In early July, videos of a Vietnamese dish called \"banh khot\" racked up millions of views one after another on US TikTok. The spark was a first-taste video posted on July 2 by creator Cami Petyn, which topped 1.4 million views in just two days. While banh miThe previous season, which went viral on TikTok under the #StandBanhMi tag<\/a>Following that, Vietnamese street food has once again grabbed the spotlight overseas. If your next trip takes you into Ho Chi Minh City, it is worth going a little out of your way to try an authentic bite at the source.<\/p>\n It started with a food-crawl video in California. On June 30, popular creators Emma & EJ tried banh khot for the first time at \"Banh Khot Lady,\" a shop in Fountain Valley in Little Saigon; Emma repeated \"so delicious\" again and again, and EJ called it \"flawless.\"<\/p>\n Two days later, Cami Petyn, a creator with hundreds of thousands of followers, posted her own first taste. She praised the texture of the golden fried shell and the way it's eaten with fresh vegetables and fish sauce (nuoc mam), and the video hit 1.4 million views in two days. Since then, searches like \"banh khot mukbang\" and \"trying Vietnamese banh khot\" keep turning up videos with hundreds of thousands to millions of views.<\/p>\n Banh khot (b\u00e1nh kh\u1ecdt) is a small, bite-sized dish made from a batter of rice flour mixed with coconut milk (n\u01b0\u1edbc c\u1ed1t d\u1eeba) and scallions, pan-fried in a special cast-iron mold lined with round dimples. Turmeric gives it a faint golden hue, crisp on the outside and fluffy inside. Each one is topped with a single large sea shrimp; some shops use squid or minced pork instead.<\/p>\n The way it is eaten is elaborate in a distinctly Vietnamese way. You wrap a freshly fried piece in leafy greens and herbs, dip it in a sweet-and-sour nuoc mam sauce, and pop it in your mouth. Each one is small, so lightness comes through before any greasiness, and you can keep eating them alongside vegetables. Its roots lie in banh can from central Vietnam, but the people of Vung Tau added coconut milk for aroma and richness and topped it with big sea prawns, fitting for a coastal town, growing it into a signature dish of their own.<\/p>\n This buzz isn't a one-off whim; it sits on top of an established international reputation. Here's a rundown of the main view counts and awards.<\/p>\nThe 'bite-size fritter' boom sparked by a US TikToker<\/h2>\n
What exactly is banh cot<\/h2>\n
The boom and its international acclaim, by the numbers<\/h2>\n