Bánh mì

• 1. Introduction

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  Bánh mì is a Vietnamese baguette, and it is also the sandwich built from that bread. On the 24th of March 2011, the Oxford English Dictionary added the word to its pages. Nine years later, on the 24th of March 2020, Google honored the sandwich with a Doodle. The loaf behind those honors began as an expensive French import. How did it become a Vietnamese street food? Which migrations, shortages and kitchens shaped what goes inside it? And how did refugees carry it from Saigon to Melbourne, London and New Orleans?

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• 2. Names and Words

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  Ask for bánh mì in Vietnam and you may be naming three different things at once. The phrase joins bánh, a word for many foods and mostly baked goods, with mì, meaning wheat. Said alone, it can mean any bread, the Vietnamese baguette, or the sandwich made from it. In northern Vietnam it is sometimes spelled bánh mỳ.

  Speakers have tools for sorting these meanings out. The phrase bánh mì không, meaning plain bread, separates the bare loaf from the filled sandwich. The phrases bánh mì Sài Gòn and bánh mì Việt Nam, meaning Saigon-style and Vietnam-style bread, set the local loaf apart from other breads.

  A folk etymology claims that bánh mì is a corruption of the French pain de mie, a soft white bread. The evidence points the other way. The word bánh, or its Nôm form, has named rice cakes and other pastries since as early as the 13th century, long before French contact.

  Northern Vietnamese first called the baguette bánh tây, literally Western bánh. Southern Vietnamese called it bánh mì, wheat bánh. Jean-Louis Taberd's dictionary, Dictionarium Latino-Annamiticum, already records bánh mì as a word for bread in the 1830s, decades before the baguette itself arrived.

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• 3. The French Loaf

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  In the 1860s, at the start of French imperial rule in Vietnam, the baguette arrived alongside other baked goods such as pâté chaud. The Nguyễn dynasty was still on the throne. The poet Nguyễn Đình Chiểu mentions the baguette in his 1861 poem Văn tế nghĩa sĩ Cần Giuộc. Imported wheat was costly, so baguettes and sandwiches counted as a luxury.

  World War I changed that. An influx of French soldiers and supplies came into the country. At the same time, disrupted wheat imports pushed bakers to mix in cheap rice flour, which also made the bread fluffier. Ordinary Vietnamese could now afford French staples, and by the early 20th century the baguette was a staple food.

  Many shops baked twice a day, because bread goes stale quickly in Vietnam's hot, humid climate. Baguettes were mainly a breakfast food, eaten with a little butter and sugar.

  Until the 1950s, sandwiches stayed close to French taste. The usual choice was a jambon-beurre, moistened with mayonnaise or a spread of liver pâté. Both of those spreads would survive into the Vietnamese version.

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• 4. Saigon Reinvents It

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  The 1954 Partition of Vietnam sent over a million migrants from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, and Saigon's cooking changed with them. Among the newcomers were Lê Minh Ngọc and Nguyễn Thị Tịnh. They opened a small bakery called Hòa Mã in District 3. In 1958, Hòa Mã became one of the first shops to sell bánh mì thịt.

  Other experiments appeared around the same time. Another northern migrant sold chả sandwiches from a basket on a mobylette. A stand in Gia Định Province, in what is now Phú Nhuận District, sold sandwiches filled with phá lấu. Some shops even stuffed rolls with cheap Cheddar cheese from French food aid, which migrants from the North had turned down.

  Many sources describe bánh mì mainly as a French bread tradition adapted in Vietnam. In that account, local fillings were added on top of a colonial-era baguette. Vietnamese vendors layered herbs, pickles, chiles and meats onto the loaf. By the middle of the 20th century, the result was a distinctive Saigon street food.

  Vietnamese communities in France also began selling bánh mì.

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• 5. Scarcity and Revival

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  Before 1975, well-known South Vietnamese vendors included Bánh mì Ba Lẹ and Bánh mì Như Lan, which opened in 1968. Then came the Fall of Saigon, and the sandwich slid back out of ordinary reach. During the so-called subsidy period, state-owned phở eateries often served bread or cold rice as a side dish. That habit explains why people now dip quẩy in phở.

  Not everyone stayed to see the shortages. Võ Văn Lẹ, the owner of Ba Lẹ, fled to the United States. There he and Lâm Quốc Thanh founded Bánh mì Ba Lê.

  In the 1980s, Đổi Mới market reforms brought a renaissance for bánh mì, mostly as street food. The comeback has since reached corporate counters. In the 21st century, McDonald's and Paris Baguette locations in Vietnam both offer bánh mì.

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• 6. Inside the Roll

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  A Vietnamese baguette is short, with a thin crust and a white, airy crumb. The bread also works without any filling. Diners eat it beside bò kho, a beef stew, or beside curry and phá lấu. It can be dipped in condensed milk too, and the source points to the brand Sữa Ông Thọ.

