Local Knowledge: Two Years In, Banh Mi Phuong 18 Is Already Competing With Decades-Old Bakeries

Every day, the intersection of Bankstown City Plaza and Chapel Road teems with life. Wheels of granny trolleys loaded with fresh produce hum alongside the murmurs of patrons drinking glasses filled with barley tea or ca phe sua da, all while Vietnamese ballads boom from speakers around the block. You’ll also find queues that have snaked for over three decades at Banh Mi Bay Ngo and Nam Fong Hot Bread, with loyalists to each asserting theirs is the best in town. But less than two years ago, a new queue formed metres away, catapulting another shop into the conversation.

Enter Banh Mi Phuong 18.

As you approach its hot bar, you’ll find a staggering collection of barbequed, roasted and steamed meats, right next to a cold bar with mountains of fresh veggies, condiments and cold-cuts. But there’s an emphasis on serving hot meats here.

“We like to keep the same experience like you have in Vietnam,” owner Khoa Bui tells Broadsheet.

The signature salted pork belly – a bedazzling amber colour – is marinated overnight then steamed and sliced thinly, giving it a tender and rich chashu-like texture. The best-selling roast pork is also marinated overnight, then roasted and chopped into crunchy, pliable pieces.

Now the banh mi. The rolls begin like many others: slathers of chicken liver pate and mayo, then fresh carrots, radish, cucumber, coriander and pickled onion, and your choice of meat. But they end a little differently: a house sauce, with a dash of sweetness, and splashes of a hearty spring onion oil. The roast pork roll is liberally showered with pieces of crackling. Everything but the cha lua cold-cut is made in-house and on-site, though things didn’t start this way.

Run by Bui and his wife Mai Vong, Banh Mi Phuong 18 is named after the district in Saigon where the couple met. Vong commands the menu (along with their other restaurant Mam Mam). The shop was an opportunity for Bui, originally a software engineer, to work closer to home and look after their young child. Before opening, they flew back to Vietnam to dive into the intricacies and nuances of pork rolls, then Bui spent several months learning to cook all the meats from Vong.

Their first day? Chaos.

“People were waiting, like, more than 45 minutes to get bread and they [were] yelling ‘Give me back the money’,” Bui laughs. The were going for a casual shop, where it would just be the two of them. By the end of the first week, they had to hire two people.

Then there’s Phuong 18’s bread. It’s airy, crunchy and and came about through happenstance. There were initially no intentions to bake bread, but their supplier’s quality issues left them no choice. Vong worked on it for four months, then they closed for two days, installing the equipment to bake in-house. During this period, Bui often worked from 2am to 5pm.

It’s this dedication to quality and improvement – and, of course, the out-of-control pork rolls – that has seen the people queue. Now they employ seven people, the shop is occupied around the clock and they sell up to 1000 pork rolls a day on weekends. Meat is prepped until 10pm, and bread starts baking at 2.30am. Bui spends most of his time running the business side of things and stocking meat and produce, since the tiny store has no freezer.

Phuong 18 has never done any marketing and has no social media presence. “We believe [if] we just focus on our food, make it good, then people are going to come.”

Come they have.

Banh Mi Phuong 18
Shop 1/335 Chapel Road, Bankstown

Hours:
Daily 6am–5.30pm