HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The taste of banh te — a steamed rice cake with an enticing filling of mushrooms and minced pork — captures the quintessence of northern Vietnamese cuisine: Humble ingredients, prepared perfectly and often enjoyed with a funky fish sauce dip.
This balance of flavors is what Quang Dung, the chef and owner of Chapter Dining in Hanoi, sought in his modern take on the dish. His version of banh te is unapologetically fancy. The steamed rice cake is enriched with pork stock and served with a raw scallop and pickled daikon shavings. Freshness comes from coriander used several ways, sweetness from fried shallot oil, and a delicate floral essence extracted from a giant water bug used in northern Vietnamese cooking.
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A speciality cocktail made with fish sauce is displayed at the Liquid Store, on Feb. 19, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, including a water bug, left, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Quang Dung, the chef and owner of Chapter Dining, poses for a photo on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
And then, a splash of fish sauce — or nuoc mam — brings it all together in a savory broth that suffuses the dish.
“Fish sauce is one of the foundations for flavor,” he said.
It's also the basis for Vietnam’s diverse and vibrant cuisine. Just a drop of the amber liquid can transform a dish by boosting umami and savory notes. Made by fermenting fish — often anchovies that are getting harder to catch because of climate change — in salt for many months, the taste of each bottle varies depending on factors like the ratio of salt to fish or the length of fermentation.
Fish sauce is a staple across Vietnam, used in a variety of dishes. As a dipping sauce for spring rolls or savory crepes called banh xeo. In marinades for grilled meat dishes like Hanoi's pork and noodle classic called bun cha. In salad dressings and in braised meat dishes like the southern classic where pork is cooked in bittersweet caramel and fish sauce. Much of Vietnam’s cuisine is shaped by the decades of hardship during and after the Vietnam War, but today its economy and its cities are booming. And fish sauce is finding its way into unusual applications.
In Hanoi, fish sauce is used in some cocktails to add umami, and Dung has used it to add a Vietnamese twist to French hollandaise sauce and even flavor ice cream.
“It is very versatile," he said. "A lot of fun to use and to explore.”
Dung’s culinary explorations began early. His mother taught him to cook at 10 so he could feed himself while his banker parents worked long hours. He learned how to make rice, fry eggs, and boil vegetables. Soon after, he was braising pork and making spicy fried rice. Growing up, he assumed everyone could cook — after all, his friends in Hanoi could. But it wasn’t until he moved to the United Kingdom as a teenager to finish high school that he realized this wasn’t the case.
He eventually studied finance in coastal Devon, but while working part-time in restaurants, he fell in love with all things food: learning from his peers, consuming cookbooks by top chefs, and spending all his savings to eat out at restaurants. “When you’re 18, you’re a sponge. You absorb everything,” he said.
He came back to Vietnam in 2013 and got a job working in a bank. But every evening, he worked a second job — as a junior chef for a five-star hotel in Hanoi at night. He eventually quit both jobs in 2015 and started a gastropub in Hanoi. That didn’t go according to plan as he “managed to do everything wrong.” More failures followed — he calls them “lessons in my dictionary” — but in 2021 he opened Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant in the heart of Hanoi’s Old Quarter that celebrates local, seasonal produce and the cooking traditions of Vietnam’s mountainous north.
The restaurant, with its facade of steel slats, leads to an open kitchen where Dung and his team regularly create a 14-course tasting menu that won it a spot in the coveted Michelin Guide Hanoi in 2023 and 2024.
“I can finally call it ... my restaurant, my food, my philosophy,” he said.
Central to that philosophy is sustainability. Each menu is seasonal — warm, comforting dishes for the cold months and fresh, lighter dishes in the summer — and the ingredients are locally sourced. Given the erratic weather in the climate-vulnerable country, this means that he can't always be sure of what produce will be available. So the menu adapts, letting nature decide, and the bottle of fish sauce is never too far away.
“Fish sauce isn’t just about saltiness. It is as much about umaminess. It is magic,” he said, adding that he hoped more people would cook with fish sauce.
A good starting point, he suggested, is to use it to add a bit of that magic to the humble omelet. Three eggs, two teaspoons of fish sauce, a heap of finely diced spring onions all beaten together. Add pork fat to a hot pan and roll the eggs around.
“And then you’ve got a very nice fish sauce omelet. That goes down really well with rice,” he said.
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A speciality cocktail made with fish sauce is displayed at the Liquid Store, on Feb. 19, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, including a water bug, left, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Dishes made with fish sauce are prepared at Chapter Dining, a fine dining restaurant, on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
Quang Dung, the chef and owner of Chapter Dining, poses for a photo on March 1, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans)
BANGKOK (AP) — Emergency rescue teams on Sunday began trickling into the area of Myanmar hardest hit by a massive earthquake that killed more than 1,600 people, their efforts hindered by buckled roads, downed bridges, spotty communications and the challenges of operating in a country in the midst of a civil war.
The 7.7 magnitude quake hit midday Friday with an epicenter near Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city, bringing down scores of buildings and damaging other infrastructure like the city's airport.
Many of Mandalay's 1.5 million people spent the night sleeping on the streets, either left homeless by the quake, which also shook neighboring Thailand and killed at least 17 people there, or worried that the continuing aftershocks might cause structures left unstable to collapse.
So far 1,644 people have been reported killed in Myanmar and 3,408 missing, but many areas have not yet been reached, and many rescue efforts so far have been undertaken by people working by hand to try and clear rubble, said Cara Bragg, the Yangon-based manager of Catholic Relief Services in Myanmar.
“It's mainly been local volunteers, local people who are just trying to find their loved ones,” Bragg said after bring briefed by her colleague in Mandalay.
