“I started cooking when I first moved to Miami 10 years ago, just out of desperation for Vietnamese food.” Today Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Tam Pham, chef and owner of Tâm Tâm and the Michelin Guide Florida 2024 Young Chef Award Winner.
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00:00I started cooking when I first moved to Miami 10 years ago,
00:03just out of desperation for Vietnamese food.
00:07The emphasis of Tam Tam is on drinking food.
00:10The culture of Quang Ngoc is basically somewhere that
00:13Vietnamese go to grab a bite and also party.
00:16I work with my husband. I'm the head chef.
00:19He curates the wine list.
00:20We really embody Quang Ngoc culture that we want to bring to Miami.
00:25Good morning, everyone. My name is Tam Pham.
00:27I'm a chef owner here at Tam Tam in downtown Miami.
00:30We have a lot to do today, so let's get to work.
00:33It took us about a year to get everything decorated.
00:36Just to show how old this spot is,
00:38here's a photo of the courthouse in front of us being built.
00:41And the courthouse was built in 1920, and we are like right here.
00:46So we've been here for about 100 years.
00:49It's now noon. I have a lot to do.
00:51The first thing I'm going to do is a goat curry.
00:53I like to be the first person here because I like the quietness,
00:56having the whole space for myself.
00:58I don't have to stay behind or corner or sharp anywhere.
01:02This is halal goats from Australia.
01:05They come frozen and already cooped up.
01:07We go through about 15 pounds a day.
01:10Halal goat is a lot less gamey.
01:12And also the animal is just treated way better.
01:15Vietnamese curry is like a traditional Vietnamese curry.
01:19Vietnamese curry is found in the south of Vietnam
01:22where Indian immigration came over in the 50s.
01:26It comes with egg noodles, one of my favorite ways to eat curry.
01:30Every batch of curry takes about a pound of lemongrass.
01:34I get this from my auntie.
01:37You know how in Vietnamese we call everyone auntie?
01:40She's just my mom's age.
01:42She has a Vietnamese produce shop.
01:45You know it's Vietnamese when half of the store also sells nail supplies.
01:50So fish sauce is basically fermented anchovies.
01:54It adds a lot of umami flavors.
01:56I have a lot of guests who taste our goat curry
01:59and I just do not believe that it's goats.
02:01All right, first we're going to have to sear the goats.
02:04No, of course it's going to happen right now.
02:07So we're having some issues with our stove,
02:09which is a kitchen nightmare.
02:12This is Harry. This is my partner.
02:14He's also the handyman of the kitchen.
02:16Whenever I have problems, he usually wants to fix it for me.
02:20Oh, yay! Turn back on.
02:25When I moved here, there was maybe one or two Vietnamese restaurants here.
02:29So I just started learning from the internet, from YouTube,
02:33just so that I can start eating some of the dishes that I really miss.
02:36So Harry suggested that we should also start hosting dinners for our friends and family.
02:44Tam Tam started out as a supper club right in our backyard,
02:47and now it's a full-blown restaurant that's packed out every night.
02:51If you look closely to the bottom,
02:53you start seeing this beautiful pond that we have in the bottom.
02:57So we're going to be building the curry right now.
02:59We're going to start with shaved shallots with the heat off.
03:04Sweat the shallots, create a steam so that the fond gets softened
03:08and then eventually released into the gravy.
03:11Goat itself in Vietnam is usually like a drinking protein.
03:15You come in, you have a lot of the time proteins that you usually don't find.
03:19Just keep an open mind.
03:21Just know that the food is going to be great and the drink is going to be even better.
03:25It's a party at the table.
03:27Massaman paste is really similar to red curry paste.
03:31It's only a tad sweeter with more chili and also tamarind paste.
03:36The best curry powders you can find in Vietnam is Indian curry powder
03:40because curry powder was introduced to Vietnamese food through Indian immigrants.
03:46What I'm doing right now is pounding lemongrass, which is actually a very essential step.
03:51Pounding lemongrass helps to release all the essential oil.
03:55This used to be a Cuban diner for about 20 years.
03:58This is actually something that was left over from the Cuban diner.
04:03All right, now we're going to go in with our lemongrass.
04:06I make this dish specifically once we don't have an actual recipe for it.
04:11All the recipes are right in here.
04:13We are a very new restaurant.
04:15The cuisine is quite unfamiliar to a lot of my staff.
04:19I trust my staff to do certain things, but when it comes to bigger dishes like the curry itself,
04:24I like to make it myself.
04:26Eventually, I will have to pass on the torch, right?
04:29Our coconut, some fish sauce.
04:32This is MSG, just like sugar is responsible for sweetness.
04:36MSG is the purest form of umami, which is the fifth taste.
