Origin of the Vietnamese "banh mi" sandwich
From: Shawn McHale
Date: Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 8:56 AM
Dear list,
Frank Wu, who is teaching a course for us on Asian American history, has a student who wants to write on . . . the banh mi sandwich. He writes:
"I have a student writing a paper that promises to be
fascinating, and I thought I'd drop you a note in the event you have
any leads (in English). The student is going to dissect the Banh Mi
sandwich, tracing each ingredient to a European or Asian origin, and
then describing its transition to the States; sort of a biography of
the sandwich. Have you run across anything along these lines in English?"
So -- any leads gratefully accepted (even if not in english, actually).
Shawn
Shawn McHale
Director
Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
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From: Jean Michaud
Date: 2009/2/2
Most VSG contributors probably know that already but just in case: the French like to state that 'banh mi' in Vietnamese is derived from 'pain de mie' in French, which is the soft crusted white bread traditionally used in France for sandwiches and croque-monsieurs.
An appetizing topic in any case.
Jean Michaud
Université Laval
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From: Dieu-Hien t. Hoang
Date: Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 10:04 AM
Shawn,
Would some anecdotal life experience help? And some clarifications, too?
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, and when I returned and lived there in the 90s as well as 2003-2004, even now, where I came from in Sai-Gon/Ho Chi Minh City, there are <ba'nh mi` thi.t> or <ba'nh mi` thi.t nguo^.i> or <ba'nh mi` jambon> which refer to the meat filling being a type of French cold cut; <ba'nh mi` cha? lu.a> has the Vietnamese bologna cha? lu.a in the filling; <ba'nh mi` xi'u ma.i> has Vietnamese-style meatballs; <ba'nh mi` tru*'ng> has eggs for filling. <Ba'nh mi` sandwich> refers to a sandwich made of sliced bread, most likely white bread, like what people here in the U.S. would think of a sandwich.
There are terms and meanigns used in Viet Nam, and perhaps among those living abroad who grew up in Viet Nam. Don't know if the generations of Vietnamese descendants growing up overseas attach other meanings to <ba'nh mi` sandwich>?
From reading the post, I have a feeling that <ba'nh mi` sandwich> means
differently by the person who wrote the note than what I noted above.
Would love to see other discussions on this list regarding this topic.
Hien
----
Hoang t. Dieu-Hien
University of Washington Tacoma
Nursing Program
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From: Dieu-Hien t. Hoang
Date: 2009/2/2
Yes, this shows the evolution of the meaning of a borrowed word in local usage. This is precisely the kind of bread a Vietnamese from Viet Nam would refer to when they say, ba'nh mi` sandwich. Ba'nh mi` alone, however, is understood to be the crunchy-crusted baguette style, big and small.
I'd like to add a little correction to the content of my previous post, other than a couple of typos, for which I apologize. In Viet Nam, at least in the South, many people would refer to the <pain de mie> bread, or other western style sliced bread as <ba'nh mi` sandwich>. That is, just the bread itself, without any filling. If this bread is made into a sandwich, it becomes <ba'nh mi` ke.p> or <ba'nh mi` ke.p sandwich>.
To qualify this further, the usage mentioned above and in my previous post would be true among the general population of Sai-Gon/Ho Chi Minh City. The same would be true for the general populations of Ha Noi and other parts of the country for <ba'nh mi` thi.t>. I'm not sure about the use of <ba'nh mi` sandwich> in other parts of the country outside of Ho Chi Minh City. Among those who have studied abroad or who have frequent interactions with westerners in Viet Nam, understanding and usage of the term <sandwich> is likely to be different, particularly when talking to a westerner.
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From: Ben Kerkvliet
Date: Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 11:44 AM
I've noticed customers ordering "banh mi" at stands-on-wheels along some of Hanoi's streets will say "banh mi" and immediately tell the vender what to put in it to make a sandwich. If a customer wants only the "banh mi" itself, with no additions, s/he asks for "banh mi khong" (bánh mì không).
