Where I Buy My Vietnamese Ingredients in Neukölln (And Why It Matters)

I make bún bò Huế about once a month. It takes the better part of a Saturday afternoon and requires ingredients that you cannot get in a standard Berlin supermarket — lemongrass, shrimp paste, dried shrimp, the right kind of rice vermicelli, annatto seeds for the colour. I sent my mother a photo of the finished pot last week and she replied asking what it was, which felt like a fair response from someone who makes it from memory and has never had to buy the lemongrass separately.

The Vietnamese grocery situation in Neukölln is one of the things I would tell anyone about if they asked what it’s actually like to live here. Sonnenallee, particularly the stretch between Hermannplatz (Hermannplatz, Neukölln) and Karl-Marx-Straße, has a density of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian grocery shops that I have not found matched anywhere else in Berlin. This is connected to the Vietnamese community in Neukölln, which has been here since the 1980s — a specific history of labour migration from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the GDR that shaped this part of the city in ways that are still visible in the shops and restaurants and social infrastructure.

Dong Xuan (Sonnenallee 154, Berlin) is where I start. It’s a proper Asian supermarket — Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Filipino provisions all in one place. The fresh herbs section is reliable: Thai basil, Vietnamese mint, sawtooth coriander, perilla. The frozen section has the rice vermicelli I need in the right diameter. The fish sauce selection is better than anything I’ve found north of the IJ in Amsterdam, where I lived before Berlin.

For fresh vegetables I prefer the smaller shops — there are three or four on Sonnenallee that specialise more narrowly and have better turnover on the produce. The specific one I use changes depending on what I’m making, because they stock slightly differently and the owners know their regulars and will tell you if something isn’t good this week.

This is the thing about Neukölln that the version of the neighbourhood in travel writing tends to miss: the food infrastructure here isn’t a cultural amenity for people visiting the area. It exists because communities have been here for decades and need to eat the food they know. The shops serve those communities first. That’s why the ingredients are right — not tourist-right, but actually right. The shrimp paste is the brand my mother uses. That’s not an accident.

I made the bún bò Huế on a Sunday after the canal walk. Ate it while writing another piece. Sent the photo. My mother’s response was delayed — she was at Sunday mass. When she replied she said it looked good and asked when I was coming home. I said I didn’t know. I turned back to the bowl. It was still warm.