A full loaf of Mr. Ly's bread includes 5 types of ham, cucumber, chili, onion, soy sauce - Photo: HO LAM
Customers who come to Mr. Ly's bread tray are usually office workers, students, and pupils who need a filling breakfast.
But some people stop by just to buy the ham, the ingredient that makes the banh mi here special.
Sidewalk bread tray sells 500 loaves every morning, sells out early and leaves early
Before 6am on a weekend morning, many Saigon residents were already on the sidewalk of Hai Ba Trung Street, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, waiting to buy Mr. Ly's bread.
At around 6:15 a.m., Mr. Nguyen Hoang Quoc Thien, owner of Mr. Ly's sandwich shop, prepared a bamboo tray, covered it with banana leaves, and arranged various types of sausages to start selling.
A middle-aged female guest exclaimed: "It's a bit crowded, the wait will be long!".
The owner worked quickly and "reassures" the customer: "Slowly, wait a moment, beautiful lady."
Mr. Thien makes bread quickly to sell to customers.
Mr. Ly's bread tray is probably familiar to those who have lived in Saigon for many years. Because the shop has existed for more than 70 years in Saigon with many ups and downs of the times.
Mr. Ly is originally from the North. He used to sell bread in alley 191 Hai Ba Trung for nearly 60 years. Mr. Thien is the third generation to continue the bread selling business.
He said: "Mr. Ly is my grandfather. Then my uncle sold it. He sold it for a few years and then stopped.
Later, it was my turn to sell. I have been selling here for almost 20 years."
Explaining why he chose to follow his family's traditional profession instead of choosing another job, Mr. Thien said that bread is a very easy dish to sell, close to Vietnamese people, so people support him a lot. Because he loves it, he has been selling it until now.
Mr. Thien Long, a regular customer of Mr. Ly's bread, confided to Tuoi Tre Online : "I work as a security guard, I often come here to buy food for breakfast before going to work, but I have to leave early, if I leave late, there will be no food left. I am a regular customer of that shop! I have eaten here for decades so I am very familiar with him."
According to Mr. Long, Mr. Ly's bread stuffing has many types of sausages, but each type has its own distinct flavor. If you enjoy it slowly and eat it for many years, you will feel it clearly.
The patties are prepared early in the morning, still hot and fragrant.
The bread has no pate and butter, but why is it rolled like that?
Currently, the filling of Mr. Ly's bread includes 5 types of sausages: dill beef sausage, cinnamon sausage, fried sausage, silk sausage, and pork skin.
According to many diners, what makes Mr. Ly's bread different from other types of bread is the ham. The bread also does not have pate, butter, or pickles, but only onions, cucumbers, and chili.
Explaining this, Mr. Thien said that this is a Northern bread. He still retains the family recipe from the Ly Dynasty. Many people in Saigon are probably familiar with this flavor.
He said: "I don't add pate and butter partly so people don't get bored because my bread already has a lot of sausage. I also add onions to eat with beef sausage and cinnamon sausage to make it more fragrant."
All the ingredients are handmade by his family, starting preparation at 2am.
As for the bread, I get it from a familiar bakery and it's delivered every half hour to ensure it's still hot, crispy, and ready to sell.
Mr. Thien said that in about 3 hours in the morning, Mr. Ly's bakery sold more than 500 loaves of bread, along with about 40 - 50kg of ham.
The price of each loaf of bread is 25,000 - 30,000 VND.
Bread buyers line up from 6am
Banh mi Cu Ly has just been recognized as one of the famous and long-standing bread brands in Saigon.
The signboard of Mr. Ly's sandwich shop is simply hung on a motorbike. That is also the motorbike that Mr. Thien uses to transport ham and sausage to sell every day.
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