The Vietnamese Have Been Eating Hipster Since Before Hipster was Hip

Southeast Asian hipster
Southeast Asian Hipster
I’m not a hipsterologist or anything — in fact, I once thought being hipster, scenester, and emo were all the same thing (an hour long rant set me straight). However, I did live in Toronto, Canada for about 8 years, and… Well, if you live at the zoo, you’re going to learn about animal behavior. Most of my hipster behavioral studies courses have taken place at cafes or restaurants, so I think I’ve got a pretty good sense of their eating habits. Since moving to Vietnam and having the chance to study an entirely new race of people, I have found some interesting similarities to the hipster race. I’ve decided to break it all down and see who eats more hipster – the Vietnamese or the hipsters. Lace up your Cons, this shit’s on.

Eating Local

Hipsters

This is very important to them. Hipsters frequent weekly local markets to pay more money for food that’s sourced closer to their home. Of course, in winter the local markets shut down, so hipsters go into hibernation, only eating ironically when they absolutely must. It’s how they stay thin enough to fit into their pants.

Vietnamese

The markets are daily, all year round, and almost everything is grown or raised locally. How locally? Well, if I look out the window of my suburban house right now, I can see a couple cows grazing on the neighbour’s trees. It would be easy to source all my food for a year from areas within 100 miles. If you pull that off in Canada you write a book about it.

Winner: Vietnamese

Dining Furniture and Tableware

A chair at a table in a Vietnamese dining room

Hipsters

Studies show, a hipster’s food actually tastes better if it’s served on a vintage looking plate. Ideally, it should be somewhere between Madmen and Downton Abbey era. Ugly tableware also works, as long as it’s being used ironically.

Vietnamese

All the furniture in Vietnam is pretty ugly. I’ve yet to determine if it’s done ironically, but the sense I get is that they just have really bad taste. Our table is pretty retro though. I could picture Peggy Olsen sadly eating alone at it.

Winner: Hipsters

Gluten free diet

Hipsters

To a hipster, gluten is about as evil as mainstream music. They would prefer to drink beer made from millet, rice, or corn than traditional barley. In Germany, they would be arrested for that nonsense. A science person told me gluten has something icky in it that affects people who have celiac disease and hipsters.

Vietnamese

Although, the Vietnamese aren’t against eating gluten, they don’t really eat it that much. They prefer rice noodles to wheat based ones. They don’t really eat cake or cookies. Even their bread is only half wheat flour (the other half is usually rice flour). They do like their beer though.

Winner: Hipsters

Nose to Tail Eating

Hipsters

A new trend that hipsters have started yammering on about is eating ‘nose to tail’ — not wasting any part of the animal. There are some trendy restaurants/hipster hangouts in Toronto that are based on this. They serve up tasty dishes like cow brain tortellini, and beef tongue risotto. Of course, non-hipsters have been eating nose to tail for a long time now – what do you think hotdogs are made out of? But the difference is, hipsters brag about their whole-beast-eating. This is essential to the movement. They use it to spout knowledge about the food industry and French novels.
The Vietnamese rice porridge, chao long.

Vietnamese

When I go out for breakfast I usually pass by 3 or 4 places that are serving up chao long. It’s basically rice gruel with pig innards – intestines, cheeks, heart, kidney, liver, whateves. Last weekend I saw a dog’s head for sale at the market. That’s right, the head of a dog hanging off a hook at a stall in the meat market. Now, I don’t speak Vietnamese so I can’t say whether they are bragging about eating nose-to-tail, but c’mon – if you ate a dog’s head for dinner you’d be telling anything that still had ears.

Winner: Vietnamese

Free Range

Hipsters

I’m not sure if it’s because of animal cruelty, or because of evil corporations like Monsanto (perhaps a combination of both), but hipsters hate corn fed animals. If a hipster eats meat, they want it to be free range — cows that eat grass and not corn, chickens that are allowed to roam around and eat whatever they can find. Unfortunately, this is not that easy to find in North America. You have to go to specialty stores like the hipster haven Whole Foods.

Vietnamese

The cows in Vietnam are furious at the western world and how they treat their livestock. The chickens are too. They have been cawing and clucking about America’s poultry industry since before the egg. In Vietnam, some of the cows and chickens don’t even have fences to contain them. They wander around my subdivision eating and making barnyard noises to their soon-to-be-eaten heart’s content. Not like in those prisons we call pastures – with their fences, which are sometimes electric! How barbaric!
Cows on an abandoned lot in Vietnam
Winner: Vietnamese

Vegan diet

Hipsters

The ability to not eat meat or dairy is perhaps the hipster’s greatest weapon. It just takes one vegan hipster to make a room full of people feel like a smear of shit on the bottom of a worn out work boot. Combine this with a gluten-free diet and you have the Megazord of hipsters – a pale, frail, skinny as a rail, smug spewing machine.

Vietnamese

Vegans in Vietnam? Bahaha! Even vegetarianism in Vietnam is a joke. The other day I went to a vegetarian restaurant in a Buddhist temple and got a bowl of vegetarian crab noodle soup (bun rieu). The broth is made by crushing crabs whole and filtering the juices out. There were slices of pork loaf floating in it, for Buddha-sake!

Winner: Hipsters

Results

Hipsters – 3

Vietnamese – 3

It’s a tie! I guess we’ll have to wait and see what crazy food fad the hipsters come up with next. Maybe they’ll stop eating food that involves chewing. Or perhaps a diet consisting entirely on foods that make your farts smell bad. If it’s hacking up phlegm in restaurants, the Vietnamese will surely take the title.