Mam

Mắm is a northern Vietnamese restaurant centered on eating bún đậu mắm tôm — a platter of vermicelli patties with fried tofu (made on their own 130-pound machine flown in from Vietnam), blood sausage from a family recipe, grilled pork intestines and a fermented shrimp paste — on low Song Long stools. No New York restaurant on record served the dish before Mắm. In 2019, as the chef at Đi Ăn Đi in Greenpoint, Jerald Head pitched it for the menu, and when its owner said New Yorkers weren't ready for it, he replied that he was American and loved it.

Head is not Vietnamese himself, but got into Vietnamese cooking through a copy of Charles Phan's The Slanted Door and subsequently spent 3 months in Vietnam, where he met his wife, Nhung, who he runs Mắm with. The blood sausage is her father's recipe. There's an indie film of the same name that showed at SXSW 2026, starring the two of them in a fictionalized version of how they met and opened the restaurant. In a 2025 interview, he spoke about the criticism that came with being a white chef cooking Vietnamese food, such as people questioning Mắm's authenticity when it first opened.

Pete Wells gave Mắm two stars in The New York Times less than a year after it moved into 70 Forsyth, and it has been on the paper's 100 Best list every year since.