Red Boat

Discover What Makes Red Boat

The Purest
On Earth

Founded to honor our Vietnamese heritage, our fish sauce is made using a traditional fermentation process and only two ingredients: black anchovies and salt.

A Tale of Rediscovery

How an ex-Apple engineer made the leap to become a fish sauce entrepreneur.

The Red Boat Story

After moving to the United States, Cuong Pham was hungry to recreate the flavors of his childhood in Saigon. But not even the vibrant Asian markets of San Francisco offered the intensely fragrant first-press fish sauce, nước mắm nhĩ, that Cuong remembered from Vietnam. So in 2011, Cuong decided that if he couldn’t find it, he would make it — and started Red Boat Fish Sauce. Returning to Vietnam, Cuong expanded a small, family-run facility on the tropical island of Phú Quốc. With its clear waters and traditional fishing communities, Phú Quốc has long been renown for producing the world’s greatest fish sauces. Cuong partnered with expert fishermen and continued a centuries-old fermentation tradition. Today, the Red Boat brand is stronger than ever. In an era where transparency, traceability, and sustainability reign supreme, Red Boat is just as committed to quality ingredients and its time-honored fermentation tradition as the day it was founded. That means no additives, no preservatives, and no flavor enhancers. Just the purest fish sauce on earth.

Unrivaled Purity

Red Boat Fish Sauce is the purest on Earth for
three simple reasons.

1

We use only black anchovies caught off of the crystal clear waters of Vietnam’s Phú Quốc archipelago.

2

Our fish sauce is fermented using a centuries-old traditional method in large wooden barrels for a clean, natural umami flavor.

3

We bottle only first press fish sauce as indicated by our classic dark amber color, guaranteeing it is never diluted.

The Red Boat Process

Catch

Catch wild black anchovies off the coast of Phu Quoc, Vietnam.

Salt

Upon catching, anchovies are salted immediately to preserve their flavor.

Ferment

Anchovies are brought back to the barrelhouse and fermented for 12 months. Each barrel holds 13 tons of black anchovies.

Press

After fermentation is complete, the first extraction from the barrel (called the first-press) is bottled.

Recipes & Stories

Our favorite recipes to revolutionize your home-cooked meals with the help of fish sauce

Shop Red Boat

Ready to add another secret ingredient to your pantry and leave your friends and family speechless? Here are three of our newest products you can't find anywhere else!

Featured Products

SHOP ALL RPRODUCTS

Press

“When it comes to buying fish sauce, there are hundreds of varieties out there, and if you head to an Asian market you’ll be able to find more regionally-specific brands and variations. But if we had to choose one brand that’s an all-around winner in terms of availability and flavor, we’d go with Red Boat every time. “

“The scent of Red Boat’s fish sauce was of the sea and not of fishiness. If you’ve tasted the difference between fleur de sel and iodized table salt, then you can imagine the gulf in flavors between Red Boat and its additive-laden brethren. There’s no aggressive smack of salinity in the 40N or 50N. Instead, there is a rounded, mellowed, briny marriage of its two ingredients and an almost sweet, buttery finish that is especially noteworthy in the 50N.”

“Anchovy salt makes adding that coveted funky-salty-earthy burst easier than ever. I just sprinkle it on whatever I’m cooking instead of regular salt, and there it is, the magical, mystical power of umami.”

“Here, in the past couple of years, fish sauce, like so many other uniquely ethnic ingredients, has wandered into the universal pantry and is now used as a seasoning in non-Asian dishes as well. Red Boat has been my favorite brand of fish sauce because it’s fresh tasting, vibrant and light, and unlike some brands, there’s actually nothing fishy about it.”

“Manufactured the old-school way with salted anchovies on the southern Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc, Red Boat has become a chef favorite in recent years for being a first-press, extra-virgin fish sauce offered at up to 50°N—a very high concentration of nitrogen per liter, yielding an especially intense umami flavor.”

“Red Boat’s singular flavor—less of a fish taste and more of a tantalizing funk like that of Iberico ham or Parmesan cheese—quickly garnered business from Vietnamese who remembered the traditional fish sauce from their homeland, nuoc mam nhi. “