A Brief History of Bánh Mì

The bánh mì as we know it didn’t exist until the late 1950s. Its story, though, begins 100 years before that, when French troops launched a 30-year conquest of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos — or what would become known as Indochina (or French Indochina). By the early 1900s, parts of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) were beginning to look like a young European city, and the French imported not just their architecture, but also their cuisine, including the ubiquitous baguette — which they ate exclusively.

The Vietnamese called the imported baguettes bánh tày, or ‘Western cake.’ The French would typically serve them on a platter with ham, cold cuts, pâté, cheese, and butter — or what is known as a casse croute (break the crust). The French did not want the local population eating their food, which they considered superior to the local fare — nor could the Vietnamese afford it. The outbreak of World War I in 1914, though, resulted in both a surplus of European food products and a reduction of the French in Vietnam. Meanwhile, about 100,000 Vietnamese men were sent to Europe to fight alongside the French. There, they got a taste of European food, not to mention an increased distate for their French masters. After the war, bread had become a common item in the Vietnamese diet.

The French, of course, stayed in Vietnam after the war, proclaiming their presence in southeast Asia as a mission civilisatrice, a political rationale for military intervention and colonization. It purported to facilitate the modernization and the Westernization of indigenous peoples. The reality, however, was profiteeering, harsh subjugation, and brutal exploitation.

Once again, a world war interceded. When Japan invaded Indochina in 1940, the Vietnamese saw an emerging Asian empire. One year later, amid increasing calls for independence, Ho Chi Minh answered with the establishment of the League for the Independence of Vietnam, the Viet Minh.

As anti-French sentiment increased, bánh tày (Western cake) became bánh mì (wheat cake), and the French casse croute platter became the Vietnamese cát-cụt. By the end of 1946, the Japanese were gone, and the Viet Minh were at war with France. Eight years later, France agreed to end hostilities, and Vietnam was sliced in two, with Ho Chi Minh’s communist government in North Vietnam, and a U.S.-backed republic in the south. An estimated one million northern Vietnamese — who became known as Bắc 54, “the Northerners of 1954” escaped to the south before the border was closed.

Among them were the Le family, who fled their village of Hoà Mã near Hanoi in the north, for Saigon in the south. Mrs. Le had worked for a French-owned company that supplied European-style hams and processed meats to French restaurants. She and her husband opened Hoà Mã’s, a cát-cụt shop at 511 Nguyễn Đình Chiểu Street in Saigon’s District 3. This is where the modern bánh mì was born. (They moved a few blocks away a couple years later, and continue to this day to operate Như Lan, a restaurant, bakery, and delicatessen in Saigon.) Mrs. Le made her own processed meats, and they sold the cát-cụt platters to local students, office workers, and laborers. Mrs. Le’s husband is credited with turning the cát-cụt platter into the modern day bánh mì. He reduced the size of the baguette and replaced some of the meat with vegetables to make the platter more affordable. Observing that customers often took their platters with them, Mr. Le began stuffing the ingredients into the bread. Thus was born the bánh mì.

Other shops in the district made their own innovations, and eventually other versions emerged, including the popular bánh mì made with lemongrass-marinated grilled pork. Thus the sandwich, born out of French colonialism, has become a quintessentially Vietnamese staple and one of the country's most famous food exports.