Why is bánh mì so cheap and why are we still arguing about the price?
In episode five of Bad Taste, Thi Le, chef and co-owner of Anchovy and Ca Com Bánh Mì talks about costs, perception of value, self-worth and how it’s all linked to a humble sandwich.
Thi is an award-winning chef who’s made a name for herself by cooking Vietnamese food informed by her Australian upbringing. During lockdown, she started selling bánh mi out of her restaurant window to get by.
Young kids come in and they’re like, ‘This isn’t Viet cos it’s not what my mum cooks.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I know that cos I’m not your mum'. Thi Le
Hosted by food writer Jess Ho, Bad Taste is a six-part podcast series that looks at who we are through the foods we eat.
Follow Bad Taste in the SBS Radio app, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Each episode of Bad Taste is paired with a recipe on SBS Food. Try our recipe for do chua - carrot and daikon pickle
Host and producer: Jess Ho
Executive producer: Michelle Macklem
Series producer: Bethany Atkinson-Quinton
Producer: Beź Zewdie
Sound designer: Nicole Pingon
Editor: Zoe Tennant
Theme music: Rainbow Chan
Art: Joanna Hu
Want to get in touch? Email us at badtaste@sbs.com.au
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Transcript
Jess Ho: I acknowledge this episode was created on the lens of the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung people of the Kulin nation. I acknowledge the ongoing effects of colonisation and how it impacts the soil, the production of food, and in turn the foods we eat today. I pay my respects to the elders past and present. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
Ho: Back when I was at uni, I lived in a typical sharehouse.
(groovy drum and bass)
Ho: There were five of us, all in our early 20s,in a shopfront we pretended was a house with one bathroom. We threw a lot of parties and we accumulated a lot of crap. The more parties we threw, the more crap we collected. So, we needed to have a garage sale. In our carport, we lined up all the miscellaneous items: party props, racks of clothes, records, piles and piles of books. We sat out the front of our carport on the street on stolen milk crates, drinking beers and chatting to our friends who showed up to keep us company. Five hours in, we’d sold barely anything and had just enough money to buy a slab of Coopers Pale.
(beat drops)
Then, a car pulled up to the curb. It was my housemate’s parents.
(sound of car pulling up)
Her mum rolled down the window, said something in Vietnamese and my housemate told us that she’d brought us lunch.
(car boot opening)
Her dad opened the boot, pulled out a trestle table and flicked it open.
(music shifts, more gentle, sound of discovery)
They both started pulling out plastic bags and containers from the back seat. They were filled with sliced meats, pickles, washed herbs and bread rolls. Her mum even brought her own cutlery and knives cos she didn’t trust that ours would be clean or sharp. There were dozens of ingredients- sauce bottles, homemade mayonnaise and cut chillies. While she was shaming my housemate for having so much rubbish, her mum gracefully sliced open a bread roll—
(sound of roll being sliced)
Swiped it with an array of condiments, stuffed it with meats, herbs, splashed on Maggi sauce and finished it with salt and pepper.
(sound of salt and pepper shaker)
She walked over to each of us and told us to eat.Crumbs fell all over my t-shirt.
(sound of bread crunch)
The bread was crisp and chewy, and the fillings were fatty and savoury, punctuated with heat, piquancy and sweetness. It was a textural wonderland.
(synth shimmer)
I remember saying “What is this called? I love it!” My housemate was like, “It’s bánh mi!” I thanked her mum profusely and made it my mission to find all the shops that made it near our house. I was a broke student, but I was prepared to pay whatever it cost. It was the best sandwich I’d ever had.
(music ends)
I saved up my coins and went to a shop on Victoria Street. They only charged me $5. How the hell was it only $5? They baked the bread, the ingredients were all fresh, and the roll was jam-packed. I couldn’t even make it for that price.
(theme song: ‘Ylang Ylang’ by Rainbow Chan - inquisitive bassline begins)
Ho: I'm Jess Ho and this is Bad Taste, a podcast about who we are through the foods we eat.
I purchased that $5 bánh mi 15 years ago. I still go to that same shop on Victoria Street for bánh mis. The street has changed. The faces behind the counter belong to the next generation. But the prices have barely budged. So, I wonder, how can bánh mi still be so cheap?
(music fades out)
Ho: It’s the Friday before the Easter long weekend. Thi Le and her team at Ca Com Bánh Mi are cleaning down for the day and she invites me in for a chat.
(sound of air street outside a shop)
Le: Hey, how are you?
Ho: Not as good as Cheddar Cheese.
Ho: Thi is an award-winning chef who’s made a name for herself by cooking Vietnamese food— informed by her Australian upbringing - at her restaurant Anchovy. She owns it with her partner, Jia-Yen Lee. Oh and Cheddar Cheese isn’t an ingredient in a Ca Com bánh mi, it’s their dog.
