My first bites of bánh cuốn were hardly intentional — they came from a banh mi shop tucked in Houston’s Third Ward. I’d been working at a day care, and also a stadium’s parking company, and most of what I ate came from this tiny Vietnamese spot. It stood between a print shop and a busted bus bench, but the mother and son who ran it always welcomed me, running a full operation with one stove, a coffee press and a toaster oven. For my first week of patronage, I was “Sir.” A month later, I became “Bryan.” Thereafter, it was, lovingly, “Hey, fat guy.” I always ordered the same thing (“an egg banh mi with extra pâté, please!”) with a cà phê sữa đá to da to go.
One day, the owner’s son told me I should try something else. A few visits later, he repeated his suggestion. Several weeks after that he just handed me a bag of boxed bánh cuốn, with separate tins for fish sauce and bean sprouts, alongside an edict: enough.
It was delicious as hell.
Bánh cuốn is a staple originating from northern Vietnam — a thin, fermented rice batter is steamed gently, then filled with seasoned ground pork and minced wood-ear mushrooms. As Jerry Mai notes in Street Food Vietnam, “bánh cuốn is traditionally eaten at breakfast but can also be enjoyed throughout the day.” The dish is served alongside pickled vegetables, sliced cucumbers and bean sprouts; if you’re lucky, you’ll also have a dipping dish of fish sauce with garlic and chiles. But from this base recipe, you’ve got a plethora of variations: barbecued pork could serve as your protein, or dried minced shrimp, or pork roll, or you could opt for crisped tofu if you prefer to go meatless.
Eating streetside bánh cuốn in the morning, in the hubbub of other diners, over a stool and folding table, is basically a miracle. The thickness of your bánh cuốn might vary from restaurant to restaurant, and also your fillings, but you’ll still find yourself won over from iteration to iteration. Maybe one batter’s a touch sweeter. Perhaps the pork is a bit saltier. But years after my old spot closed and the owners moved on (I was tearful that afternoon; they told me to relax), I wouldn’t try the dish again until my boyfriend brought me to breakfast in Bellaire years later. This spot stood just beside a feeder road, and the owners played soap operas from a television above the register — but even if the setting had shifted, the sensation of flavors rattled me accordingly: comforting, simple, precise and layered.
I asked my dude if anyone had ever made a better meal. He smiled, politely, naming several other bánh cuốn places, and also his mother.
Naturally, to make up for lost time, I started ordering bánh cuốn whenever I spotted it. Trying the dish from restaurant to restaurant, over the course of years, opened my mouth up to new iterations of complexity. There’s value in the simplicity of a few things done precisely.
And Houston’s ecosystem of Vietnamese foodways extends widely: You’ll find bánh đa cua , bánh canh cua, bánh xèo, nem nướng cuốn, bún bò Huế, and mì Quảng within the same assemblage of buildings, faded in pastel colors and flanked by the banks and coffee shops and taquerias and insurance stands that so firmly integrate themselves into the city’s DNA. It’s rare to drive too far in the region without passing a noodle bar. It might be rarer to find a glossy, high-top spot whose menu doesn’t at least nod respectfully to Vietnamese palettes. And this culture, alongside its cuisine, is foundational to the city. They inform its flavor pathways accordingly, as much as any rack of ribs or pot of biryani or bowl of menudo after a long night out. But at the same time, if you ask around for the best Vietnamese food in Houston, there’s a good chance you’ll hear about somebody’s mom, or another person’s best friend’s cousin’s aunt.
Like so many Vietnamese dishes, bánh cuốn is layered, luminous and striking, but it’s also pretty forgiving. As you work through the dish, regardless of your result, it’ll still be delicious. So it’s fine if your batter tears the first few times, because you’ll try it again. No worries if you’re still figuring out how to evenly parse your protein. The more you find your own home in the recipe, the better you’ll get at mixing, steaming and folding.
Or, worst case, you could grab a plate to go from the experts. Lately, my bánh cuốn spot in Houston is Thiên Thanh, a restaurant tucked in a strip mall between a cellphone shop and an accounting agency. They’re always busy, but even when they’re not, the chatter of Bellaire’s locals gives way for its own soundtrack. Neighbors catch up. Folks take their time at their tables, and the knowledge that deliciousness can be folded into your day is never a small thing. Whenever I step to the counter, I’ll also grab a side of pork roll — a habit I picked up in L.A. One of the chefs gives me a fist bump every time I walk in. Before I can even speak, he’ll put in my usual order, telling me it’ll only be 10 minutes, asking if I’d like to try anything else.
