How one chef in Vietnam uses fish sauce as the foundation for flavor

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The taste of banh te — a steamed rice cake with an enticing filling of mushrooms and minced pork — captures the quintessence of northern Vietnamese cuisine: Humble ingredients, prepared perfectly and often enjoyed with a funky fish sauce dip.

This balance of flavors is what Quang Dung, the chef and owner of Chapter Dining in Hanoi, sought in his modern take on the dish. His version of banh te is unapologetically fancy. The steamed rice cake is enriched with pork stock and served with a raw scallop and pickled daikon shavings. Freshness comes from coriander used several ways, sweetness from fried shallot oil, and a delicate floral essence extracted from a giant water bug used in northern Vietnamese cooking.

And then, a splash of fish sauce — or nuoc mam — brings it all together in a savory broth that suffuses the dish.

“Fish sauce is one of the foundations for flavor,” he said.

It's also the basis for Vietnam’s diverse and vibrant cuisine. Just a drop of the amber liquid can transform a dish by boosting umami and savory notes. Made by fermenting fish — often anchovies that are getting harder to catch because of climate change — in salt for many months, the taste of each bottle varies depending on factors like the ratio of salt to fish or the length of fermentation.

Fish sauce is a staple across Vietnam, used in a variety of dishes. As a dipping sauce for spring rolls or savory crepes called banh xeo. In marinades for grilled meat dishes like Hanoi's pork and noodle classic called bun cha. In salad dressings and in braised meat dishes like the southern classic where pork is cooked in bittersweet caramel and fish sauce. Much of Vietnam’s cuisine is shaped by the decades of hardship during and after the Vietnam War, but today its economy and its cities are booming. And fish sauce is finding its way into unusual applications.

In Hanoi, fish sauce is used in some cocktails to add umami, and Dung has used it to add a Vietnamese twist to French hollandaise sauce and even flavor ice cream.

“It is very versatile," he said. "A lot of fun to use and to explore.”

Dung’s culinary explorations began early. His mother taught him to cook at 10 so he could feed himself while his banker parents worked long hours. He learned how to make rice, fry eggs, and boil vegetables. Soon after, he was braising pork and making spicy fried rice. Growing up, he assumed everyone could cook — after all, his friends in Hanoi could. But it wasn’t until he moved to the United Kingdom as a teenager to finish high school that he realized this wasn’t the case.

He eventually studied finance in coastal Devon, but while working part-time in restaurants, he fell in love with all things food: learning from his peers, consuming cookbooks by top chefs, and spending all his savings to eat out at restaurants. “When you’re 18, you’re a sponge. You absorb everything,” he said.

He came back to Vietnam in 2013 and got a job working in a bank. But every evening, he worked a second job — as a junior chef for a five-star hotel in Hanoi at night. He eventually quit both jobs in 2015 and started a gastropub in Hanoi. That didn’t go according to plan as he “managed to do everything wrong.” More failures followed — he calls them “lessons in my dictionary” — but in 2021 he opened Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant in the heart of Hanoi’s Old Quarter that celebrates local, seasonal produce and the cooking traditions of Vietnam’s mountainous north.

The restaurant, with its facade of steel slats, leads to an open kitchen where Dung and his team regularly create a 14-course tasting menu that won it a spot in the coveted Michelin Guide Hanoi in 2023 and 2024.

“I can finally call it ... my restaurant, my food, my philosophy,” he said.

Central to that philosophy is sustainability. Each menu is seasonal — warm, comforting dishes for the cold months and fresh, lighter dishes in the summer — and the ingredients are locally sourced. Given the erratic weather in the climate-vulnerable country, this means that he can't always be sure of what produce will be available. So the menu adapts, letting nature decide, and the bottle of fish sauce is never too far away.

“Fish sauce isn’t just about saltiness. It is as much about umaminess. It is magic,” he said, adding that he hoped more people would cook with fish sauce.

A good starting point, he suggested, is to use it to add a bit of that magic to the humble omelet. Three eggs, two teaspoons of fish sauce, a heap of finely diced spring onions all beaten together. Add pork fat to a hot pan and roll the eggs around.

“And then you’ve got a very nice fish sauce omelet. That goes down really well with rice,” he said.

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A speciality cocktail made with fish sauce is displayed at the Liquid Store, on Feb. 19, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)

Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)

Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)

Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)

Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, including a water bug, left, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)

Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)

Quang Dung, the chef and owner of Chapter Dining, poses for a photo on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)

LONDON (AP) — Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok is preventing most users from generating or editing any images after a global backlash that erupted after it started spewing sexualized deepfakes of people.

The chatbot, which is accessed through Musk's social media platform X, has in the past few weeks been granting a wave of what researchers say are malicious user requests to modify images, including putting women in bikinis or in sexually explicit positions.

Researchers have warned that in a few cases, some images appeared to depict children. Governments around the world have condemned the platform and opened investigations into the platform.

On Friday, Grok was responding to image altering requests with the message: “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers. You can subscribe to unlock these features.”

While subscriber numbers for Grok aren't publicly available, there was a noticeable decline in the number of explicit deepfakes that Grok is now generating compared with days earlier.

The European Union has slammed Grok for “illegal” and “appalling” behavior, while officials in France, India, Malaysia and a Brazilian lawmaker have called for investigations.

On Thursday, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer threatened unspecified action against X.

“This is disgraceful. It’s disgusting. And it’s not to be tolerated,” Starmer said on Greatest Hits radio. “X has got to get a grip of this.”

He said media regulator Ofcom “has our full support to take action" and that "all options" are on the table.

“It’s disgusting. X need to get their act together and get this material down. We will take action on this because it’s simply not tolerable.”

Ofcom and Britain's privacy regulator both said this week they've contacted X and Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI for information on measures they've taken to comply with British regulations.

Grok is free to use for X users, who can ask it questions on the social media platform. They can either tag it in posts they've directly created or in replies to posts from other users.

Grok launched in 2023. Last summer the company added an image generator feature, Grok Imagine, that included a so-called “spicy mode” that can generate adult content.

The problem is amplified both because Musk pitches his chatbot as an edgier alternative to rivals with more safeguards, and because Grok’s images are publicly visible, and can therefore be easily spread.

FILE - Workers install lighting on an "X" sign atop the company headquarters, formerly known as Twitter, in downtown San Francisco, July 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)