(dog bark)
Ho: During lockdown, they started selling bánh mi out of the restaurant window to get by, and are now doing it permanently next door.
Le: Ca Com which we opened during the pandemic is a Bánh Mi shop
Ho: I met Thi when we were both up for “best new” awards one year at the Gourmet Traveller awards. We were sat next to each other. She won her category and I lost mine. This was a few years ago now, but I’ve been a regular at Anchovy since. I’ve also been lining up for her bánh mis since she started slinging them.
Ho: I have to admit, it was the first time in my life that I enjoyed lining up for food. I got to chat to strangers. And while I was chatting to strangers I learned that there is a miscommunication about what Australians think bánh mi is, and what bánh mi actually is.
Le: So bánh mi in Vietnamese just means bread. The French coming into Vietnam. a lot of it chefs were forced to cook French food for the French. and so they brought in bread, cheese and hams, all the cold cuts So it wasn't, until the French left Vietnam, that the Vietnamese actually started doing their own thing to to the beget, you know, and we started putting the herbs in and started putting Maggi seasoning and or all these chilies and pickles and stuff. And it's, I think it's just the bánh mi you get today, it's just a evolution. Something that was brought into the country and been embraced.
Ho: Anchovy and Ca Com are on Bridge Road, in Richmond. And there are two sides to Richmond. One side is packed with Vietnamese restaurants, bakeries and cookware shops. The other side, where Anchovy and Ca Com are, is full of new apartment blocks, there's a pilates studio for every building, everyone's got a designer dog and a wide, all-terrain pram for their newborn. It's also known as the poor man's South Yarra.
Le: We wanted somewhere, a little bit of foot traffic, a good community, and somewhere that kind of fit our price bracket and with a bit of room to grow. And that's how we ended up here on bridge road.
Ho: And just like those two sides to Richmond, Thi’s customers are quite diverse too.
Le: it's a bit of a mixed crowd at the moment. you got your, you know, your Vietnamese people that come in young Vietnamese, and totally into it. And bit of a mix, I think, probably thirties to fifties. We ended up getting a lot of, uh, the baby boomers in, And when people saw bánh mi, they expected to see single digit prices.
Honestly, when I first decided to do bánh mi, i thought it'll be easy. I think originally when we first started it was I think, $11, and our bánh mi prices now start at 14 to I think, 17 that was. Every so often it we're doing something fun. It might be 20 bucks. We make the pate, the pickles, the Mayo picking all the herbs I think for us, cause we use a mixture of like, uh, just butter, lettuce, coriander, and SciShow so we're picking all that down, chopping it through, we do a red copays, you know, a chili oil, and then we were breaking down whole pigs.
(upbeat bassline)
Ho: Yep, whole pigs. That’s a hell of a lot of work. Thi fills her bánh mis with a jungle curry pork sausage, turmeric marinated chicken, cooked over coals, tomato-braised sardines, Manchurian spiced pumpkin… you get the idea. She wanted her customers to be able to see why her bánh mi commanded a higher price. But even with all this work, she was still underpricing her product.
Le: And then it wasn't until I had a friend who was white Australian and she started helping us out in the bánh mi shop. And she was like, “What are you doing?” And I was like “What do you mean?” So the next day she came in and she grabbed menus from a whole bunch of sandwich, places around Melbourne. And she was like, look, you know, it ranges from $15 to $22 and she's broke down all these venues, and she's like, look, they make zero. All their salamis, they buy it. I was like, oh, okay. They use the same produce as you. And I was like “aw yeah”. These guys, they just buy Kewpie Mayo, you know, I was like, “oh yeah.” And I think you even came and said, “This is too cheap.” And then we moved from $11 to $12 to $13.
(music ends)
Ho: I have never understood why bánh mis are so cheap. Sure, they’re a fast-casual item you can find in Viet cafes and bakeries, but if you've ever bought all the ingredients to make your own, you'd understand how buying bánh mi at a Vietnamese bakery feels like a steal. But Thi's bánh mis are even more involved because she makes everything from scratch. I ask her to tell me all the steps involved in making one of her top selling bánh mis: the jungle curry pork sausage.
(maraca-driven beat)
Le: So whole animals come in, on a Thursday. (fade out)
Ho: This whole pig has to be broken down, ground, mixed with curry paste that is made in-house before it’s even turned into sausages.
Le: Then we hang it over night. (fade out)
We would smoke it for at least like 20 minutes before we start grilling. That's just the sausage process alone.
Ho: And don’t forget the other components of bánh mi. This isn’t a sausage sizzle. You’ve got other elements to think about too.
Le: So this is fresh ingredients. We then make a cold vinegar, pickle liquor, and then we pickle it in a vat at least for two days in advance. Then we blend it all up and that gives us our paste. And then it's the herb mix.
