Mandy Moore was in. A product placement in the film, “3000 Miles to Graceland” starring Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner as Elvis impersonating crooks was guaranteed (I’ll let Geoffrey tell you this story). All things were a go for Geoffrey, it was Geoffrey’s business partner who was the bottleneck. The business partner passed on the celebrity endorsements. The pour-profit wasn’t right to the business partner, so to lower costs, he pushed using malt instead cane sugar, making the tea heavy and filling — using malt would also get a lower brewing tax. Geoffrey was against all of this. And, Mike’s Hard Lemonade sued for the name. The “Hard Iced Tea” deal *ahem* went soft.

Regardless, Geoffrey moved to Việt Nam indefinitely, when bicycles ruled the streets, to understand not only Việt Nam and Vietnamese people, he moved there to understand Vietnamese food and the Vietnamese palette, putting in his time on plastic stools in the maze-like hẻms, one bowl of alleyway cà ri dê at a time. It wasn’t just about the recipes, Geoffrey wanted to know why Vietnamese eat the way they do — in their families, with their friends, in their environment, where they live. Why do Vietnamese eat the way they eat?

“Once you learn the taste, and the playful banter and fun Vietnamese people put into their food, then you start understanding what you can, and can’t do with it, because there are rules to Vietnamese cooking.”

Anointed by CNN as one of the top restaurants to eat in the world (his innovations with bánh mì using chả cá and cua lột), Blackcat was Geoffrey’s first restaurant in Việt Nam — it still stands in Sài Gòn (Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) today (now owned by the Blackcat manager-turned-owner Phương). For me and many, it will forever live as the nursery for every expat’s weekend hangover, as we ate properly made cubanos, downing them with hair of the dog-Cannonballs to progress our weekend binges, peeling our foreheads off the square tables, like every twenty-something who uses their youth wisely. To Geoffrey, Blackcat was about more than the food — Blackcat was his statement to other expats opening businesses in Việt Nam.

Everyone has a crush on Thảo

The one time Bourdain was wrong

Living on and off in Hà Nội for 6 years, the one place I remember more than I’d like to admit, is Bobby Chinn’s red-silk draped restaurant, when it was on the corner of Tràng Thi and Bà Triệu, at the tail of Hoàn Kiếm lake. The only time I went there was because it was one of the few places in Hà Nội that had shisha — I didn’t know jack about food then. Apparently, Bobby Chinn didn’t either. Anthony Bourdain was infamously quoted as saying “what Bobby doesn’t know about Asian food is not worth knowing.” Considering Bobby’s skills, the comment has gone down as a monumental slap across every chef’s face in Asia. If you ask anyone in Việt Nam’s restaurant industry, you’ll know the real side of good ‘ole Bobby. Mr. Chinn, camera-ready, shocking elderly saleswomen with brash Northern Vietnamese utterances as they descended shop ladders. Mr. Chinn, flip-flopping like a sociopath during food prep, sauntering in late for staff appointments. Mr. Chinn, micro-torturing his staff, kicking them in the shin when they didn’t bring the right coffee during interviews (Google this one). Mr. Chinn, pairing salmon with wasabi mashed potatoes.

Note: when Bourdain said what he said about Bobby, he was starstruck by Việt Nam (we all were), hysterical to be outta Les Halles, getting paid to learn his TV self during his miserable Cook’s Tour years. Bourdain gets a pass. And Bobby, well, he got the shit kicked out of him in front of his own restaurant because of the way he treated people. All is well.