Pachamama Group – Vietnamese Breakfast Pizza and much more at next The Brunch Club
Anaïs Van Manen doesn’t have her own restaurant, but between her own supperclubs, collaborative projects and development work for Bao, she’s making a serious mark on the London food scene.
Born in Paris to a Vietnamese-Dutch family, Anaïs Van Manen is a thoroughly well-travelled chef. She moved with her family to Vietnam at the age of three and lived there for fifteen years, absorbing the sights and smells of Ho Chi Minh City’s incredible street food scene before moving again to Singapore, then back to Paris, then to London, then to Bogota, and finally back to London, where I find her sitting in the window of her favourite café in Borough Market.
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My Vietnamese upbringing influences me in all the other projects that I do,’ she explains. ‘I think that’s why I’m cooking it now, because it’s the food I miss the most.’ Vietnamese food in the UK ‘just isn’t the same’, she says, and whilst restaurants here often don’t do the food justice, Anaïs’ food is Vietnamese through and through, bursting with flavour and aroma from piles of beautiful herbs, pungent fish sauce and aromatics.