Cheers,
Ben
Universit Laval
--
Ben Kerkvliet
Emeritus Professor
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T., Australia
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From: Hong Nhung Nguyen
Date: 2009/2/2
Hi, it's such interesting topic.
I grew up in Hanoi so I would like to add some about banh mi Ha Noi. When I was small (about 80s only), for breakfast, my grandparents often feed me banh mi cha^'m sua~ (a slide of banh mi with some condensed milk), or a hot cup of sweetened milk and drop in some piece of banh mi and we'd better eat the banh mi on it before they become too soft. A slice of banh mi with butter and sprinkle some sugar on it was also on the list.
The more popular banh mi now is at 9 Thuyen Quang street, and another one at Hoa Ma street, where you can find the very "traditional" banh mi of Hanoi with "pate^" (or bate^), xiu' mai., xu'c xich', butter and pickles, and some spiced chili paste if you prefer; or banh mi with omelete (I found it interesting that in the US, it's called "sunny side up" when you cook the egg without breaking the yolk) on a small griller; and banh mi` so^'t vang (stew beef).
Banh mi in Hanoi often sells by street salers. About 10 years ago, you can find them going around the street singing the banh mi songs something like "Ai banh' mi` no'ng deeee^^^, Ai banh' mi` no'ng do`n na`oooo". Today the banh mi on the street like that becomes smaller, the skin is not as crusty as before and the white bread is not as soft and tasty as that of many years ago. Price also has changed: before: 500d, now: 1000 and more for banh mi only.
I think the banh mi in Hanoi is different with banh mi in Saigon, or Danang (where they call it bo` ne' if I am not wrong). And on Hanoi streets now a new kind of banh mi: banh mi Hai Phong, a skinier banh mi with the same fillings, that is become popular recently. And there are also new way to make banh mi such as banh' mi` trung (more popular for students and can be found around kindergartens, schools and colleges campus) where the egg is scramble and used as filling; banh' mi` bate^ ra'n; or banh' mi` with scew grilled meat.
Best,
Nhung
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From: ryan nelson
Date: 2009/2/2
Regarding banh mi khong in the Trang.
Written in Lonely Planet's Vietnam --
“Nha Trang is naturally a seafood haven and there is a wide variety of excellent eateries. If you’ve been enjoying the fresh baguettes in Vietnam you’re in for a treat -- Nha Trang has its own unique variety of French bread, a heavier loaf that is closer in consistency (and taste) to a New York City pretzel. Proud locals say the bread is more filling for Nha Trang’s hard-working fisher[people].”
Indeed Nha Trang’s bread is rather tough. So much so I once cut the roof of my mouth on the jagged, crusty brown edge of a delicious cheese filled baguette and woke up with a swollen and infected mouth the next day. Let me tell you, I never heard the end of it from my German girlfriend at the time who already thought of North Americans as feeble. I prefer to eat Ha Noi's banh mi khong.
:)
Peace
Ryan Nelson
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From: Dieu-Hien t. Hoang
Date: 2009/2/2
Thank you, Ben Kerkvliet, for that clarification. Yes, when ordering plain bread at a street vendor which sells sandwiches, one must specify <ba'nh mi` kho^ng>. When people just speak in general terms about bread, <ba'nh mi`> is used.
For the linguists among the list, in the South, a loaf of bread is <mo^.t o^? ba'nh mi`>. In the North, it is <mo^.t chie^'c ba'nh mi`>. I received the most strange stares from vendors in the North back in '89-early 90s when I said, May I have <mo^.t o^? ba'nh mi`>?
Would love to hear of other variations of <loaf> in Viet Nam. On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Ben Kerkvliet wrote:
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From: Fr Peter Hansen <phansen@ourladys.org.au>
Date: 2009/2/2
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Charles Keith recently told me of the demise of No Noodles, hitherto on Nha Chung in Ha Noi between the National Library and the Cathedral; dispensers of (IMHO) the best banh mi in Viet Nam. Very sad.
