Ex-Apple Engineer Takes on Big Fish Sauce

It’s rush-hour on Phu Quoc Island’s Duong Dong River as Cuong Pham’s craft navigates diesel-belching fishing boats coming in from the sea with their overnight catch of anchovies piled high on decks. The Vietnamese-American and former Apple Inc. engineer, who fled his homeland on a boat decades earlier, has returned to Vietnam from Silicon Valley in the unlikely role of fish sauce entrepreneur whose condiment has become a global culinary sensation.

At the moment, Pham is giving chefs from the U.S. and Europe an overview of his Red Boat Fish Sauce operations, decidedly low-tech but infused with a Steve Jobs-like obsession with quality. It took Pham, who acquired a small fish-sauce barrel house in 2006, three years to produce the first batch he considered good enough to sell after investing a half-million dollars and commuting between California and Vietnam. He sold his first bottle in 2011. Now, gourmands make pilgrimages to Red Boat’s riverside operations on Phu Quoc Island off the southwest coast of Vietnam, right on the border with Cambodia. The island is known as a Napa Valley or Bordeaux for fish sauce, with recognized designation of origin status.