Coolest Person in the Room: Thư Phạm Buser

If someone had never heard of you or your work, what’s the first dish or project you’d show them to explain who you are?

The work I do in food styling and culinary arts are a deep part of who I am, but the one thing that is truly an extension of my philosophy is my event series, Ăn Cỗ. It’s my dream to see Vietnamese food recognized on the world stage for our flavors and heritage art, so I would show them the dessert from my most recent event, “Treasures of the Mekong Delta.” It was a five-part tasting flight of sweets from the Mekong Delta region, served on a colorful graphic art board I cut and made to serve. I handmade each dessert at home and arranged the colors to try to capture the vibrancy of the riverside markets of the Mekong that I remember growing up. I had guests dip them into a coconut pandan cream sauce and wanted them to experience the bounty of textures on display in the Delta. This dish felt like the culmination of all my passions: serving delicious Viet food, experimenting with visual food art and diving deeper into my culture.

You’re a chef, a food stylist and a food artist. What’s the biggest difference between making food taste good and making it look good?

If I do my job right, people can’t help but imagine tasting the food in their mind. We are so wired around food and all its little cues, when we see something tasty, our brains just light up. My goal is to trigger that visceral connection. Many people think making food look good is just a bit of decoration to spruce it up. But your unconscious mind knows yummy when it sees it.

Therefore, I need to find, source, prepare and cook food that looks like it tastes good, because it does. When you see “a good looking burger,” you might not be consciously admiring the beauty of the burger, but you are noticing all the subtle details. I will search through a pack to find one puffy, chubby, moist brioche bun. I want to make the cheese look melty but not oily, the fresh, thick-cut tomatoes like they just got rinsed in cool water before slicing. The edges of the burger show a hint of onions above the charred side of the patty. The difference of what good looks like and what tastes good are often not too far apart in my world.

Have you ever made something visually stunning that actually tasted terrible?

I have never made anything terrible in my life. Maybe not the way I hoped or expected, but never terrible. Well, my mom might disagree... But every food starts to become petulant when it’s been exposed to heat, light and time. Entropy’s a bitch.

You can throw a dream dinner party with three guests, dead or alive. Who’s at the table, and what are you serving?

Serving my version of my mom’s old restaurant dishes to a young version of my grandpa, Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain. Anthony was the first foreigner I remember who really fell in love with our cuisine, and I saw our food from an outside perspective. I think he’ll get along with my young grandpa. My grandpa was a firebrand, author, political activist, assassination survivor and overall badass, but he also had this insatiable curiosity. He could connect with Julia on learning French, and I’d just like to see her reaction when eating Vietnamese food (like shrimp paste).

Is there a food trend you wish would disappear forever?

Anything that wastes food for no real benefit. I wish people would stop stabbing heirloom tomatoes with candles.

What’s your guilty pleasure snack or meal? Something you eat when no one’s watching.

Chili, shrimp, salt. It keeps me spicy. These evil, crunchy, crispy little granules are umami and meant for salting things — not for eating straight out of the container. I usually cover my tracks by doing the typical Vietnamese thing and shaking it on fruit. I recommend it with grapes, apples, oranges or sour mangoes. My mom always tried to hide it from me, but I knew how to twist my dad’s arm and get it back.

You’re bringing your event Ăn Cỗ Vol. VI to life this spring, showcasing different eras of Saigon’s food culture. What’s one dish that instantly takes you back to a specific memory?

Gỏi khô bò (beef jerky and green papaya salad) is a dish I can close my eyes and hear my mom preparing it. It is unripened green papaya shredded with a sharp tool that strips it into delicate threads. As the claws draw through the fibers, they make this satisfying slice sound. The papaya is topped with chilis, sweet beef jerky, a handful of fresh herbs, and sweet and sour vinaigrette. It’s usually served at parks around lunchtime, you can see ladies in conical hats churning through mounds of ingredients and people enjoying a bite under the mahogany trees.

How do you think Vietnamese cuisine is evolving, both in Vietnam and in the US?

We’re entering this new phase that demonstrates how well the Viet diaspora are plugged into the wider world. So many trendy items that I have a hard time finding outside of New York are already being served in Saigon. Vietnamese people have such a ferocious optimism for the future, it is inspiring to go back home and try all the new crazy things they’re cooking up. Lychee beer is popping off right now and is so yummy.

The food cart culture is slowly eroding as these incredible cooks retire or move onto something else. It is a sign of increasing prosperity, but all the same I can’t help but get a bit nostalgic finding out that the noodle lady in my alley is gone. She took over the same stall that her mom and grandma ran together. There are so many commercial options now, but I do think a growing proportion of Vietnamese are seeking a sort of “back to the roots,” artisanal approach. Small batch rice wines, mung bean treats using ancient recipes, and ancestral dishes are blowing up.