Peter Hansen
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: 2009/2/2
Yes, it's been defunct for a while. In Ho Chi Minh City, however, there is a restaurant called Bun.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: Erica J. Peters <e-peters-9@alumni.uchicago.edu>
Date: 2009/2/2
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
I've been very much enjoying all this information about bánh mì sandwiches. I thought I would chime in with some citations from the early colonial period:
>From the moment the French arrived, they taught Vietnamese and Chinese men to bake their bread, a hot job, especially unpleasant in a hot colony.
In 1870, H. Aurillac wrote in his book Cochinchine that the natives love our bread at first, then they go back to their rice (p. 40).
In J. M. J.'s dictionary of 1877, 'bánh mì' is translated as "pain de froment."
In 1910, A. Jourdain wrote in Impressions d’Indochine that "In the morning in Saigon one sees natives on every street having a café au lait or café noir with half a roll ('petit pain')" (p. 21).
The earliest reference I can find to Vietnamese people selling sandwiches on the street (as opposed to just bread), is in 1934, when Vũ Trọng Phụng wrote in The Industry of Marrying Europeans that "Madame Hai Yểng had been in business for a long time; she had a successful cát-cút (casse-croûte) stand."
(Transl. by Thúy Tranviet, Cornell SEAP 2006, p. 37.) From the context, I would say it's likely, but not absolutely certain that the cát-cút stand sold something like what we now call bánh mì.
Would love to get earlier references for French bread or for bánh mì sandwiches, if anyone can provide.
Erica
Erica J. Peters
Culinary Historians of Northern California
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From: Tuan Hoang
Date: Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:16 PM
Erica's post about coffee and roll reminded me there are all kinds of
passing comments about food in Nguyen Vy's memoir _Tuan Chang Trai
Nuoc Viet_ [Tuan, Young Man of Vietnam]. Thanks to the Internet, I
saw a reference in the link below. The year was 1927, the future poet
was leaving his hometown Quang Ngai for Hue, and his teacher/friend
got up early to make milk coffee (ca phe sua) & toast a baguette.
There is no mentioning of condiments or anything else, so presumably
he ate it plain.
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:iXRqp7301AsJ:www.onthi.com/%3Fa%3DTV%26tv%3DSTR%26str%3DS%26hdn_story_id%3D6075%26hdn_chapter_id%3D35306+tuan+chang+trai+nuoc+viet+bánh+mì&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
The fact that it wasn't Hanoi or Saigon but Quang Ngai, suggests that
banh mi was available in the provinces at this time, even in the more
conservative central region.
~Tuan
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: 2009/2/2
In 1967, my aunt wrote her memoirs about her arrest in 1929. She wrote that while she was detained for interrogation, the warden smuggled in sandwiches for her and her co-defendants. Later on, when she was incarcerated in the Central Prison in Saigon, her lawyer smuggled some toilet paper and half a pen to her in a loaf of bread so that she could use these to write.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: William Noseworthy
Date: 2009/2/3
Hello again list!
So, though I have relatively little experience with Vietnamese, I can say that the popular banh mi, as of my living experience in Ho Chi Minh, manifested itself in two popular forms; the most popular way to grab these sandwiches in the crowd that I knew was from a street side stand.
The breakfast banh mi op la pho mai (or pho mat), which is essentially a modern Vietnamese take on what I would consider, the very American "egg and cheese". I should add that my Vietnamese teachers (one a private tutor from University, another a TA at ILA Vietnam, an international English language academy, and a tutor from a private company geered more towards long term tourist types) all connected pho mai/mat etymologically to "fromage". The private tutor "for tourists" connected "banh" to a transliteration of "pain", although this seems shaky to me, especially since my other two sources were unable to confirm this.
