Back Lane Banh Mi in Kota Damansara

 By Lee Yu Kit, 

Sept 21, 2021

Update: This banh mi outlet closed sometime in 2022. There were plans to revive it but it remains closed as of July 2023.

One of Vietnam’s popular street food dishes is banh mi, sandwiches made with Vietnamese baguette and a variety of fillings.  Quintessentially Vietnamese, banh mi is true fusion food born of France’s long occupation of Vietnam. French baguette is longer with a stronger texture than the smaller, airer Vietnamese version, for example.

Now from a backlane in Kota Damansara, there’s authentic Vietnamese banh mi, served from a literal hole-in-the-wall. The shop is painted a mustard yellow with green highlights, calling to mind a field of sunflowers, with the words “Banh Mi” painted on the wall.

The effervescent Ms Hang, a native of Hue, Vietnam, is a one-person do-it-all, from taking orders to cooking to serving. She makes almost everything from scratch, including the bread, which is baked in an oven squeezed into the niche-like kitchen-bakery behind the serving window. Only the fish filling is imported from Vietnam, with the chicken, charsiew, pork and pate, a combination of pork and chicken liver, made in-house by Ms Hang. 

The menu, pasted on the wall, has six types of banh mi ranging from RM8.80 to RM14.80. Optional add-on, pate adds Rm1 to the bill, while hot or cold drip coffee with condensed milk, costs an additional Rm2 with each banh mi. There are a few other items besides, such as spring rolls and meat loaf, and off-menu specials such as specialty noodles that the tireless Ms Hang whips up on weekends.

The banh mi is served street-food style, wrapped in brown paper inside a brown paper bag, coffee is served in domed plastic cups with clingfilm to prevent spillage during transport.

Besides the chosen meat filling, each banh mi contains pickled daikon, carrot, cucumber, and coriander. Pounded chili, which comes with a hefty kick, and a brown sauce, are packed separately.

The banh mi is best eaten fresh, when the bread is warm and fresh, ingredients freshly prepared, the brown sauce and chili added just before eating to prevent sogginess setting in.  It’s quite a kick of nostalgic familiarity, if you’ve eaten freshly made banh mi off a street vendor in Vietnam.

The flavour and texture are complex and fresh, bread crispy outside, fragrantly soft within, the filling being meaty and crunchy, the sauces adding a dimension of lushness. The pate, if added, provides a luxurious, smooth mouth feel, a sense of satisfaction.

A worthwhile add-on, the Vietnamese drip coffee is rich, thick and sweetly addictive, the icing on a simple, yet ridiculously sumptuous meal.  

All orders must be placed beforehand by calling in or Whatsapp, as Ms Hang can’t entertain walk-ins. The eatery only serves takeaways, and it’s best to use GPS to find the eatery as it’s not obvious the first time around.

The eatery is open from 8am to 8pm daily, seven days a week. It’s just a few months old, yet from this obscure backlane in the Kota Damansara shophouse complex, come the sweet, authentic flavours of Vietnamese banh mi.

Go Vietnam,

38-1B, Jalan PJU 5/10 Dataran Sunway, Kota Damansara, 47810 Petaling Jaya, Selangor

Whatsapp or call: 019-661 9132

Business Hours: 8am-8pm daily.