Outside of Vietnam, a lot of the diaspora has now grown up immersed in other countries like the US. They are making food that feels unique and honest to their own lived experiences. When I travel around, I am really excited to try Vietnamese restaurants and see how they are adapting based on what’s available. In particular, I love Viet Cajun and how the Pacific Northwest incorporates the sea’s bounty into Viet dishes. People are starting to shrug off the tyranny of authenticity, no longer feeling the demand to make it exactly as it was back in Vietnam. They’re experimenting more and creating new experiences that go beyond just the dish you eat. The market is ready to try these experiences, too. For example, I served roasted frog at my last pop-up and nobody even blinked.

You styled all the recipes for Madame Vo’s cookbook. What’s a styling trick that would blow people’s minds?

This was so much fun. It got a bit blurry-eyed getting the chance to style such abundant Viet dishes. I don’t really have any tricks, but I would challenge people to experiment with leaning into the natural beauty of every ingredient. For example, in ikebana flower arrangements, you are not supposed to bend nature to your will. Instead, you want to accentuate the natural flow of the stem. If an ingredient has a really awkward shape, I try to give it a spotlight instead of hiding it — show some love to irregular produce.

What’s the weirdest DM you’ve ever received?

I think I get a lot of the typical weirdness in my DMs... But I noticed more DMs from brands with messages that have been AI-tailored to what is publicly available on my website or Instagram. It feels eerily accurate but still somehow inauthentic. It’s probably an omen of what’s to come.

If you had to pick a different creative career — no food, no styling — what would you be doing?

If I never got into food, I probably would still be doing what I was doing back in Vietnam — marketing and branding strategy for foreign companies entering Vietnam. I blame it for exposing me to the magic of food on camera and setting me off on a new course. But if I had another chance, I’d probably be doing sculptures. I imagine myself in a sunny studio with fresh coffee, dried clay all over my hands and not schlepping anything to set. A girl can dream.

You’ve worked with Resy, Instagram and so many other brands. What’s one gig you’ve done that made you think, Wow, how did I end up here?

A lot people would say it’s the SNL Sushi Glory Hole, which was a ton of fun, but I think I would pick something more personal. When I moved to the states from Vietnam, on the first day I made a salad for my mother-in-law. She said it looked like a Bon Appétit dish. I asked, “what is that?” She gasped and spun me away to the local bookstore and showed me the food magazine section. I think I just melted into a puddle on the spot. People can do this for work and get away with it? There are magazines that sell photos of food? I couldn’t believe it. A few years later, after moving to New York and finding a career in food styling, I called her to tell her to watch her mail and expect to see my food on the cover of Bon Appétit magazine. It was her turn to melt into a puddle.

You went back to Vietnam in February for research. What was at the top of your food exploration list?

Chinatown, Northern Cuisine and mountain herbs. In my upcoming Saigon-themed menu for Ăn Cỗ, I want to highlight some of the lesser-known aspects of the city. For example, we have the largest Chinatown in the world by area. I grew up eating so many delicious dishes from the Teochew, Hakka and Hainanese people that have lived in Saigon for more than 300 years. I found the place I grew up eating and it was still so good.

Northern food is so exciting to me because it feels familiar and foreign at the same time. I knew all the most famous dishes, but there is this whole other layer of items everyone up north in Hanoi grows up eating but that I had never even heard of before. Because of the climate, Southern food uses more coconut and sugarcane in our dishes while the North is more balanced and savory.

Finally, mountain herbs. The markets will sell things that are not agriculturally farmed ,but need to be harvested from the forests like wild fiddlehead fern, tingly mac khen pepper, Vietnamese mugwort, wild garlic vine or field bitter herb. I grew up as a city girl, so tasting a lot of the herbs I was like, Wait, what the hell is that? They were delicious and I am going to sneak them into some future Ăn Cỗ dishes.

What’s one thing you haven’t done in food yet that you’re dying to try?

Sugar blowing and sugar sculpture. I have been really obsessed with sugar as a material, how it changes based on water content, heat and manipulation. I love how you can stretch it into these alien shapes and then it just freezes in place like magic. There is so much you can do with sugar and I think we’re just scratching the surface. I’m especially interested in how to get this pearlescent color I remember from the homemade candies I had growing up. The sellers would stretch the candy into little characters almost like balloon animals and I would just lose my shit.

The difference of what good looks like and what tastes good are often not too far apart in my world.

Photography: Diego Villagra Motta
Styling: Angelina Cantú
Hair: Marin Mullen
Makeup: Aimi Osada
Lighting: Kaiya Lang

Photo assistant: Xandra Hafermann
Styling assistants: Joyce Esquenazi Mitrani, Monica McMahon

Editor-in-chief: Justin Moran
Managing editor: Matt Wille
Editorial producer: Angelina Cantú
Story: Ivan Guzman
Location: The Knife Factory