Ho: Have you ever washed herbs in bulk before? Not fun.
Le: So the bread itself, we re-toastiit over the wood grill. So it gets that nice char.
Ho: The only area where Thi cuts herself some slack is the bread. She buys it in from Phuoc Thánh. This bánh mi, which takes 48 hours to make, with a house made sausage, a red curry mayo, pickled carrots, herbs mix, chilli oil and cucumber is only $14.
(jaunty horns fade out)
Le: So it's pretty labour-intensive
(steady beat)
Ho: There are so many skills that are required to make that one specific bánh mi. From butchery, pickling, emulsifying, pounding curry pastes, smoking, and let's not forget… lighting a controlled fire that you can cook multiple items over. It is not an assembly line sandwich. We're not in Subway anymore, Toto. But it's not just skill and raw ingredients that you're paying for. There are so many other costs associated with running a restaurant. There’s rent, GST, outgoings like gas and electricity, wages, staff super, insurance, payroll tax, liquor licensing, APRA to play music, POS systems, banking fees, merchant fees and packaging. The list goes on.
(beat fades out)
Ho: So, how is it that Vietnamese bakeries are able to sell bánh mi for less than $10?
Le: I think number one will be labour. I think you find like, even Phuoc Thánh, you know, her dad is like, he's the main baker. He worked seven days a week and I'm pretty sure he's in there from midnight all the way through.
Ho: And Phouc Thánh isn't the only bakery in this position. These families get away with keeping the prices low because they don’t pay themselves properly. They just live on what’s left after paying overheads and cost of goods. And the rest of the family is roped into the business as well. In the words of one baker I spoke to, “I’m committing wage theft on myself and my own family.”
Le: And the other thing is produce. It's a natural economy where it's like, you're trying to have this product out X price, your selling something for $6, right, just say hypothetically, $6. Are you really going to pay $28 for pork belly? You know what I mean? And then if you're willing to pay for something, you end up calling the supplier, you push the price down. So you're pushing the other person's business is down, so no one grows together
Ho: Ah, a race to the bottom.
Le: Even now, when I go shopping with mum comes down here, she's like, just tell them for cheaper price. And I'm like, oh my God, mom, like, they're struggling as much as I am. If I can help them, you know, just buy at that price. You know, it's a win-win situation for everyone. It's it's okay. You know, it's 20 cents more, or it's $2 more, whatever it is. And it's even still, I think it's crazy right now, coriander in an Asian grocery store, it's like a dollar. Coriander in Woolies is $2.15, that little plastic packet. It's time we value ourselves.
Ho: The idea of value is difficult to navigate. As a child of immigrants, I not only see people outside of our culture expecting our food to be cheap, but I see that from my own family as well. I wonder why they place such little value on their own cuisine.
Le: I don't know if they devalue it on purpose and… this is what I'm always trying to figure out.
You've gone in, you've opened the business and you're a dollar cheaper from old man next door. You're not making money. So you're like, what can we do to, you know, reduce costs? I know, let's ring the suppliers and be like, we need the chickens cheaper. We need this. And then it just cheapens the dish. I'm trying to elevate Vietnamese cuisine on the same par level as other cuisine, you know, We also take our food seriously. we also like to eat and drink well and, you know, it doesn't have to be cheap and dirty, you know. And it's a mixed perception, even, you know, there's young kids that come in like, “Oh, you know, this is this isn't it. Cause it's not what my mom cooks.” And I was like, “Yeah, I know that. Cause I'm not your mom.” And it's just like, they can't see beyond what you're trying to do, you know, just trying to move this whole culture forward little bit more.
(synth jam)
Ho: I find Thi's use of the word "elevate" interesting. Cos I don't think she’s elevating Vietnamese cuisine the way that food media uses the word elevate. It's a loaded term.
Usually, it means the dish has been manipulated in a way that is more approachable for a white person. When Thi says she is elevating Vietnamese food, she's setting a standard for the way it should be valued and appreciated. It should be as respected as any other cuisine. By charging what the cuisine is worth, she is humanising the people behind it.
Le: People walk in the shop and be like, “Yeah, can I have a bánh mi?” Well, which one do you want? They go through the whole process and then time pay, they look up the thing and they’re like “$17, no.” And walk out. And I had another gentleman who said “It must be really hard for you. Your price? Either people love it or they hate you.” And I was like, “Yeah, that's kind of a gist.” And he said, “One day the Viets will appreciate what you're doing. Right now, they might not appreciate it, the younger generation might not see it, but what you're doing is pushing it forward.”
Ho: And it's not just the locals that Thi's received pushback from. She's even copped it from her mum.
