Skin, Bones and the Basics

We escaped Vietnam not long after the fruitless war and spent a difficult year in a Thai refugee camp before arriving in Australia in the late seventies. My brothers and I grew up in Cabramatta during the bleakest of times. Ruled over by our strict, food-obsessed parents, we ran a busy Vietnamese restaurant on the main street called Pho Cay Du — this is where a significant part of our lives unfolded. Both formally trained chefs, my parents were never relaxed about showing tenderness and understanding with us as children. Whether it was out of disinterest or necessity, they were workaholics who instead poured their knowledge and affection into the food they cooked to feed their children. A strange way to show parental love, but I have grown to accept that this was perhaps the only way they knew.