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Pulling up outside Dong Phuong, the Vietnamese restaurant and bakery way, way
down Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans East, the commingling smell of roasting
coffee and baking bread arrests the nose of the hungry visitor like a woman’s
perfume wafting through a cell block.
To be sure, Dong Phuong serves good, strong coffee. But the main ingredient of
the head-turning local aroma comes not from its French press espressos—it
comes from the world’s largest industrial coffee roaster, operated by the
Folgers company nearby. Nonetheless, it makes for an incredibly appetizing prelude
to the baked goods sold within. There are croissants and turnovers, steamed buns
filled with tropical fruit spreads or minced pork, egg and onions, green tapioca
cakes that look like blown glass sculpture and taste like pistachio jellybeans.
But above all there is bread, and where there is bread in a Vietnamese bakery
the singular sandwich known as banh mi cannot be far behind. Diminutive in size
and so inexpensive as to be suspicious, banh mi are Vietnamese sandwiches carrying
not only a lot of flavor but also a heavy dose of history to boot.
The flavor end is taken care of by a variety of Asian meats or seafood garnished
abundantly with fresh vegetables and slicked with spicy sauces. But the fact
that these ingredients are crammed into a hybrid baguette reflects the culinary
impact of roughly 100 years of French rule in Indochina. Meanwhile, the increasing
availability of banh mi across New Orleans neighborhoods is a testament to the
waves of history that brought the people of one former French colony across the
globe to settle in another.
Vietnamese war refugees arriving in south Louisiana in the 1970s found a similar
climate, jobs in the familiar rice and seafood industries and even the underpinnings
of a recognizable French Catholic culture. Today, the restaurants opened by these
refugees and their families have cropped up in all parts of the city and their
cuisine, including banh mi, is becoming more familiar to local palates.
A staple in Vietnam, banh mi have been dubbed here and elsewhere as “Vietnamese
po-boys.” While the appellation makes handy shorthand for menu scanning,
the only connection banh mi have with New Orleans po-boys is that they are both
made with French-style bread. But the bread isn’t even the same, and in
fact the difference between the bread we get at po-boy shops and the bread used
on banh mi is a key to their essence.
The term “banh mi” (pronounced “bon me”) translates basically
to bread made with wheat. That the native term dwells on this distinction speaks
to how unusual it is for wheat flour to turn up as an ingredient in Asian cooking,
where rice flour is much more prevalent. But somewhere along the way, Vietnamese
bakers put the stamp of the jungle climate on their commissioned Gallic recipes
and mixed rice flour with wheat flour to produce a singular, tropical weight
bread. The combination gives the bread an incomparably light body, softer and
moister than po-boy loaves, while the thin-skinned exterior is crackly-crisp.
The result is addicting and provides the first of several contrasts in flavor
and texture that each bite of a well-made banh mi should deliver.
When it comes to pricing, however, the term po-boy is more fitting for banh mi
than most modern renditions of the classic New Orleans sandwich. While po-boys
were originally devised to feed striking streetcar drivers cheaply, it’s
hard today to find a good one around town today that costs less than the minimum
hourly wage. Not so with banh mi. The local prices range from as low as $1.50
to $5, with most between $2 and $3. The sandwiches are modest, with the nearly
universal size of the baguettine, or small baguette, running about eight inches
heel to heel. Still, one sandwich makes a sensible, light lunch and two, at a
grand total of $4 or $6, are more than adequate for a larger appetite.
Dong Phuong makes the best banh mi in New Orleans, serving the well-traveled
little sandwiches within sight of NASA’s massive Michoud rocket assembly
plant in the Venetian Isles neighborhood. Dong Phuong serves a menu of about
a dozen banh mi, either at tables in the full service restaurant or over the
counter in the connected bakery. The standard here, and across the city, starts
with slices of red-tinted, salty Vietnamese ham and a smear of chicken liver
pate. This latter ingredient is applied sparingly, like a condiment, and its
relation to the French charcuterie is another reminder of the banh mi’s
heritage. Topping the meat is the standard banh mi dressing of cool and crunchy
vegetables: shredded carrots and daikon radish, a long wedge of cucumber, a few
sprigs of cilantro and raw jalapeno peppers.
From here, Dong Phuong’s menu moves on to roasted pork, rotisserie chicken
and small, satisfyingly greasy pork meatballs, plus a delicious fish cake and
shrimp cake for banh mi fillings. At $2 and $3 each, it’s fun to order
an assortment to go and figure out your favorites over a leisurely and inexpensive
feast.
Dong Phuong supplies other restaurants and Asian markets with bread for their
own banh mi, including the superlative Tan Dinh. This Gretna restaurant also
serves a wide assortment of fillings. The house-made pate is mild and excellent
when paired with the charbroiled pork or ham. A unique choice here is a pork
meatball sandwich that would seem more at home in Sicily than Saigon. You get
a bowl of large meatballs in a red tomato sauce that tastes like marinara spiked
up with a restrained touch of sweet-and-sour fish sauce. The bread comes on the
side and you assemble your meatball sandwich or simply dip it into the sauce.
The most convenient place for most locals to eat banh mi is at Pho Tau
Bay, thanks
to the local chain’s four locations in Gretna, Fat City, Mid-City and downtown
in the bat-like shadow of Charity Hospital. The offerings vary by location, but
all of them have the house-made pate sausage and a vegetarian version filled
with tofu. The grilled shrimp banh mi here sounds like a winner, but the fresh,
clean-tasting shrimp lack the necessary saltiness that the pork and pate versions
offer in contrast to the crunchy fresh vegetables. A better choice is the sandwich
stuffed with meatballs and ribbons of shredded pork with green onions. The bread
at Pho Tau Bay, made by the Kenner bakery Chez Pierre, is true to form for banh
mi but is harder and drier than the high standard set by Dong Phuong.
Frosty’s Caffe, a suburban pit stop specializing in the many varieties
of the smoothie-style drink called bubble tea, also has a few banh mi options
listed on its short menu of soups and salads. The small restaurant’s location
on Clearly Avenue in the belly of the beast that is Metairie at its most obnoxious
makes it hard to recommend. Frosty’s West Bank location in Harvey is somewhat
better. Still, if you’re in the vicinity, a $2.50 banh mi here beats any “value
REVIEWED THIS MONTH:
Dong Phuong: 14207 Chef Menteur Hwy., 254-0214.
Frosty’s Caffe: 3400 Cleary Ave., Metairie, 888-9600;
2800 Manhattan Ave., Harvey, 888-9600.
Pho Tau Bay: 1134 Westbank Expwy., Gretna, 368-9846; 216 N.
Carrollton, 485-7687; 3116 N. Arnoult Rd., Metairie,780-1063; 1565 Tulane Ave.,
524-4669.
Tan Dinh: 1705 Lafayette St., Gretna, 361-8008.
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