First Look: Bammi Is a Serious New Player in the CBD Banh Mi Scene

New-wave banh mi businesses such as Ca Com, Good Days Hot Bread and Banh Mi Stand are redefining how the city views and values the Vietnamese favourite. Bammi – pronounced like the Aussie slang term for banh mi – joins the fray.

Owner Khoa Nguyen, opened Bammi in Brighton at the end of last year. This month, he followed it up with an outpost on Lonsdale Street in the CBD. Everything that goes into the shop’s banh mi is made in-house. Every morning, 100 short baguettes are baked for the opening crowd, and another 100 rolls are prepared for the lunch rush.

At least 15 ingredients go into each sandwich, and preparation is time-consuming. “People don’t realise that they could eat [something] really quickly, but it takes us a lot of juice,” Nguyen tells Broadsheet. Each roll has pâté, Vietnamese egg yolk mayonnaise and a reworked hoisin sauce that’s been cooked with garlic, palm sugar, plum sauce and caramelised onions. They’re topped with fried shallots and roasted peanuts. For a final touch, Nguyen spritzes a coconut-infused oil onto the bread to bring out the aroma of the sauces and fillings.

Nguyen says he wants to distinguish Bammi from bakeries that charge $10 or sometimes less for banh mi that may be cheaper but not as substantial. “You pay for what you get.” At the Lonsdale Street location, banh mi ranges from $13 for cold-cut meats to $16.50 for a roll with a combination of crispy and barbeque pork. For the crispy pork, the meat is cleaned, rubbed down with spices and dried for two days before it’s cooked in order to achieve maximum crackling crunch.

A hospitality veteran who migrated to Australia from Dalat in 1989, Nguyen previously founded Smith Street restaurant Xeom, which he ran for nearly a decade before he sold it to focus on Bammi. At Bammi, you’ll find traces of this background in a few other Vietnamese dishes, including salad, rice and vermicelli noodle bowls, and small cups of pho. There’re also Vietnamese iced and salted coffees, made with imported Trung Nguyen coffee beans.

The small shop is mostly a takeaway venue, which Nguyen describes as “a McDonald’s of sorts, just a quick in and out”, though there is limited counter seating. Like McDonald’s, Nguyen has grand plans. He hopes to scale the business and bring Bammi all around Victoria. He’s already looking to eastern suburbs like Malvern or Elwood for the next opening.

Bammi CBD
528 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
(03) 9421 1448

Hours:
Mon to Fri 8am–5pm
Sat 9am–5pm

bammivietnam.com.au
@bammivietnam