In Search of the Vegan Banh Mi
In a culture where meat is the cornerstone of many dishes, is it possible to have tasty vegan Vietnamese food?
Hi friends,
A few weeks ago, I was inspired create a list of 10 things I wanted to learn more of in 2024 (thanks to for his post), and of the list, I realized I wanted to learn more about people. I love learning about anyone who’s done something interesting or unique to see what I can learn from them. This is the first in what I hope to be many posts spotlighting interesting people in the food world. I hope you like it.
As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to share with your friends!
Recently I went on a search for veganism.
As someone who generally loves meat1, I was curious to see what being a vegan was all about. On the internet, there are no shortage of articles, videos, and blogs focusing on this dietary choice. But there was a question that lingered in my mind: are there vegans who are also Vietnamese? and if so, how would they make a vegan banh mi?
Banh mi is arguably one of the most well-known foods in Vietnamese cuisine. So familiar is the sandwich now that you can find it practically everywhere2 across America and beyond. Any place that sells Vietnamese food in some capacity, whether it’s a food cart, restaurant or pop-up, will most likely offer this ubiquitous Vietnamese staple. To me, it’s one of the most delicious things ever. Delicious because it’s traditionally filled with varieties of meat, from pate to grilled chicken to BBQ pork to eggs, you simply cannot have a banh mi without an animal protein.
So imagine my surprise when I discover a local chef in my hometown who makes exactly that—Vietnamese vegan food. It all began with a school field trip last Thursday.
Turns out, volunteering to chaperone your daughter’s school field trip can bring about some interesting conversations and help you fulfill your goal of talking to more strangers. That I just happened to find Thuy Pham of Mama Dut Foods the week before I met her was of no coincidence. I’d like to think that the stars aligned to bring us together.
During our conversation, I asked her more questions than I would have normally asked someone I’d just met. (Again, trying to talk to more strangers means asking more questions of such strangers). After returning home, I went straight to Instagram and began to learn more of her story.
Pham stands barely five feet tall, perhaps no more than 110 pounds. But what she lacks in size and height she more than makes up for in her signature blue hair, round funky glasses and a smattering of tattoos, evident in a lot of her photos and videos, like this one.
Even if you’re not vegan, you may be tempted after seeing this photo. Two halves of a perfectly proportioned sandwich sits on a silver platter, its background highlighting what appears to be hoa mai, a yellow flower known in Vietnamese culture to represent good luck and fortune.
According to a profile on the Today Show, cooking was Pham’s hobby and was “motivated by the need to veganize her favorite Vietnamese dishes.” Her story has similar tones to the many foodies who quickly found fame through TikTok, YouTube and Instagram during the pandemic. Pham credits her daughter (who’s in the same class as my daughter!) for convincing her to do an Instagram Live video showing her vegan pork belly, a recipe that she’d perfected during the early days of the pandemic, when she lost her job as a hairstylist and suddenly had more time to cook. “Had Kinsley not suggested the Live, I don’t know if Mama Đút would exist,” she says. The video was a success so she quickly launched a business in April 2020. By November 2020, she had a restaurant. And just last month she had a cookbook deal, less than two months after she announced the closing of that restaurant.
“When your body and your soul are conditioned to respond as a fighter and as a survivor, by the time you’re in your 40s that survival is always on. I’m still in survival mode.”—Thuy Pham
It’s hard to believe that Pham’s success came from a vegan pork belly recipe and a single video alone. Not surprisingly, I discovered that prior to posting that original video on Instagram, Pham already had an impressive following of 3,000 which has now grown into more than 49,000 followers. Her personal account boasts almost 10,000. Collectively, she has almost 60,000 followers. Not bad for someone who just started cooking three years ago. Of course, a large following coupled with heritage stories and good photography always wins.
While talking to her on the bus on our way to OMSI in Portland, I asked Pham how long it took to get a book deal. She told me that it took about two weeks or so—from the time that her agent shopped the proposal, which went to auction (a major achievement for a brand new chef and creator) to the time they found a publisher.
Yep, you read that right. Two weeks. I’m no publishing expert, but I don’t think this is normal.
In two weeks, I would be lucky if I can even get two chapters of my book edited.
The more I studied Pham, the more I realized that the secret ingredient to her success isn’t the fact that she makes vegan Vietnamese food. No, at the heart of Pham’s “immigrant-hairstylist-turned-chef” narrative is simply good storytelling with a common universal theme: the need for survival. And survival means feeding your family. Even better: feeding your family while also adhering to your personal values.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from Pham, it’s the fact that vegan banh mi’s are possible. So is vegan pork belly, and anything else so long as you make it without animal products.
But then again, this can’t be the only vegan banh mi option, is there?
So I did a search around the internet and around my hometown, looking for any place or chef that can turn popular Vietnamese dishes into popular vegan Vietnamese dishes and guess what popped up in the search results on Google? You guessed it…Mama Dut.
Is there anything else besides Mama Dut? The closest I found in competitors is Van Hanh Restaurant, located in southeast Portland, where one can find a vegan banh mi filled with—you guessed it, tofu—along with a sprinkling of pickled vegetables such as daikon and carrots.
Further searches yield even less completely vegan Vietnamese options. Yelp’s Top 10 Vegan Vietnamese was a sad compilation of Vietnamese restaurants who happen to serve some vegan options, most of which involves…more tofu.
For now, it seems that vegan Vietnamese food is a small niche pocket of culinary exploration that when coupled with a story about survival and family and several thousand pairs of eyes, can become a hit. In the meantime, I eagerly await for Pham’s cookbook, slated to arrive in 2025.
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Except I don’t really eat red meat.
I assume that in very small towns that do not have a Vietnamese restaurant there probably isn’t any. But I could be wrong.
Great article, very well researched. I Especially like the images of the Vietnamese bánh mì sandwiches.
Love Mama Dut! So sad to see her shop closing but excited for what’s to come. Great read! As someone who’s been vegan 6 years I really love and appreciate your curiosity!