Hello, I’m Tam, you might be thinking, where does that name come from? I’ll save you the trouble and just tell you. Tam is a very common Vietnamese name like “An” or “Jan”  in Belgium.

I was born in Belgium and raised in a Vietnamese family. After the Vietnamese war both my parents went looking for a better future, and ended up in Belgium late 1970s. Together with my 2 brothers and 2 sisters we’re quite a noisy gang.

5 years ago me and my wife, Karen, started with a passion project: Banh Mi.

Banh Mi was born out of a feeling that stayed with me when I was still at school. Just like the Belgian children, my lunch usually consisted of sandwiches. 

My sandwiches were often nicely filled with butter, cheese and ham, nicely wrapped in an aluminium foil. When the lunch bell rang, I was always one of the first in the lunch canteen because I was already starving and couldn’t wait to have lunch. There were, of course, days when I was tired of eating those freaking sandwiches.

Very occasionally it was different, on that day I would open my backpack and find a different aluminium package. The lunch package had a different shape and form as usual.