Tung Hing Bakery

Tung Hing Bakery
1196 Kingsway
Vancouver, BC

Following my visit last week to Ba Le, fellow bloggers Sherman and Gatronomydomine mentioned Tung Hing Bakery, which was also mentioned in the articles in the Westender. This is not the first time I act on suggestions from readers so, here you go, my post of Tung Hing Bakery!

The day I went to Tung Hing Bakery, I was driving west bound in Kingsway. What that has to do? Well, driving west bound meant I was on the north side of the street; however, the store was on the south side. No problem, just park and cross the street, right? It seems I forgot that small detail that Sherman wrote about the crossing: it is a long stretch without an intersection and Tung Hing is almost in the middle of that long stretch. Similar to Sherman, I was tempted to play chicken – or at least a human version of Frogger but, no, despite I will go to certain extremes when it comes to food, this won’t be one of those. But, come to think about it, I haven’t played Frogger in ages either… ^_^;;; Fortunately, it was a Sunday and, as a result, traffic was somewhat light compared to a weekday.

Sorry, these two pictures were not taken with my trusty D40…

Despite it was a Sunday, there were several customers queueing up. And, in the meantime, I checked their other offerings. I will have to say I was quite tempted to order some of their pastries, specially their version of moon-cakes, since we are near Mid-Autumn Festival. While Chinese is known to celebrate this, Vietnam has their own version as well. When they were preparing their next order, I called me and asked what I wanted for mine. One thing really caught my attention: none of their banh mi offerings are over $3.25! Yup, you could order 3 and it would still be under $10! Also, if you order 10 at once, you get one free! While I was hungry, I wasn’t sure how hungry I was so I decided to order two. Worst case scenario, I would eat one and check if I would still be hungry enough for the second one… Anyway, after I made my order, I was surprised at the agility preparing the sandwich. Unlike a sub prepared at, say, Subway, there was a graceful movement grabbing each ingredient and putting it in the baguette. In fact, it was done at such speed that I was still mesmerized when they call me to hand over my order!

Since a link to the post on Ba Le was already establish, there is no way I won’t do comparisons between the two. The first noticeable difference would be the baguette itself. Here, it is longer (think of it as a ~20cm/~9″ baguette) and not uniform. OK, let me clarify the last part. Since I bought two banh mi, I would have assumed they are about the same size, right? Nope, one was a bit longer than the other. In fact, one of them was a bit “thinner” than the other. I guess they are no trying to “standardise” their baguettes. No problem with that!

Since Tung Hing is not technically a restaurant but a bakery, there are no tables or seats. As a result, I had to take those back with me and eat afterwards. The first one is the garlic chicken (?). For some odd reason, I thought I ordered the sausage version but my memory might be failing me on this one. The second one is the house special with your usual assortment of (Vietnamese style) cold cuts. In both cases, the bread was crusty, not that fluffy compared to Ba Le. However, it wasn’t that heavy either. In other words, it felt it was substantial. As for the fillings, they had the same assortment of pickled vegetables and cucumber. In both cases, it had a crunch to it and, in the case of the pickled vegetables, it retain a slight hint of sugar and vinegar. As for the meat filling, the chicken was, well, chicken. It did not add much in terms of flavour; instead, it served as a meat-y blank palette to the pickled vegetables. As for the house special, I was again expecting a little bit of the pate but it wasn’t there either. Could it be I got so used to the pate that I am subconsciously thinking it ought to be there? Regardless, it had a different mix of texture and flavours if I compare it to, say, a Subway cold cut sub. Here, it was more savoury yet not extremely salty. Come to think about it, the different mix of textures (crunchy with the bread crust and vegetables, somewhat substantial in the inner bread, some texture from the meat) worked quite well together.

Overall, I must say this is a really good example of cheap good eats. If I was in the area and was hungry for banh mi, I would go here. And, going back to the comparison to Ba Le, I will have to say this one is better, even after “updating” my thoughts on Ba Le regarding the pate.

Tagged under: Pastry • Sandwich • Vancouver • Vietnamese