One of the stranger things about my childhood was that my father was not allowed to eat mangoes. He was not afraid of them. Or allergic. He was just not allowed.
My mother, an Indian by birth but very much British in most other ways, saw the mango as a symbol of her superior cultural heritage. My father, a half African, half Spanish British-born sports-playing, story-telling-man-about-the-house saw the mango simply as a delicious and slightly nostalgic piece of fruit. It reminded him of his adolescent summers on the beaches of Sierra Leone with his father (my grandfather), with white sand, deep blue waters and endless palm trees. Which, unfortunately for him, was not enough to grant him rights to eat mangoes in our house.
My father likes his mangoes, as he does, a little stringy in texture and very slightly tart. Because, well, that's what a mango was like in West Africa in 1979. My mother liked mangoes of the Alphonso variety - Indian in origin, very sweet, slightly tangy, but buttery, smooth and not at all stringy.
Indian Alphonso mangoes have a desperately short season and, to make matters worse, travel terribly. Every year, as a child when the prized Indian mangoes made their way to South East London, my mother, brother and I would travel on the long train into town to purchase a single, precious box. Each box contained a dozen. Some were slightly overripe. Some slightly under. But about half were perfection. Golden skin, soft to the touch and the exact kind of sweet, tangy, buttery and smooth that gave my mother shivers. My brother and I were allowed to eat exactly one a day, no more, no less. My mother would slice of the cheeks (one each) and we would then fight over the seed like dogs over a bone. As mangoes stained, we were naked from the waist up, and, during the process, delirious with happiness. I remember my father jealously staring on from outside the kitchen, occasionally being shoo'd away by my mother.
The reason, apparently, was that he wouldn't appreciate the finer Indian Alphonso mango, which we had taken such trouble to procure. He was, apparently, content with mangoes of the supermarket variety "from Mexico or wherever" which more closely resembled the morally and intellectually inferior West African mangoes of his youth.
Thinking back on these annual rituals, I feel slightly sorry for my father. It was a bit like the Disney movies where the penniless, heartbroken servant watches on as the princess dances with the prince. Except in this case the princess was my mum, the prince was a mango and the background music was me salivating over a mango seed.
The point, I guess, is that even people who love each other dearly, as my mother and father do, can be irrational, petty and, in this case, inexplicably guarded over their cultural heritage. Forty years of marriage paled in comparison to the importance of a single, slightly overripe imported mango. With me and my brother having left home some time ago, I sometimes wonder if my Dad is allowed to eat mangoes at home, or if my mum still keeps up the tradition of shoo'ing him away just for old time’s sake.
I was thinking of this as I queued (for an hour) outside a tiny, but apparently legit, Vietnamese restaurant in Yau Ma Tei earlier this week. Vietnam is only an hour away by air from Hong Kong, but real, authentic, Vietnamese food is in short supply here. Pho in most places is beef broth and MSG. Summer rolls are sad prawns, lettuce and cucumber. And you may as well forget about the tasty banh mi sandwiches you get on the streets of Saigon. If decent Alphonso mangoes can make it to London, surely a decent bowl of Vietnamese soup can make it to Hong Kong?
Up to now, my conclusive answer had been no. But we had a tip off that there was a small, grungy, restaurant in Yau Ma Tei, quietly proving me wrong. What my dining companion and I were after was bun cha, which we had both had for the first time in Hanoi a year earlier, back when air travel was allowed and foreign holidays weren't seen primarily as an opportunity to contract highly contagious and life-threatening respiratory diseases.
For the uninitiated bun cha is a slightly strange sounding dish. It is a warm, vinegary, tangy, sweet, sour, savoury, kinda-orangey broth, with bits of barbecued meat and herbs inside into which you dip cold rice noodles , before slurping gloriously. It is one of those dishes which, to the Western palette, is difficult to explain, but impossible to resist. The Vietnamese know their shit, somehow blending punchy flavours into one bowl of tangy, sour, sweet, mellow, smoky goodness. It is heaven in a bowl. And, frankly, impossible to find outside of Vietnam.
Until now.
Hungry from the hour long wait on a hot, smelly cockroach-y street, we went HAM on the menu and ordered Vietnamese spring rolls, buttered chicken wings, fried pork, rice, and the must-have bun cha. And it. Was. Incredible. Not just incredible. It was Alphonso mangoes in my kitchen with juice running down my fingers, face and chest incredible. It was the real deal.
I felt, for a moment, guilty. Like there should be some Vietnamese grandma shoo'ing me away and telling me, like my father before me, that the real stuff isn't for me. That I should go back to the living room and be content with my sub-par MSG and beef broth like everyone else. But there wasn't. There was just bun cha, properly decent spring rolls and sticky buttery chicken wings. And joy.
It turns out that, unlike mangoes in my childhood home, real, authentic, Vietnamese food isn't just for the lucky few.
Sure, the place is small, the wait is long and annoying, and the atmosphere isn't much. But the food is great, the price is exceptionally reasonable and, given that air travel isn't a thing any more, it is the closest you're going to get to Vietnam for a while.
So go, luxuriate and count yourself lucky to live in a time when everyone is allowed to eat mangoes and bun cha to their heart’s desire. I promise you won't regret it.