The Hot Bread Shop — Restaurant in Sydney

This place serves authentic tasty Vietnamese bread roll called banh mi and is exactly what I was after from Sydney Cabramatta.

Others do pub crawls. I like to do food crawls for certain food items that I like such as banh mi, pho noodles, Wonton noodles, Combination broken rice, etc and then compare it to the same dish in other places that I've been to. This place is among the top.

It's a quaint old looking place, but this means it's been there for ages and the owners know what they're doing. A tried and true authentic tasty banh mi that's comparable with some of the best I've had.

I had the cold meats one and the roast pork (heo quay) one, which I think from memory Sydney calls it BBQ Pork.

In Adelaide, where I am from, the banh mi places and other stores describe the following items as - see below:

Cold Meat - Thit Nguoi Roast Pork - Heo Quay BBQ Pork - Char Siu Meatball / Pork Mince - Xiu Mai Grilled meatball - Nem Nuong

So it was super interesting to learn that Sydney stores call it differently in English compared to Adelaide. Luckily, I knew some Vietnamese words to help decipher this.

I love no fuss, no frills places if the food is spot on and this is what you get here....

Shop: Minh Hung aka “The Hot Bread Shop” 9/10-12 Hughes St Cabramatta Bread: 5/5 Filling Amount: 4/5 Price: $6 regular pork banh mi, $2.50 Pate Chaud Pork Pastry Taste: 5/5 Overall: 5/5

Got the old school regular pork roll and it came with three kinds of sliced pork, plenty of pate and mayo (that I could actually see before I dug in!), plus batons of cucumber and daikon, pickled carrot and lots of coriander. No shallot, but they use sliced white onion instead. Veggies were fresh and crunchy, plus bread here was perfect; thin and crisp crust that gave structure without punishing my mouth every time I chomped. Together with the sauce, the rich pate and creamy mayo created an atomic flavour bomb 💣 as they collected and soaked into the bottom of the roll. The technical components were on point and the taste was just outstanding. Even after setting aside the childhood nostalgia, I can confidently say this was one of the best banh mi I’ve had.

PS: The “Pate Chaud” pork pastry was great too, buttery and flakey pastry surrounding a warm and juicy pork filling. It is quite rare to see these at bakeries in other parts of Sydney and definitely another thing I miss about this...

Been coming to this bread shop ever since I can remember. Not sure if they have changed owners, however the pork rolls and chicken rolls are consistently good and still quite cheap compared to the other pork roll shops (that’s considering I remember when they were $1.20 each (10 for $10) once upon a time circa 2000 😅). The pickled carrots and radish perfectly compliment the meat, pate and mayo. Their cheese and bacon rolls are pretty tasty also. The filling is pretty generous so no complaints there.

15/3 - Score updated from 5 to 4. Used to be the OG of banh mi in Cabra, however every single time we come here, no matter how early or late, the bread rolls are always so dry! it really affects the banh mi when the roll is dry and crumbling everywhere. Thought they were just off days, however the past 5 or so times I’ve been here the bread has been super dry no matter if I go at 7am or afternoon.

Fix up your bread recipe and I will update the score back to a 5 (as flavour, price and service is still great). Not sure if you’re using way too much flour or yeast or over baking …… but that...