Experiences on Saigon"s Best Banh My (bread with mixed filling)

Word on the Street is Robyn Eckhardt’s column for Scene on Asian street food

As pho is to Hanoi, so banh mi is to Ho Chi Minh City. The French-inspired sandwich – a split baguette spread with mayonnaise and sometimes pate, filled with meat, cheese or canned fish, and garnished with daikon-and-carrot pickle, a few sprigs of cilantro, and often spicy Sriracha and umami-rich Maggi sauce – was born in northern Vietnam but moved south with bread bakers after 1954, when France’s colonial rule ended and the nation was divided in two. Nowadays you’re rarely more than a couple of blocks from a banh mi shop or street vendor in Saigon (as the city is still called by southern Vietnamese), yet a mediocre version marred by flabby bread and insipid fillings is more the rule than the exception.

 

 

Last month I set out to identify a few banh mi worth travelling for, and enlisted the help of Saigon-born food writer and banh mi expert Andrea Nguyen, who baked daily for three months to perfect the baguette recipe for her forthcoming cookbook “The Banh Mi Handbook,” out in the U.S. in July. Our first stop: a wheeled cart operated by Thanh Mai Hoang, a relative newcomer who’s been in the business for only two or three years.

“When she slid open the door and I saw the egg cooking over charcoal… my banh mi radar went off,” said Ms. Nguyen. She was referring to Ms. Hoang’s ingenious kitchen-on-wheels, a stainless-steel trolley with a low compartment housing a brazier and a heated warming cabinet in which loaves crisp on a slatted wooden rack.

With the exception of gio heo, Vietnam’s steamed mortadella-like pork sausage, Ms. Hoang makes each of the ingredients herself in her banh mi dac biet – a meat-laden “special” banh mi with pate, pork three ways (barbecued, roasted and gio heo), and carrot-and-daikon pickle. She’s so keen on quality that fresh baguettes are delivered to her several times over each three- to four-hour workday, during which she sells about 100 sandwiches.

“Kheo,” a Vietnamese word for doing something with thought and care, is how Ms. Nguyen described Ms. Hoang’s operation. The observation was confirmed with my first bite of warm banh mi, which sent shards of golden crust flying and littered my shirt with crumbs. An optimal ratio of bread to filling meant ingredients stayed put as I worked my way down the loaf, with each bite marked by the fresh tang of crunchy pickle and the richness of mayonnaise, pate and an optional runny-yolked egg.

Patrons dig in to op la (eggs fried with sausage in single serving pans) and banh mi at an alley table at Hoa Ma

From Ms. Hoang’s cart we taxied to Hoa Ma, a little corner shop that serves banh mi and op la (eggs and sausage fried in a single-serving pan) at tables parked in the alley that runs alongside the shop. Here, proprietor Thi Hanh Le carries on the business founded by her grandfather in 1960. “He sold banh mi so that he could finish work in the morning and devote his afternoons to writing poetry,” Ms. Le told us, standing beside the big metal box set atop the charcoal brazier in which Hoa Ma’s baguettes are kept warm.

Ms. Nguyen was intrigued by the distinctively short, plump baguette, with its unusually dense ruoc (“innards” or crumb), featured in Hoa Ma’s banh mi, which is stuffed with extra-thick slices of meat and sausage. “You don’t need the long loaf unless you’re going on a trip, and our customers prefer less bread and more meat,” said Ms. Le. I was especially enamored of Hoa Ma’s pickles – thick cross-slices of carrot, daikon and cucumber rather than the standard strips of daikon and carrot – and pate as smooth as crushed velvet.

On my own the next morning, I was lured by the scent of grilled pork to So 1, a shallow corner unit selling banh mi, noodles and lunchtime rice plates. Owner Tran Linh Son worked for a decade in hotel kitchens before opening his shop in 2008, and his innovative style shows in the trio of condiments – oil-softened scallion greens, fish sauce, toasted crushed peanuts – that replace the usual mayonnaise, Sriracha and Maggi sauce on his banh mi. A more subtle foil for the smoke of barbecued meat, it made for a sandwich for the banh mi purist, stripped-down and satisfying.

Where to Eat Banh Mi in Saigon

Mornings only, until noon or supply runs out:

Thanh Mai Hoang’s banh mi cart is next to a coffee shop in the middle of the block. Truong Dinh between Ngo Thoi Nhiem and Nguyen Dinh Chieu. VND 15,000.

Hoa Ma Quan, 53 Cao Thang, District 3. VND 30,000.

So 1, 1 Nguyen Thuong Hien (at Nguyen Thi Minh Kai), Phuong 5, District 3. VND 15,000.

Experiences on Saigon"s Best Banh My (bread with mixed filling)