Ba Le at Footscray, Melbourne

I got back from a quick trip to Melbourne in late August and promptly flew off for a 2-week long work trip after that, and I've been so dying to write this post ever since. Sometimes, when I eat a wonderfully memorable meal, I'm thinking as I chew on how to do the blog post - Ba Le was exactly like that. It was SO good that I drove back 2 days after my first time, for a final taste before flying back to Singapore.

Ba Le is a small Vietnamese sandwich shop located about 100m away from Footscray Market near Flemington. If not for the Chinese words, I would never have guessed that Ba Le actually means Paris : )

When we walked in, there were amazing sights of all the food in the display that greeted us. They're a banh mi shop, meaning they do the baguettes filled with meat.

My friend had other ideas - she steered me to what looked like ham, sausages, cured meat and fishcake.

There was a lot of incredible looking stuff on display

This was what we ordered: fish cakes, pork with sticky rice cakes, and the large flat cake in the middle with cinnamon (verbatim). From the internet, I learnt that these preserved meat rolls that look like sausages are called cha lua, or silk sausages.

And we also picked up one kilogram of the rice noodles - these were similar to cheong fun.

The shop owner slicing off a wedge of the flat stuff with cinnamon for us

All the stuff that we couldn't buy

After that, we headed to the Little Saigon Market round the corner to pick up mint, holy basil, and lettuce, before heading home. Here's the entire spread:

All the pork/fish cakes all sliced up, about 5mm thick. The stuff on the bottom right is the pork cake with sticky rice - the grains clearly visible.

My friend made the dipping sauce by mixing fish sauce with sugar and water, with minced garlic and chillies added. Tasted just like the Mekong spring roll sauce! Ba Le sells this sauce too, but my friend's was better.

We couldn't find the correct lettuce, and had to settle for iceberg instead. The lettuce is supposed to be the variety with the curly leaf edges that is used for popiah.

Sitting out on the balcony for breakfast in 12 deg C weather!

So she used scissors to cut the rice noodles into 5-cm wide pieces.

First the greens go into the bowl

This is what the rice noodles look like up close. They were amazingly soft and supple. Better than any kuey teow, kuey chap, or cheong fun that I've ever eaten. The stuff that dreams are made of.

Stage 2 of assembly

Throwing on the lettuce and meat slices

And finally adding the sweet/salty sauce before devouring the first of many bowls. It was perhaps the most memorable meal of my Melbourne trip.

PK, I love and hate you forever for creating this life-long desire for Ba Le. I'm even craving it as I'm typing this post out now.

Ba Le

Shop 3, 28A Leeds Street

Footscray, VIC 3011

Tel: +61-3-9687 2985