Friday I made the San Francisco-Style Vietnamese American Garlic Noodles recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Kenji notes in the introduction to this recipe that these noodles are definitely Vietnamese American, not Vietnamese. They were created by Vietnamese immigrants in the 70s in San Francisco.

The ingredients are certainly a mixture of readily available from mainstream US groceries (butter, garlic, spaghetti, parmesan, and scallions) and East Asian basics (oyster sauce, soy sauce, and fish sauce). Kenji points out that using Italian spaghetti is his preference, whereas the originating restaurant uses fresh wheat noodles. While the ingredient list is familiar, the eye-popping piece is it calls for 20 cloves of garlic for a pound of spaghetti.

The preparation nods towards cacio e pepe (with which I’ve finally found success thanks to Leite’s Culinaria). The sauce is made by melting butter in a saucepan, softening the minced garlic, and then stirring in oyster sauce, soy sauce, and fish sauce. The pasta cooks in a very small amount of water (a la cacio e pepe) until almost al dente, at which point it’s added to the sauce, the parmesan is added and (like cacio e pepe) the whole thing is vigorously stirred until the sauce emulsifies (cacio e pepe!). Granted cacio e pepe uses a lot more cheese. This recipes modest cheese quantity probably helped keep it from clumping, which is my most common problem with cacio e pepe.

My parents were with us for this meal and feedback ranged from “fine” to “really good!” I think the “fine” camp mostly felt it was indistinguishable from an Italian dish, and it was very close. The Vietnamese influence was there, but subtle.

I might make this one again. It was a straightforward dish to prep and cook.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.