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Aotearoa and Australia · Volume 02, The Ration, the Milk Bar and the Bush Table

Banh mi

Cabramatta and Footscray

Banh mi, a split baguette filled with pate, cold cuts, pickled carrot and daikon: a split, crackle crusted baguette roll on a plain plate, packed tightly with pale pink cold cuts, a smear of dark pate, bright orange and white julienned pickled carrot and daikon spilling from the sides.

Illustration

Time
1 hour

Refugee resettlement built Cabramatta and Footscray's Vietnamese food economy from the ground up after 1975; banh mi's own first Australian sale has no confirmed date, the Australian Food Timeline stating it "remains unknown," and naming instead the earliest documented businesses: Hong Ha Bakery in Mascot from 1986, a Dinh family shop in Bankstown from 1988, Richmond's Phuoc Than trading since 1999. A roll that cost around $5.50 a decade ago now runs to $11, up to $17 at specialty shops, a live community debate over fair pricing for genuinely skilled labour.

As tradition built it

Serves 4. The pickle stands 1 hour.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

The pickle

  • 80ml white vinegar
  • 80ml white sugar
  • 1 carrot, julienned
  • ½ small daikon, julienned
  • 1 tsp salt

The roll

  • 4 banh mi rolls
  • as needed butter
  • pâté
  • cold cuts and chả lụa (pork roll)
  • 1 small cucumber, sliced
  • 120ml coriander leaves
  • 2 spring onions, cut to the length of the roll
  • to taste fresh chilli, sliced

Method

The pickle

  1. Heat the vinegar and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Take off the heat.
  2. Add the carrot, daikon and salt and leave 1 hour, until cool. Drain and refrigerate.

The roll

  1. Split the rolls lengthways. Spread with butter, then pâté.
  2. Lay in the cold cuts and pork roll.
  3. Top with the pickle, cucumber, coriander, spring onion and chilli.

Notes

The pickle and the order of the roll are Jerry Mai's (Pho Nom, Annam), from her recipe for Australian Pork's Porkstar; her filling is roast belly, not cold cuts. Dan Hong's, on SBS, spreads a pâté of pork liver, Shaoxing wine and butter, pickles for at least three days, and finishes with sriracha mayonnaise. Luke Nguyen's chả lụa on SBS is pork leg, toasted salt and fish sauce, poached an hour in banana leaf. No Vietnamese-Australian source read quantifies the cold-cut roll itself, and the earlier SBS in-house page now returns nothing.

What a modern chef changes

Our own technique work; no fine-dining precedent for banh mi specifically was found in this research.

Method

  1. Make the pickle properly ahead, the full 24 hours rather than the rushed hour, for genuine depth rather than raw crunch alone.
  2. Build the pâté in-house, a straightforward chicken liver pâté rather than a shop-bought tin, for a cleaner, less processed centre.
  3. Toast the split baguette briefly before filling, a small step most takeaway versions skip, for real textural contrast against the soft pickle and pâté.
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