“I've also seen reports that now some countries are sending search and rescue teams up to Mandalay to support the efforts, but hospitals are really struggling to cope with the influx of injured people, there's a shortage of medical supplies, and people are struggling to find food and clean water,” Bragg added.
The organization was sending a team by road on Sunday to assess peoples' most pressing needs so that it could target its own response.
With the Mandalay airport damaged and the control tower toppled in the capital Naypitaw's airport, all commercial flights into the cities have been shut down.
Still, two Indian C-17 military transport aircraft were able to land late Saturday at Naypitaw with a field hospital unit and some 120 personnel who were then to travel north to Mandalay to establish a 60-bed emergency treatment center, according to the country's Foreign Ministry. Other Indian supplies were flown into Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city, which has been the hub of other foreign relief efforts.
On Sunday, a convoy of 17 Chinese cargo trucks carrying critical shelter and medical supplies was expected to reach Mandalay, after making the arduous journey by road from Yangon.
The 650-kilometer (400-mile) journey has been taking 14 hours or longer, with clogged roads and traffic diverted from the main highway to skirt damage from the earthquake.
At the same time, the window of opportunity to find anyone alive is rapidly closing. Most rescues occur within the first 24 hours after a disaster, and then survival chances drop as each day passes.
An initial report on earthquake relief efforts issued Saturday by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted the severe damage or destruction of many health facilities, and warned that a “severe shortage of medical supplies is hampering response efforts, including trauma kits, blood bags, anesthetics, assistive devices, essential medicines, and tents for health workers.”
China said it has sent more than 135 rescue personnel and experts along with supplies like medical kits and generators, and pledged around $13.8 million in emergency aid. Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said it had flown in 120 rescuers and supplies to Yangon, and the country’s Health Ministry said Moscow had sent a medical team to Myanmar.
In neighboring Thailand, the quake rocked much of the county, bringing down a high-rise building under construction in Bangkok, some 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) away from the epicenter.
So far, 10 people have been found dead at the construction site near the popular Chatuchak market, where 83 people are unaccounted for and the latest body was recovered from the rubble early Sunday morning. A total of 17 people have been reported killed by the quake in Thailand so far.
In Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, rescue efforts so far are focused on Mandalay and Naypyitaw, which are thought to have been the hardest hit, but many other areas were also impacted and little is known so far about the damage there.
“We're hearing reports of hundreds of people trapped in different areas,” said Bragg. “Right now we're at 1,600 (known fatalities) and we don't have a lot of data coming out but you've got to assume it will be increasing in the thousands based on what the impacts are. This is just anecdotal information at this point.”
Beyond the earthquake damage, rescue efforts are complicated by the bloody civil war roiling much of the country, including in quake-affected areas. In 2001, the military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking what has since turned into significant armed resistance.
Government forces have lost control of much of Myanmar, and many places are dangerous or impossible for aid groups to reach. More than 3 million people have been displaced by the fighting and nearly 20 million are in need, according to the United Nations.
The government military has been fighting long-established militias and newly formed pro-democracy People's Defense Forces, and has heavily restricted much-needed aid efforts to the large population already displaced by war even before the earthquake.
On Saturday, Myanmar’s opposition shadow National Unity Government, to which the PDF militias are loyal, announced a unilateral partial ceasefire to facilitate earthquake relief efforts.
The military did not immediately comment on the announcement and it continued airstrikes even after the earthquake.
The Three Brotherhood Alliance, a group of three of Myanmar's most powerful and well-armed militias that launched a combined offensive in October 2023 that broke a strategic stalemate with the military regime, didn't mention a ceasefire in a statement Saturday, but said it was ready to help.
“We will promptly provide assistance to those affected by the earthquake to the best of our ability, with a spirit of humanity, unit and brotherhood,” the group said.
Jintamas Saksornchai contributed to this story.
A woman cries as she waits for news as rescue work is underway at the site of an under construction high-rise building that collapsed after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
A Buddhist monastery building that has collapsed is seen following an earthquake in Naypyitaw, Myanmar Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)
A person goes through rubble at a Buddhist monastery building that has collapsed following an earthquake in Naypyitaw, Myanmar Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)
A woman cries as she waits for news as rescue work is underway at the site of an under construction high-rise building that collapsed after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Rescuers use sniffer dog at work at the site of an under-construction high-rise building that collapsed on Friday after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
A woman cries as she waits for news as rescue work is underway at the site of an under construction high-rise building that collapsed after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Rescuers work at the site of an under-construction high-rise building that collapsed on Friday after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Relatives of victims wait as rescuers work at the site of a collapsed under construction high-rise building in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday morning, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)
A person watches rescue work underway at the site of an under-construction high-rise building that collapsed on Friday after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Rescuers use sniffer dog at work at the site of an under-construction high-rise building that collapsed on Friday after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
people watch rescue work underway at the site of an under-construction high-rise building that collapsed on Friday after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Women cry as they wait for news as rescue work is underway at the site of an under construction high-rise building that collapsed after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Rescuers works look for the survivors at the site of an under-construction high-rise building that collapsed on Friday after an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
A Buddhist monastery building that has collapsed is seen following an earthquake in Naypyitaw, Myanmar Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)
A Buddhist monastery building that has collapsed is seen following an earthquake in Naypyitaw, Myanmar Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)
A Buddhist monastery building that has collapsed is seen following an earthquake in Naypyitaw, Myanmar Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)
A Buddhist monastery building that has collapsed is seen following an earthquake in Naypyitaw, Myanmar Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)
A person goes through rubble at a Buddhist monastery building that has collapsed following an earthquake in Naypyitaw, Myanmar Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)
A woman reacts after being informed that her husband had died at the site of a collapsed under construction high-rise building in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