Le: Her reaction in Vietnamese was ôi trời ơi, which means, “Oh my God. Oh my God.” You know? And then she's like, “What are you doing?” Like, it's expensive, and even my oldest sister, when she heard prices, she was horrified. so when mom came down here, She sees the invoice. She sees the piggy, she sees the difference. She's like, “Oh wow.” And the thing is, she tastes the difference.
Ho: I can't speak for every immigrant and all immigrant experiences, but I can see from my family, that they had a belief that our food had to be cheap, because it was a service for our community. And then they felt a pressure to keep it cheap when white Australians caught onto it. Cheap food became like this passport to being accepted by white Australians. But if immigrant foods are so palatable, maybe the immigrants who make the food should be too.
Le: But now, you know, we're educated. We're trying to embrace our own culture where we're learning about ourselves. It's like, okay, mom, thank you. You introduced people to the food, and now time for our generation to be like, all right, we're going to appreciate it and embrace it and move beyond that entry level, you know, cheap and cheerful.
Ho: And I don't think this is exclusive to Asian communities because I've seen this happen in so many ethnic ones. It's always the older generation and the youngest ones who are stuck in their ways.
Le: I had this older gentleman come in, with his daughter and, he would probably be put my mom's age and the daughter's probably maybe a bit older than myself. They're looking around in my head, I was like, please don't talk about the price because, you know, just cause I find it really hard to try to justify.
So they got, they got bánh mis and they sat at the back and I went out the back end. I cleared the table and I said, oh, are you Vietnamese? And he's like, “Yeah, I’m actually Vietnamese.” And I said, you know, “What do you think?” And he goes, “Interesting.” I was like “Interesting in a good way or interesting in the bad way?” And his daughter said to me, “We've read, stuff about this one was shocked, but we were very skeptical, but we're just curious to see why everyone was talking about this.” And I was like, “Well, did, did it answer your question?” And then they said, “I think so.” She's like, “We've never had a bánh mi like this before.” And then dad said “It's so familiar, but so different in a good way.” He said, “The thing I love about all this is soul is still there. You're not my daughter, but I'm so proud of what you're doing for Viet food.”
Ho: Oooh!
Le: I was like, wow. I think we're onto something.
(percussive groove)
Ho: The tricky thing about change is that someone always has to instigate it. Whether its about new flavours, concepts or price. For every person that gets it, there are ten people telling you, ‘you're crazy.’ There will always be push back. Immigrants and the generations after them deserve to ask for what they’re worth. And people outside these cultures need to ask themselves why they're willing to pay more for one cuisine over another. Why are they more willing to pay $30 for a plate of pasta but not a bowl of noodles? Why don’t they see an issue with a $17 pastrami sandwich, but do with a bánh mi? This is how internalised racism affects what we value.
(music ends)
(a bright dinner bell rings and reverberates)
Ho: Hang out after the credits for a recipe for carrot and daikon pickle- the one you find in bánh mi.
(theme song: ‘Ylang Ylang’ by Rainbow Chan— inquisitive bassline begins)
Bez Zewdie: Bad Taste is an SBS podcast. Jess Ho is our host and producer. Michelle Macklem is our executive producer. Our Series Producer is Beth Atkinson-Quinton. Our sound designer is Nicole Pingon. Our editor is Zoe Tenannt. And I’m Bez Zewdie, our producer.
A big thank you to our well bread team at SBS: Rachel Sibley, Caroline Gates, Joel Supple and mix engineer Max Gosford. Our theme music is Ylang Ylang by Rainbow Chan. Our stunning podcast art is by Joanna Hu.
Thanks to Bánh Mi extraordinaires Thi Le, Jia-Yen Lee and the crew from Anchovy and Ca Com, and Loc Le from Phuoc Hung. We’re back next week with more delicious and disgusting flavours, so make sure you follow Bad Taste in your favourite podcast app so you get every episode delivered straight to your device.
(theme music ends)
(chimes)
(upbeat and fun jazz-inspired song)
Ho: This is a recipe for carrot and daikon pickle. You'll need 250 grams each of julienned carrot and daikon, 1 and a half tablespoons of salt, 1/2 cup of water, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of white vinegar. Salt the carrot and daikon and leave to sit for 30 minutes. Rinse off the salt and squeeze out the excess moisture. Pack the carrot and daikon into sterilised glass jars. In a pot, boil the water and add the sugar, stirring to dissolve.
Turn off the heat and add the vinegar. Pour this pickling solution into the carrot and daikon-filled jars so they're fully covered. Screw the lids on and leave for 48 hours. Check to see if they're done by tasting the pickle. If it needs longer, screw the lid on and leave at room temp. Once they're done, transfer to the fridge. Enjoy these pickles in bánh mi, with bún, broken rice and more.
(jazzy outro to song with horn and drum flourishes)
