Features

The Banh Mi Culture Of Vietnam Is Thriving On The US Gulf Coast

The Village de l’Est neighborhood in New Orleans East

The exodus started in May 1975.

Following the fall of Saigon to the Communist North Vietnamese, 130,000 refugees were evacuated from South Vietnam.

Operation Frequent Wind, the largest boat and air lift in refugee history was a rousing success that would lead to 1.4 million Vietnamese émigrés resettling in the United States between 1975 and 1994.

The Gulf Coast South was a favored destination. Continue Reading

Features, The Art And Science Of Chili

There Will Never Be Another Man Like Texas Chili Boss Wick Fowler

Wick Fowler (photo courtesy of the Wittliff Collections)

How did Wick Fowler, the best chili cook in Texas, manage to not win the first Terlingua Chili Championship back in 1967? According to his boon companion, Sidney Roper Weisiger, a south Texas journalist, it was because Wick left out the treasured ingredient of his youth: swamp rabbit.

At the dawn of the roaring twenties, Wick and his group of playmates contented themselves the way many small-town Texas boys did. When they weren’t in school they spent their days fishing, playing marbles and hunting small game. Victoria, where Wick grew up, had less than 6,000 residents. Continue Reading