  A typical sandwich has three parts: a main filling of one or more meats, vegetables, and condiments. The vegetables are fresh cucumber, leaves of coriander and shredded pickled carrot and daikon, known as đồ chua. Condiments include chili sauce, sliced chilis, seasoning sauce and mayonnaise. Chả lụa, the Vietnamese sausage, and pâté from French cooking sit side by side in the same roll.

  The most popular variety is bánh mì thịt, where thịt means meat. Its fullest form is bánh mì thịt nguội, also called bánh mì pâté chả thịt, bánh mì đặc biệt or the special combo. It brings Vietnamese cold cuts such as sliced pork or pork belly, chả lụa and head cheese together with liver pâté and vegetables.

  The list of other fillings is long. Bánh mì bì uses shredded pork or pork skin doused with fish sauce. Bánh mì chà bông uses pork floss, and bánh mì cá mòi uses sardines. Bánh mì chay is vegetarian, made with tofu or seitan.

  Bánh mì trứng ốp-la holds fried eggs with onions, sprinkled with soy sauce and sometimes buttered. It is a breakfast dish in Vietnam. At the sweet end sits bánh mì kẹp kem, scoops of ice cream topped with crushed peanuts. Bánh mì que is a thinner, longer loaf that takes the same fillings. A typical bánh mì shop in the United States offers at least 10 varieties.

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• 7. American Kitchens

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  In Northern California in the 1980s, Lê Văn Bá and his sons began winning over Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese Americans alike. They did it through a food truck business and a fast-food chain, Lee's Sandwiches. Lee's now has locations in several states. It serves Vietnamese sandwiches on French baguettes, or on traditional bánh mì at some locations, and Western-style sandwiches on croissants. The chain Phở Hòa also puts bánh mì on a menu built around pho.

  In New Orleans, a Vietnamese po' boy recipe won the 2009 award for best po' boy at the annual Oak Street Po-Boy Festival. The city's Dong Phuong Oriental Bakery is known for supplying bánh mì bread to restaurants across town. A restaurant in Philadelphia sells a similar sandwich under the name Vietnamese hoagie. The Eden Center shopping center in Northern Virginia has several well-known bakeries that specialize in bánh mì.

  In April 2025, Banh Anh Em opened in New York City with handmade bánh mì among its main offerings. By early 2026 it was already on the Michelin Guide 2025 Bib Gourmand list, and customers were waiting in lines of more than an hour.

  The wider public noticed earlier. A 2002 PBS documentary, Sandwiches That You Will Like, featured bánh mì. As of 2017, bánh mì appeared on about 2% of American restaurant sandwich menus, nearly fivefold more than in 2013.

  Mainstream chains followed. Yum! Brands operates a chain of cafés called Bánh Shop. The former Chipotle-owned ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen briefly sold bánh mì. Jack in the Box offered a bánh mì-inspired fried chicken sandwich as part of its Food Truck Series.

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• 8. Other Shores

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  Since the 1970s, Vietnamese refugees fleeing the war arrived in London and stayed at community centers in areas such as De Beauvoir Town. They eventually founded a string of Vietnamese-style canteens in Shoreditch. From the 1990s, those canteens helped popularise bánh mì alongside phở.

  In the decade after the war, around 94,000 Vietnamese refugees migrated to Australia. Some opened bakeries that specialised in bánh mì, particularly around Western Melbourne and South-Western Sydney. Today it is a cheap and popular snack there, especially among tradespeople. In 2022, Melbourne alone had over 300 shops selling it, including the chain Roll'd.

  Social media has amplified the habit. A Vietnamese Banh Mi Appreciation Society was created on Facebook in 2017, and it grew to 155,000 members. A TikTok review of Top Ryde Baker's House, a family-run bánh mì business in the Sydney suburb of Ryde, drew 1.5 million views. Another Sydney business, Marrickville Pork Roll, had its bánh mì featured in an Instagram post by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

  In November 2025, KFC Australia added a limited-time Zinger Bánh Mì to its nationwide menu. It put a spicy chicken fillet, slaw, fresh chillies, coriander and a bánh mì-style mayonnaise inside a traditional bánh mì roll. A trial earlier in the year in Newcastle, New South Wales, had gone well, but the national launch proved controversial. A reviewer for This is Canberra called the product "glorious". A reviewer in The Guardian called it "bánh mì by name but not nature" and "the Dannii Minogue of chicken sandwiches."

  In Hong Kong, Banh Mi Nem is the only Vietnamese eatery on the Michelin selected list. A Vietnamese man who had lived in Hong Kong for almost 20 years opened it in 2024, and it was the first bánh mì shop in Wan Chai. Most local outlets use French-style baguettes, but this one bakes Vietnamese-style bread. Within a year it won Michelin recognition, and it then opened a second outlet, in Central.

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