The 11th annual queer-centered LA event brings together an intrepid group to make bánh chưng in honor of Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year.
In the winter of 1976, a group of recently arrived Vietnamese refugees gathered for their first Tết in their new land. There, they cooked bánh chưng: labor-intensive, Bible-sized blocks of sticky rice, pork, and beans that are traditionally made in their homeland’s northern regions in honor of the Lunar New Year. But they were unable to find one crucial element. Prior to cooking, the ingredients are swathed in banana leaves, which proved a little difficult to source in snowy Pennsylvania.
“Food is not stuck in amber,” says chef and cookbook author Diep Tran, as she recounts this story about her partner’s mother. “Food evolves and is dynamic. And your Tết celebrations could change as well.”, has been proving this point for the past 11 years with her annual Lunar New Year gathering to make bánh chưng. What started as a small group of queer friends became a public event in 2019; during the two years when COVID kept many families apart, more than 400 joined the events via Zoom.
It all began as an alternative to the New Year family gatherings Tran had grown up with. After years of attending celebrations with relatives who were uncomfortable with her queer identity, Tran had opted out of family events, including Tết. “I was getting really worked up about it and not getting a lot out of it,” she says. “Just because we’re related doesn’t necessarily mean we need to be around each other.
They emphasize the event is queer-centric but not queer-exclusive. “No one’s going to be asking, ‘So when are you gonna get married and have children?’” Tran explains. “It’s not so focused on these heteronormative milestones of adulthood. It’s really a celebration to normalize this is what it looks like when you affirm queers in your community.”And bánh chưng tends to be made by women, she points out.
Terri Kashima and Diep Tran making cháo, Vietnamese rice porridge with lemongrass chili oil, for lunch.Photographed by Jeni Afuso
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