They all begin with a whole baguette, preferably baked in-house and dressed with an aioli spread infused with pork, garlic and fish sauce.
-Aioli? It’s mayonnaise.
Ingredients are mixed and matched at the whim of the kitchen, but there’s a common denominator to all banh mi — a bright, crunchy vegetable slaw made with daikon radish, shredded carrot and fish sauce (nuoc cham), accompanied by sliced jalapeño pepper and fresh cilantro. While these sandwiches, usually found in bakeries and delis in Vietnamese neighborhoods, are endlessly customizable, they should always be inexpensive — beware the banh mi over $6.
-Nuoc cham is not fish sauce…and I never ate a banh mi containing any kind of fish sauce in it. For $6, I can buy almost 3 sandwiches at Huong Lan
NY Times knows nothing about banh mi.
Link to article: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/the-vietnamese-sandwich-banh-mi-in-america/
