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SOUP’S ON!

THE VIETNAMESE PO-BOY by Rien Fertel

po-boy’s gravitational pull is stronger than most local foods, the bánh mì (literally, “bread made from wheat”) has long been sold and consumed under the moniker “Vietnamese po-boy.” It’s hard to pinpoint when the bánh mì first landed in New Orleans, but it was a restaurant on the city’s West Bank called Pho Tau Bay that first exposed most non- Vietnamese locals. Opened in 1982 by Karl and Tuyet Takacs, Pho Tau Bay is a spinoff of sorts from a popular Saigon pho franchise of the same name. As a young GI stationed in South Vietnam, Karl Takacs obsessed over the pho tai, or noodle soup with rare beef, at the Pho Tau Bay there; legend has it he once ate seven bowls in a single sitting. He soon fell in love with the restaurant owner’s daughter, Tuyet.They married and relocated with her family to Louisiana, where they opened a flea market pho stand, eventually replaced by a brick-and-mortar location in the nearby town of Gretna. Though pho has always centered Pho Tau Bay’s menu, it was the bánh mì that helped the mini Pho Tau Bay empire

expand to six locations before Katrina struck. (The floods closed all but the flag- ship, which was uprooted by a Walmart in early 2015. In May 2016, the Takacs family reopened a storm-shuttered loca- tion in Downtown New Orleans.) A decade or so into the business, Karl, Sr. began advertising in the local alt weekly. A predominately Vietnamese customer base was being replaced by a non-Vietnamese clientele, so he altered the menu to read, “banh mi/Vietnamese style po-boys,” a description still in place today. “As a reference, to someone who never had bánh mì, it’s a Vietnamese po-boy,” Karl Takacs, Jr. explains, before amending that, “It’s nothing like a po-boy.” Though both sandwiches are quick, inexpensive and filling descendants of the French baguette, the breads diverge enough to deserve their own categorization. “The bread is completely different,” he says. “It has density. It’s airy, buttery. It has flavor unlike your typical po-boy from New Orleans.” First published, in longer form, in First We Feast.

THE FIRST WAVE OF VIETNAM- ESE REFUGEES WHO ARRIVED IN LOUISIANA following the fall of Saigon in April 1975 opened restaurants and groceries, especially in the subur- ban enclaves of New Orleans East and the West Bank. These new Vietnamese Louisianians quickly made major inroads in the shrimping and oyster industries. They opened bakeries and bodegas, which sometimes sold pho — and, more often, shrink-wrapped trays of spring rolls — but always, conceding to neighborhood market tradition, po-boys. As in most of America, pho and bun and nuoc mam have become part of the culi- nary vernacular of New Orleans. And then there’s Vietnam’s favorite sand- wich, the bánh mì. Sharing a name with the baguette that serves as its vessel, the New Orleans bánh mì, like bánh mìs from Hoi An to Orange County, Califor- nia, is layered with cold cuts, pâté, grilled beef or chicken; slathered with mayon- naise; dressed with pickled veggies, fresh jalapeño, cucumber and cilantro; and finished with a few umami-bomb dashes of Maggi seasoning sauce. But because the

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