A side note- that I never saw any "banh mi pho mai/mat"s that DID NOT have "la vache qui rit" ("con bo cui" is the Vietnamese translation, although I never heard this used- it was more simply "pho mai" in daily usage). It MIGHT be possible to look up some information on this particular products history- or contact a Vietnamese distributor. I know the cheese was launched in France in 1921, but I don't know much else about it, other than it is generally what you get if you ask for "pho mai" on the streets.
Does anyone know where "op la" owes its origins?
In the second form there is the banh mi pate/thit, which generally appears as either or, unless you run into one of the more "equipt" stands in district one. This version is more often a late breakfast to late lunch version, especially as most of the banh mi stands disappeared slowly between the hours of 2 and 4 in the after noon. The exception of this would be the backpacker district, where there are stands open from 5 till about 1 or 2 am, when the streets FINALLY clear.
I had some doubts as to whether the "pate" was actually as per the French conception, or some ground equivelent from a more readily available animal, however, these were never confirmed (*Thankfully*?!?). Thit, being a more general term, was mostly various forms of processed pork, some of which were akin to thin strips of bologna, some of which were miraculously quite translucent.
Of course, it was also possible to order a "banh mi khong thit", which was just the sliced carrot, cucumber, onions, salt and pepper, though I never found this particularly filling, and I was inevitably asked if I was a Buddhist (presumably with implication "conservative Buddhist" as opposed to popularized Vietnamese style Buddhism).
Two caveats- this is ENTIRELY annecdotal, based on a roughly 9 month stay in Ho Chi Minh, teaching English and studying Vietnamese, and please pardon the lack of accents/diacritics, my current keyboard won't allow them!
Thanks again VSG for such great topics!
Billy Noseworthy, B.A.
Oberlin '07
CELTA ILA Vietnam
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From: Haughton, Dominique
Date: 2009/2/3
Greetings to all! Op la comes from the French “œufs au plat », which in American English means « fried eggs, sunny side up » … All the best, Dominique
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From: Jim Cobbe
Date: 2009/2/3
I just have to add that there is a stand that operates in the evenings in Ha Noi, on Hai Ba Trung I think near Tran Nhan Tong Str, which advertises "Kebabs" but actually sells banh mi filled with what Americans call Gyro but real meat not sausage, carved off the vertical rotary grill, onions tomatoes chili sauce herbs etc. Very good and very popular, despite fairly hefty price (15,000 VND if I remember right). And on what the bread is like overall, it varies a lot -- in Da Nang one could get both crisp and soft banh mi, depended on the bakery. Jim
William Noseworthy wrote:
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From: Bill Hayton
Date: 2009/2/3
Surely a fine tribute to the late inventor of the doner kebab...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/4295701/The-man-who-invented-the-doner-kebab-has-died.html
From Turkey to Berlin and - perhaps via a Vietnamese gastarbeiter stranded in Berlin in 1989 - to Hanoi...
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: 2009/2/3
To follow up on Dominique's post: in the South in the 1960s, restaurants might advertise "op-la op-let" which meant oeufs au plat (sunny side up) and omelets. I recall going for breakfast with David Marr in the mid-a1990s in a Hanoi restaurant. David boldly ordered a cheese omelet (advertised on the menu). The omelet came with a small cube of cheese on the side.
When I was growing up in Saigon, for "gouter," at 4pm when we got back from school, we often had bread spread with butter and sugar.
Pho was considered a northern dish (as opposed to "the" national" dish); southerners had a choice between hu tieu Nam Vang or hu tieu My Tho.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: Kirsten W. Endres
Date: 2009/2/4
well, sure, i think it was the german goethe institute, or rather the vietnamese owner of the restaurant at the goethe-institute, who initiated these döner kebab stands in hanoi. there's several of them, must be a franchise.
cheers,
kirsten
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From: Nu-Anh Tran
Date: Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 5:42 AM
Dear list,
I have not heard of the "pain de mie" explanation for the word "ba/nh mi\" until now. I always thought "mi\" referred to "lu/a mi" (wheat) and was related to the word for Chinese noodles made from wheat. Isn't that similar to the Cantonese word for the noodles?
Nu-Anh