFF — serving timeless reflections for your work, life, and appetite, all through the lens of food.
🌀 1 QUESTION TO SPIRAL ON
What part of your ambition have you been starving just to stay likable?
📜 A HISTORY LESSON, SERVED HOT
How Vietnamese food taught us to play the Long Game
When Vietnamese families arrived in the U.S. post-war—
they weren’t trying to make a statement.
They were trying to make rent.
Dinner wasn’t a flex. It was logistics.
They figured out what worked—
what stretched, what froze,
what could handle being reheated three times.
They built systems in saucepans.
Routines in noods.
Phở wasn’t about nostalgia.
It was about staying fed.
Nước chấm wasn’t a side—
it was the variable that let one base dish become five.
That’s what most people miss:
Vietnamese food isn’t loud, but it’s brilliantly repeatable.
It doesn’t ask to be center stage—
it knows the power of durability.
In work, in food, in life—
the real flex isn’t the rebrand.
It’s what you can do well, over and over,
until people finally notice.
💬 BITES TO CHEW ON
I.
We crave what we’re told to hide—
until it leaks out as burnout, obsession,
or a habit we mistake for taste.
II.
In food and life, the quiet ones always win.
Not because they’re loud,
but because they’re consistent.
III.
Great chefs know mastery lives in muscle memory.
Founders too. It’s not what you launch—
it’s what you repeat, refine,
and can’t stop doing even when no one’s watching.
📍 3 VIETNAMESE SPOTS WORTH EATING IN NYC
Ha’s Đặc Biệt a.k.a Ha’s Snack Bar (Lower East Side)
Once a scrappy pandemic pop-up, now a cult communion run by Mission Chinese alums and power couple—Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns.
A tiny Vietnamese spot with big Parisian energy—and zero ego.
Must-try:
The menu shapeshifts each time I went—
yet every bite still felt like déjà-vu to a dream.
A wild-herb salad that reads your diary. Snails lounging in tamarind butter.
Scallops slicked with buttered nước mắm and peas—ugh insanely good.
Think you loathe fish sauce? You’ll leave writing it love letters.
Why it matters:
Their cooking doesn’t bow to tradition;
it interrogates it—then throws a dinner party around the answers.
Bánh Anh Em (East 13th St) - takeout available
Founded by pals John Nguyen and Nhu Ton—who went from slinging cơm tấm in the Bronx to a Bánh mì hit on the Upper West Side. Their take on northern classics hit like a love letter written on sandpaper: tender, but it leaves a mark.
Must-try:
Tableside chả cá Lã Vọng that arrives sizzling like gossip, cloud-soft bánh cuốn rolled to order, seafood phở so umami it’s basically truth serum.
Why it matters:
Proof that technique and warmth can co-star—no compromise, just chemistry.
La Đong (Union Square) - takeout available!
Chef Pithayakorn’s minimalist spin on Vietnamese tradition pulls in phở purists and TikTokers alike—everyone angling for the perfect steam shot.
Sister restaurant to Pranakhon and Thai Villa—both great for group dinners, especially if you’re emotionally prepared for someone to bail last minute.
Must-try:
The cá chiên nước mắm—Hanoi-style whole fish kissed with turmeric and dill, crisp yet delicate, wrapped in herbs and meant to be eaten with your hands and full attention.
The Miyazaki A5 wagyu phở—quietly luxurious, deeply layered, and somehow still comforting enough to carry home. Yes, even as takeout.
Why it matters:
The menu boasts 45 dishes but doesn’t feel like a flex.
🍭 BONUS BITES
Counter Service — W 14th st
Not Vietnamese. Not pretending to be.
Just the banh mi that hijacked my moral compass. But it is unreasonably good.
The kind of good that makes you angry it costs $19—and angrier when you realize you’d gladly pay it again tomorrow.
Chipotle founder Steve Ells pivoted from robo-vegan flop to sandwich savant, drafting Michelin-decorated chefs Andrew Black (Eleven Madison Park) and Neil Stetz (Quince) to build a menu with zero chill.
On paper, it sounds like a PR stunt.
In real life, it tastes like controlled chaos on a baguette.
Must-try:
The Charred Pork Banh Mi —fish sauce and lemongrass-marinated pork belly, smoky, juicy, and glistening like it knows exactly what it’s doing.
Topped with a slick layer of creamy chicken liver pâté that hits you slow, then deep.
Finished with pickled veg, cucumber, jalapeños, cilantro, and mint—
cool, sharp, and just enough crunch to make you pay attention.
The bread? It shatters on impact. Like it’s daring you to make a mess.
Why it matters:
When fine-dining minds go casual, you get a $19 sandwich that feels like insider trading. Also helps that Andrew and Neil are genuinely lovely humans—which makes the emotional damage taste even better.
I walked in hungry. I walked out texting Jonah, my husband:
“I think I just cheated on bánh mì.”
🍦FINAL BITE
Food isn’t just fuel—it’s a portal.
Into memory, sure.
But also into power, politics, precision.
When someone serves you something they've made a thousand times before, you're not just tasting technique — you're tasting the choices they’ve had to defend.
Who they became when no one clapped.
What they kept cooking when nobody asked.
Next week: How Chinese Food Became American — where tradition shapes you, and ambition dares you to carry it differently.
p.s. if you liked this, wine not share it with a friend? and DM me your favorite Vietnamese spots in nyc — i’m always hungry for recs!
till the next bite,
Your Hungry BFF 🍜