Passing Phan Dinh Phung Bridge ( Binh Duong ) every afternoon, passersby can easily see a line of people lining up around a small bread cart.

That is the 3rd generation bread cart of Ms. Do Ngoc Suong (42 years old), which regular customers call Ba Co Gai Bread .

Despite the harsh early afternoon sun, diners still patiently wait for Mrs. Suong with each delicious loaf of bread.

Perhaps partly because of the flavor of this familiar dish through Mrs. Suong's family's own recipe that makes diners remember it forever.

Three Girls Bread "Roaming" Through 3 Generations

More than 70 years ago, Mr. Sen's bread cart was a familiar part of the daily life of Lai Thieu people (Binh Duong).

Every day, Mr. Sen, Mrs. Suong's grandfather and the one who created the recipe for the current bakery, regularly pushes his cart around the streets and alleys to invite customers from house to house.

After a while, the taste of his bread made people addicted! "Because my grandfather was one of the first sellers in Lai Thieu, many people bought it. Now if you ask the elderly, everyone knows it" - Mrs. Suong said.

Not only that, the shop's flavor also leaves a lasting impression on those who live far away. Mrs. Suong laughed with mixed happiness when remembering an old customer:

"When my neighbors welcomed their cousins ​​from abroad to visit, at first they took each other out to eat and play in many luxurious places.

When it was time to get on the plane to return home, I stopped by to buy two loaves of bread to eat.

As soon as they finished eating, the two of them called him and said: "Why haven't you taken me to eat banh mi in Vietnam?"

That flavor has traveled through many alleys, through each generation. When Mrs. Suong's mother started selling, she was able to rent a permanent location. That is also the address of the shop today.

At first, Mrs. Suong did not intend to follow in her father and mother's footsteps, instead she did her own work. But later, seeing how hard her mother worked, she decided to quit to help her mother.

It was normal for the shop to sell 1,000 loaves of bread every day. She had to hire two more people to help, and on weekends, a family member would help. Customers kept coming back to eat so often that they named the cart the Three Girls' Bread Cart.

The taste of bread is the harmony inside

When asked what was special about the bread her grandfather left behind, Mrs. Suong said that for 70 years the bread at the shop has only been made from one oven. The bakers here carefully knead each loaf of bread by hand.

Thanks to that, the eater can feel the softness and aroma of the outer crust. When chewing the bread, the dough has a certain softness, not too much flour to make the eater feel bored.

Handmade bread is more expensive than regular bread, but many customers like it so Mrs. Suong accommodates them. Perhaps that is why, when waiting to get bread, people in line can see many customers coming in to buy plain bread.

"Here I sell both types of bread, hand-kneaded bread and regular bread. But I also carefully select the regular bread so it is softer and tastier than other bakeries," Ms. Suong said.

In addition, Ba Co Gai bread also has a different flavor compared to normal bread. Mrs. Suong shared that her grandfather was Chinese, so perhaps the seasoning recipe was different from that of Vietnamese people.

"A customer once asked me if the bread had a little soy sauce sprayed on it, how could it be delicious without sauce? Then the people who had eaten it before said that they only knew after eating it, how can you tell if it's good or bad by looking at the way it's made?" - Ms. Suong said with a laugh.

For the meat in the cake, Mrs. Suong will use salt, sugar, and MSG to marinate and boil. Other side dishes such as meatballs, pickles, papaya, etc. will be made by her family.

A full loaf of Mrs. Suong's bread will give the eater a taste of the blend of all the ingredients inside, including the light fat of butter, the sweetness of meat and the saltiness of soy sauce.

And so, that loaf of bread has kept diner after diner coming back for 70 years.

As a long-time customer of the restaurant, Ms. Vy shared that the special bread here is always soft, hot and crispy. She said: "My family has always only eaten here."

After decades with her familiar bread cart, Mrs. Suong confided: "I don't know if my children will want to continue selling it in the future, but I will sell it until I can't sell it anymore."

13 years of bread in the Oxford dictionary

Wherever you go, when the two words 'banh mi' pop up, you know people are talking about Vietnamese bread. It is a dish that foreigners want to enjoy but must say in Vietnamese.