04:40I like to add MSG to some of my dishes just so it can round out all the sharp edges of the flavors
04:46and put aluminum foils on top of it.
04:49This way, it's going to braise rather than roasting.
04:52Timer is on.
04:54Three hours.
04:56It's now one o'clock.
04:57We need to move on to our caramel fish sauce.
04:59Our fish sauce wings.
05:01So we have six quarts of sugar in here.
05:04We're going to keep the heat on about medium-low.
05:07This sauce is actually a really popular sauce in Vietnam.
05:10You can use this sauce to braise chicken.
05:13You can use the sauce to braise fish.
05:15Here, we have had the wings on the menu for the very first supper club event that we ever did.
05:21I don't think I'll ever be able to take it off because people will be very upset.
05:26It's nice, crunchy, sweet, salty.
05:28It's a little tangy from the lime juice.
05:31The wings are marinated overnight in a mixture of salt, fish sauce, garlic, and a little bit of vodka.
05:41I was really deep on the internet one night.
05:43So when you add vodka to a frying dish, the second it hits the oil, it will release a lot of steam,
05:50which makes your crust very light and airy.
05:53That's why we have two bottles of skull vodka in the kitchen.
05:56Obviously, we don't drink that.
05:58You don't want to drink that.
06:01It is not a hard sauce to make.
06:03I like to make it myself just so we can keep the consistency.
06:07Tam Tam was named after me.
06:10In Vietnamese, it's named heart or soul.
06:12When you put Tam Tam together, that means two hearts or two souls.
06:17In very cheesy ways, it represents Harry and I, the two people that came together to create Tam Tam.
06:25The two things need to work hand-in-hand to create a perfect quán nhậu, which is the concept that we're trying to be.
06:33So now that the sugar has turned into caramel, we're going to move on to the kind of fun part,
06:38but also very dangerous part of making this dish, which is adding fish sauce into caramel.
06:44It's going to release a lot of steam.
06:46It could really burn you.
06:48This is where the fish sauce gets caramelized.
06:51It also turns into this completely different sauce.
06:55When I was little, I did think at some point I might be a chef.
06:59I think I looked down on the position a lot.
07:02Also, my parents wanted me to be an engineer.
07:04A classic Asian story, huh?
07:06I have proved to them that this is a career worth pursuing, and I can also make good money out of it.
07:13Now we're going to go in with our sambal, which is fermented chili paste.
07:18It's not too spicy.
07:19It has a nice tanginess to it.
07:22A lot of Vietnamese food gets fermented because, one, people really enjoy that funkiness that fermentation gives.
07:30But also, I think preserving for a country that used to be poor like Vietnam,
07:34having access to food year-round used to be an issue.
07:39Now we're going to go in with half of the amount of garlic that I have.
07:44We're going to wait for the sauce to cool down completely before we add the rest of the garlic
07:48so that when the sauce hits hot wings, some of that raw garlicky flavor will come through,
07:54and it will be so aromatic.
07:56Oops, it's 2 o'clock.
07:58I better get going with my bitterleaf wrapped lamb.
08:00Let's go.
08:03Thankfully, we had a prep shift yesterday where a lot of this mixed sambal was already prepped out.
08:07When I have the whole kitchen staff coming in, we all have to fight for counter space.
08:12Being a chef, I get to call the longest one.
08:16So these are bitterleaves.
08:18It has this licorice-y flavor, but when you start to give it a nice char,
08:23it turns super sweet, very fragrant, smoky, and it grows so well in South Florida
08:29just because of the similarity in weathers.
08:31So what I like to do is mixing the dry and wet ingredients together first.
08:37Just so that we don't have any weird pockets of dry ingredients in there.
08:41This is the mixture of lemongrass and shallots.
08:45Lamb by itself is quite lean, so what I do is I also add a coarsely ground up beef mixture
08:52that has about 30% fat, ensuring that the final product is not going to be dry.
08:58So this lamb wrap dish comes with a lettuce wrap setup.
09:03There's nothing that is more representative of Vietnamese food and flavor profile.
09:08On a busy night, I would have to roll out lambs in the back as service happening in the front.
09:15You would start with the bottom side up.
09:17So because the bottom side is rougher, it will hold on to the meat.
09:21Spread it to the side.
09:23Slowly but tightly have everything together.
09:27Walking back from school, we would always pass by this beetle leaf stand on the side of the road.
09:33And the aroma brings such memories to me.
09:36So the second that my auntie told me,
09:38Hey, I have beetle leaves in my backyard. Let me know if you ever need.
09:43I was like, I definitely need to put that dish on the menu.
09:47All right, I just rolled like a hundred of this.
09:49My scallops just got here. I'm going to have to go cure some scallops.
09:53These are U10 scallops from New High Port.
09:56Just about an hour outside of Boston.
