HANOI: The table where former US president Barack Obama famously slurped noodles in downtown Hanoi has been preserved — chopsticks and all — under a glass box for eternity, in a move that has attracted legions of bemused diners to the once low-key eatery.
Bun Cha Huong Lien restaurant, since dubbed “bun cha Obama,” shot to stardom in 2016 when the then-US leader took a break from official duties on a Hanoi visit to enjoy a $3 bowl of pork noodles with fried spring rolls with globetrotting chef Anthony Bourdain.
Now customers are thronging to the hotspot for a taste of that famous evening.
“I’m very happy to sit near the table where President Obama once sat because I love Obama very much,” office worker Tran Dinh Ha told AFP during the busy lunch rush.
Pictures of Obama and Bourdain’s budding bromance over dinner — filmed for the chef’s CNN series “Parts Unknown” — quickly went viral, and now plaster the walls of the simple joint in Hanoi’s leafy Old Quarter.
Business has boomed ever since the presidential pork dinner.
But the owner insists she isn’t dining out on the Obama fame and has resisted offers from customers wanting to buy the table, instead freezing the dinnertime tableau for posterity.
“I think it’s appropriate to preserve the memory of Mr.Obama,” owner Nguyen Thi Lien told AFP, as amused tourists snapped selfies with the encased table, set with clean bowls, plates, chopsticks and condiment jars.
Lien wouldn’t say whether the dishes on display are the ones used by Bourdain and Obama, who she described as “modest and friendly.”
The transparent box is a form of preservation, and reverence, familiar to Hanoians: Vietnam’s much-praised revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh is embalmed and encased in glass at his mausoleum in central Hanoi.
Still, not all of Lien’s customers welcomed the stunt with open arms.
“Not sure how I feel about this,” Bourdain said on Instagram under a photo of the table at which he apparently once sat.
Eternal noodles: Obama ‘bun cha’ table encased in Vietnam
Eternal noodles: Obama ‘bun cha’ table encased in Vietnam
Arts festival’s decision to exclude Palestinian author spurs boycott
- A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival
SYDENY: A top Australian arts festival has seen the withdrawal of dozens of writers in a backlash against its decision to bar an Australian Palestinian author after the Bondi Beach mass shooting, as moves to curb antisemitism spur free speech concerns.
The shooting which killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec. 14 sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism. Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by Daesh.
The Adelaide Festival board said last Thursday it would disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week in the state of South Australia because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
FASTFACTS
• Abdel-Fattah responded, saying it was ‘a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.’
• Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival.
Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
Among the boycotting authors, Kathy Lette wrote on social media the decision to bar Abdel-Fattah “sends a divisive and plainly discriminatory message that platforming Australian Palestinians is ‘culturally insensitive.'”
The Adelaide Festival said in a statement on Monday that three board members and the chairperson had resigned. The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex moment.”
a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board decision.
In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government criticized Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for failing to act on a rise in antisemitic attacks and criticized protest marches against Israel’s war in Gaza held since 2023.
Albanese said last week a Royal Commission will consider the events of the shooting as well as antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia. Albanese said on Monday he would recall parliament next week to pass tougher hate speech laws.
On Monday, New South Wales state premier Chris Minns announced new rules that would allow local councils to cut off power and water to illegally operating prayer halls.
Minns said the new rules were prompted by the difficulty in closing a prayer hall in Sydney linked to a cleric found by a court to have made statements intimidating Jewish Australians.
The mayor of the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield said the rules were ill-considered and councils should not be responsible for determining hate speech.
“Freedom of speech is something that should always be allowed, as long as it is done in a peaceful way,” Mayor Frank Carbone told Reuters.
