First Look: Luke’s Banh Mi Sold 1200 Rolls on the First Day at Its New Little Bourke Street Shop

Luke Vu wants to open 15 Luke’s Banh Mi stores by the end of next year. If the turnout for the opening of his third store this past Wednesday is anything to go by, Melbourne wants that too.

At the original Moonee Ponds location (formerly named Luke’s Vietnamese), the team commonly sells 1300 banh mi a day. At the South Melbourne store , which opened in May, Fridays see the team go through around 900 rolls. On its first day, the new CBD store, inside a small Little Bourke Street food court, sold 1200.

Vu is a third-generation baker who grew up kneading dough and delivering rolls by bicycle for his family’s bakery in Vietnam. He moved to Australia at 19 and opened his first banh mi shop – the Moonee Ponds location – in 2019.

His shops are best known for affordable loaded rolls priced between $7 and $13. They’re filled with pickles; proteins such as house-made cold cuts, sate chicken and barbeque pork; and a generous amount of house-made mayo and pâté.

Everything is made in-house. Most prep is done at a central kitchen in Maidstone before items are sent to the shops and finished on-site. Dough is made at the central kitchen but proofed and baked at the individual stores. Pork belly is marinated in the fridge for three days, letting the skin dry out, so the crackling becomes impossibly crisp when roasted.

Eight vegan rolls are given as much attention from the kitchen team as the meat options. The vegan banh mi “started as a promise to one of my customers,” says Vu. “I promised him that whatever I had in meat, I would try to have a vegan version.” Vu says these vegan options account for around 40 per cent of orders.

There’s vegan duck, vegan lemongrass chicken and vegan crackling – something that took him six months to develop. Vu uses soy to re-create pork belly meat, and a combination of tapioca flour, rice flour and coconut is used to mimic the fat. He layers the two and adds a thin slice of bread to create a slab which is then steamed, chilled and flashed-fried to order. “It becomes really crispy, to replicate crackling,” says Vu.

The result was so convincing, Vu says the customer who inspired it asked to see a video of the product being made to prove it wasn’t, in fact, pork crackling.

Vu is also working to expand the shops’ bakery range. He is currently developing cakes, pastries and sweet steamed buns that are more Chinese in style, “but with our twist” – all while pushing ahead on his mission to open 15 stores. He’s currently looking to open a shop on Bay Street in Port Melbourne, followed by locations in Preston, Richmond and South Yarra.

Luke’s Banh Mi CBD
Shop 3/518 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne
0466 662 064

Hours:
Daily 8am–4pm

lukesbanhmi.au
@lukesbanhmi