09:58They are fresh, never frozen.
10:00Honestly, one of the best scallops I've ever had in my life too.
10:03We have five pounds of scallops here.
10:05I usually do 5% lime zest, 5% MSG, and 5% salt.
10:11So the scallop dish is raw scallop.
10:14It's scallop crudo dish.
10:15Curing the scallop firm up the texture.
10:18It's served with coconut nuoc cham, which is a traditional Vietnamese dipping sauce.
10:22Paddy herb oil, Thai basil, and fried garlic.
10:26To me, Vietnamese food is also really bright and acidic.
10:30The lime zest adds a nice citrusy note without me having to add a lot of lime juice.
10:36Vietnamese people don't really like to eat raw seafood.
10:39Time goes on.
10:40And as I have gained more confidence as a chef,
10:44I feel a lot more free to kind of just put on things that I believe is very good.
10:49And we can continue to push the envelope.
10:51It's going to go back into the fridge for 30 minutes to cure.
10:55And after that, give it an ice bath.
10:57It will firm up the texture of the scallops a lot more.
11:01My sous chef is working on a really special R&D dish right now.
11:04If it's ready, I'm going to have to take some photos for it.
11:11This is Adrian Ochoa, my very talented sous chef.
11:14He's been with Tam Tam since our pop-up time.
11:17And he's currently working on a new special for us for our spring menu.
11:22I spoke to our meat guy, Brandon.
11:25And what he suggested was, and he said he hated the name, but the Thor's Hammer,
11:31which is basically like an ossobuco hind shank.
11:35And what we settled on was marinate it and leave it alone for two days,
11:38sous-viding it for about 16 hours.
11:41Then we finish it off in the oven for service.
11:44This is my second time seeing this.
11:46We ran it last weekend just to see people's reactions.
11:49So we have already made some changes.
11:51We lined the plate with banana leaves.
11:54We wanted to give it a more impressive presentation.
11:58Adrian also adjusted the cooking temperature and time.
12:01Looking at it right now, I think he nailed it.
12:04It's going to be a little 151 up top.
12:06Going to light it on fire as we take it to the table.
12:08The overall goals for me when I taste a new dish
12:12is that one, it has to taste Vietnamese uncompromisingly.
12:15It has to taste good. It has to be fun to eat.
12:18We also like to have different side dishes to go with the dish.
12:22It's amazing. The shrimp paste really comes through.
12:26You could probably use a tad more salt.
12:28But the sauce is rich, but also really bright at the same time.
12:32Every time I'm reheating it, the bone marrow inside actually renders out.
12:35And then I'm creating kind of a vinaigrette with tamarinds, white pepper, Sichuan pepper.
12:41My favorite way to eat this is with the firecracker eggplant.
12:45Teeny tiny little eggplants that you pickle.
12:48I think it's very much ready to be on the menu.
12:51Adrian is like one of my best friends.
12:53If I don't like it, it's very easy for me to say, that sucks.
12:57The general wisdom is food cost should be about 20 to 30 percent of the price on the menu.
13:05For a dish that has a really high food cost,
13:08like this one already, we're not going to do 20 or 30 percent.
13:11We're probably going to cut some loss to that.
13:13But at the same time, it satisfies our needs to do fun things,
13:18to push the boundaries of the cuisine.
13:20The next step before this can be on the menu is,
13:23I have to take some photos for our Instagram and social media.
13:26Let's plate up another one so I can take the photo of this.
13:29My dad got me my first camera when I was 16.
13:33And when it was time for us to open a business,
13:37I just started learning how to do food photography.
13:40My style of food photography was inspired by Bon Appetit magazine.
13:44I really like that high flash.
13:47Definitely being an owner operating a business, I will have to wear different hats, right?
13:51It allows me to do things that I love, which is cooking and taking photos.
13:56Okay, I like that.
13:57Good photography definitely has helped a lot with our popularity.
14:01So the trick to make something look appetizing is,
14:04the color temperature of my food photography is usually lean on the warm side.
14:08We also add a lot of herbs and also red components.
14:12It helps to make something look appetizing.
14:14You like that?
14:15Yeah, I like that.
14:16Well, let's just then light it up.
14:18It's going to give a little bit of a flame off the top.
14:21Surprisingly, I always like with meats and things like that, I like to do sparkling.
14:26So I do have the wonderful cremant de jour that's going to be rosé.
14:30It's going to have some body to it.
14:32And then the sparkling is going to cut through that real meatiness of it.
14:35So it's all about balance.
14:37I think I got the shots.
14:39Thank you for joining me today.
14:41I really have to get back to service.
14:43The door is about to open.
14:44Usually, my day ends when the last table is set down.
14:48So that's about 10 o'clock.
14:50But right now, you really have to go.
14:51So, goodbye.