Baguette and the Vietnamese Sandwich

So this up above (thanks wikipedia), resembles my first Vietnamese sandwich, found outside of a San Francisco strip mall five years ago. For those who are culinarily challenged, you are looking at warm, marinated, medium rare beef atop a bed of cold crunchy cilantro, cucumber, mint, tomatoes, pickled onions and carrots--smothered in a spicy chili sauce, mayo, and pate (yes....you read that right....pate)--served in a crispy, baguette. My "first" was about 9 inches long and I handily consumed two of these without blinking.

When I started making my wishlist of tourist attractions for us to see in Vietnam--before the haunting limsetone karsts of Halong Bay, before the preserved body of the great Ho Chi Minh, and before the beautiful sandy beaches of Phu Quoc--I wrote "The Vietnamese Sandwich"......

Needless to say, Alicia was appalled. You might've been too, and if so, I would've referred you to the photo above.....That's right. It's beautiful looking! You want one, don't ya?

Unfortunately, this is NOT what I found in Vietnam. In the attempt to find something that came close to what I ate in San Francisco, I tried about 20 sandwiches all over Vietnam and I was saddened to discover, that the Banh Mi didn't live up to my expectations. Every Banh Mi was skimpy on meat, skimpy on vegetables, and never with that fresh, "right out of the oven" Quizno's thing.

Also, I am told that I should NOT, under any circumstance, ask 'What's in the pate?'. My instinct was to delve deeper into this for the sake of YOU, my faithful readership.....but you know what? Twenty sandwiches into this mades me want to forget this little minor detail and just move on. 

 

Here is a shot of some REAL duck pate that we had at a classic charcuterie in Hanoi. This stuff was amazing! A slice of pate, a spread of homemade mayo, and a baguette at midnight? Better than a warm glass of milk, if you ask me. Ahhhh, the French! 

So yes...disappointment. Did I just not find the right places? Was I just 60 years too late? I mean, if i was walking around Saigon in 1950 with a rotund French colonel, and I asked him to take me for a Banh Mi, would we have found something divine?

So, I dug a little. The Banh Mi originated in French colonial Vietnam, and the word Banh Mi comes from the French word pain de mie, which literally means, "bread." Presumably, the sandwich is a fusion of French ingredients (pate, mayo, and baguette) with Vietnamese herbs and marinated meats.
It turns out that the typical French incarnation of this sandwich was typically minimalist, focusing on well-made bread, accented with a small helping of beautiful pate and mayonaise. The San Fran sandwich was of .....(yikes) hoagie proportions. It made me wonder whether what I initially discovered in California was just the typical American super-size-me bastard child of the true French-inspired Banh Mi.

Upon further digging, I was appalled to discover what the western world has done to our pauvre, pauvre Banh Mi. In New Orleans, it's called a "Vietnamese po' boy". In Canada: "The Vietnamese Submarine." in Philadelphia: "The Vietnamese hoagie." These are all undoubdtedly monstrous, hedonistic, gut-busting.......EPIC SLABS OF HEAVEN!

There! The truth comes out. As fun as it has been to put myself out there in a strange country and try new flavors and textures, it is hard to shed all of my hard-wired Western ideas about food. It's shameful, but I think I just wanted more.....you know, like "Where's the beef!"

Nonetheless, there is a happy ending here, as there are a few redeeming qualities in Banh Mi:

1. Banh mi stalls are ubiquitous. There were more than a few times where I found my self weak, hypoglycemic, or just hung over. Standing on a random street corner in a random town in Vietnam, my strength failing me, I would desperately scan the streets for something to grab and shove into my face. No doubt, there was a Banh Mi stall on some corner within spitting distance.

2. The baguettes are consistently good. These are not typical French baguettes, which tend to be denser and chewier. Vietnamese baguettes are lighter and more airy, presumably because the dough is mixed with rice flour. Vietnamese baguettes are almost always still crusty and flaky on the outside. This is astounding, given the holes in the walls in which I have found these stalls, including busy interstates. I hear that many of the sandwich vendors make their own baguettes fresh at home every day.

3. They are cheap! Like 30-50 cents. Hard to argue with that.
 
 
So there you have it. I feel like this entry resembled a 'Lifetime' episode. There was a little conflict, we worked through it together, and now there's a tidy little moral to the story. Things will be a little bit messier when we talk about fish sauce, though.