Let the good times roll: The rise and rise of banh mi

Now that we’re all back at work (well, sort of), it’s time to focus on where our next banh mi is coming from. Is there a more beautiful worker’s lunch on earth than Vietnam’s crunchy, freshly baked baguette, stuffed and layered with cold meats, chicken-liver pate, pickles, chilli, cucumber, coriander and mayo? Exactly.

Surely, it is one of the great triumphs of our multicultural society that everyone, from the boss to the work-experience kid, is happy to queue for banh mi. Show me a factory in an industrial precinct or a fintech start-up in the CBD, and I will show you a banh mi canteen and a queue. (There is always a queue, because even in this pre-fab, commodified world, banh mi is assembled to order.)

But how did banh mi come to colonise our office canteens and smoko rooms? A colonial child of French bread and charcuterie and Vietnamese ingenuity, it became the portable salad roll we know and love during the 1950s. The Le family, in particular, is credited with opening the first street-side banh mi stall in Saigon, having fled from the north when Vietnam divided into two countries in 1954.

Not surprisingly, banh mi continues to evolve as new generations fall under its spell. Chef Dan Hong was the first to miniaturise banh mi into three-bite sliders at Merivale’s Ms. G’s in Sydney several years ago. Last year, Lit Canteen in Alexandria became instant lockdown heroes with some beautifully crafted banh mi kits available for home delivery in tailor-made boxes, with a choice of traditional baguette or freshly baked croissant.

Banh mi continues to evolve as new generations fall under its spell.

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In Melbourne, chef Thi Le of Anchovy restaurant has turned her lockdown pop-up Ca Com banh mi bar into a regular side hustle, selling slabs of chicken pate, pickles, herbs and Laotian pork sausage inside traditional baguettes from the nearby Phuoc Thanh Bakery.

The height of banh mi’s evolution, however, belongs to the pate en croute with banh mi flavours, at the buzzy, wood-fired Aru in Little Collins Street. Here, chef Khanh Nguyen creates an immaculate, classic pork shoulder terrine with chicken-liver pate fringed with a hauntingly rich aspic encased in intricately moulded pastry. It’s one of the best new/old dishes to have emerged in the past two years – so good, in fact, I’m thinking that, one day, people might even queue for it.

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