Step into a Vietnamese home and you'll find a single round tray set on the floor or a table, the dishes gathered on top of it. This round tray iscai mam (the tray)is what it's called. It may look like a tool for carrying dishes. But look closely at a single tray and the whole etiquette of the table rides on it—who sits where, in what order chopsticks are taken up, who defers to whom within the family. For anyone who eats their way around Vietnamese food while traveling, the key to not being flustered when invited into a home is right here. Let's read this tray, taken up by Saigon media in July, as a single object.
From wood to copper and aluminum, and rattan and banana leaf too: one tray that changes with material and place
The material of the cái mâm has shifted with the times. In the old days it was wood — jackfruit wood and the like, finished with vermilion lacquer and fine motifs — and it was a furnishing that signaled a household's wealth. Then sturdier metal trays like copper (đồng) appeared, and today light, cheap aluminum is widespread. From an age when vermilion-lacquered wood spoke of riches to an aluminum everyday item every home has — the lighter the material got, the more the tray shifted from a special possession to 'the thing a family gathers around every day.'
Metal isn't the only answer. Among the Thái people of the north and along the central coast, woven rattan trays are still made and, used with care, are said to last about 20 years. The Mường people lay lightly toasted banana leaves on the tray and arrange local dishes on the leaves into a vivid spread. Whatever the material, the idea of binding the food onto one surface to gather around is shared. Peer into a household's tray on your travels and the outline of that place's food comes into view on a single surface.
A circle with no ends erases upper and lower seats, and everyone shares the fish sauce at the center
What keeps the cái mâm from ending as just a tray is its round shape. A square table creates seats of honor and lower seats, but a circle has no edge. Sit around the tray and everyone is equally distant from the center. In the middle sits a small bowl of fish sauce (nước chấm), surrounded by seasonal vegetables, protein and soup. Everyone reaches chopsticks to that one central bowl and shares the flavor. The circle is a shape chosen for sharing, not for rank.
Manners are handed down on this tray as well. The young bow to their elders before picking up their chopsticks, and the thoughtful reach across the tray to serve food into others' bowls. For family not yet home, a portion is left on a covered plate. The very act of gathering around a single tray becomes a place to practice respect and consideration.
The tray features at weddings and memorials, and the mâm trên / mâm dưới hierarchy also lingers
The cái mâm is also a ritual object. Engagement gifts are placed on a tray to join two families, and offerings to ancestors are raised to the altar tray and all. At the same time, at a rural celebration, this tray can also lay bare a hierarchy.mâm trên(the upper tray) andmâm dưới(the lower tray) is separated off, and in some places an old rule survives that women and children can't leave their seats until the eldest man has finished eating. The circle that symbolizes equality is at the same time a vessel for an old hierarchy. In this duality, the tray is shown carrying the whole of Vietnam's view of family.
City youth head to street stalls, and time spent gathered around the tray grows thin
Right now the cái mâm is at a quiet crossroads. The urban younger generation has come to prefer eating with friends at street stalls over gathering around a tray with family. The time of going up into a home to sit around a single tray is being whittled away, little by little, amid busy city life. How to pass down the tray is not merely a matter of tableware but the very question of how much a family shares its table.
This wavering is what a blind Vietnamese chefRewriting a mother's cooking while retelling the family's foodattempts, and the way the same dish changes shape from town to townAn Giang–style com tam, an alley mealis of a piece with this, too. Not just what you eat, but with whom and how you gather. Vietnamese food has placed as much meaning in “how you gather around it” as in the dishes themselves.
When invited, look for the fish sauce in the center, and wait for the elders before picking up your chopsticks
What you can do as a traveler isn't hard. Invited into a Vietnamese home, first find the bowl of fish sauce at the center of the tray, and wait for the elders to pick up their chopsticks before reaching in. When you're served a portion, return a small nod. That alone lets you gently fall in with the manners flowing around a single round tray. A shared plate around a street stall's tray with friends and a dinner around a household's tray are both faces of this country's table. Next time you meet a round tray in Vietnam, take in, along with the taste of the food, the family time that circle binds together.
