Life

The closure of Sydney’s best banh mi joint is a prompt to consider the limits of Australia’s consumerist embrace of multiculturalism. By Alexander Kelly.

Banh mi and the realities of multiculturalism in Australia

The shopfront of Alex ‘N’ Rolls in Marrickville, Sydney.

Credit: Facebook

Banh mi competition runs deep in Sydney, perhaps nowhere stronger than in Marrickville, in the city’s inner west. It’s a contest many feel is won comprehensively by a shop operating out of the front of a house on Illawarra Road, a place called Alex ‘N’ Rolls.

The store is famous for its glass-entombed display of glistening meats, a pâté mountain to rival that of the inner-city French gourmands, and bread rolls that caress instead of carve the gums.

The technical prowess and unusually perfect ratio of sauce, protein, salad and pickles is dependable, even if the hours are not. So desired are the rolls that more than 10,000 people are members of the private Facebook group monitoring the store’s trading hours, unimaginatively titled “is ‘ALEX ‘N’ ROLLS’ open?!?”

In our confused reality, objectivity is nigh impossible to come by, but at Alex ‘N’ Rolls it appears people have stumbled upon an irrefutable, delicious and reliable fact – it’s the best banh mi in Sydney.

It had been like this for years, until, as one of the Facebook group’s users put it, “one gloomy morning, disaster struck”.

Rumours spread. Posts circulated. Suddenly, the rolls became as inconsistent as the opening hours. It went on like this for what must have felt like an eternity to those surveillant group members. Then, on July 14, 2023, the news was “confirmed”. The owner’s apparent “business partner” said the unthinkable during a chance encounter – “There will be no rolls ever again.”

Outrage, disbelief and perverted bargaining ensued. One user offered to sleep with Alex for rolls. Another expressed dismay at the realisation they were now in a “toxic relationship” with the Alex ‘N’ Rolls equivalent of a rebound – the sticky rice the shopfront continued serving after they stopped with the banh mi.

The majority of these initial reactions were selfish – lunch-related lamentations, symptomatic of the system of exchange we erected in response to multicultural policy. It is this system of exchange that makes the Alex ‘N’ Rolls saga worthy of interrogation in the context of Australia’s broader multicultural project and its limiting relationship with consumerism.

According to Lebanese–Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage, multiculturalism in Australia is eater-centred and varies in “degree to which” we “emphasize ethnic feeders as active central subjects”.

Hage’s seminal essay, “At Home in the Entrails of the West”, speaks with brilliant erudition of the interdependency between multicultural policy, ethnic foods and the subjectivity and security of migrants.

Moving through the stages of assimilation (1947-1964) and integration (1965-1973), before arriving at the current epoch of multiculturalism, Australia sloughed off the parochial policies and standards of “White Australia” and the “Good Neighbour” projects.

The subsequent economic and cultural expansion of Sydney’s central business district, indebted to immigration and an emphasis on skilled worker visas for chefs, produced the conditions for a new class of inner-city eaters and journalists. It is a class that, in connecting to our nation’s emerging preoccupation with cultural diversity as indicative of global standing, generalised the love of ethnic food with non-racism and vice versa.

This reality has only accelerated, thanks in no small part to the infamous lockout laws that closed Sydney for several years (2014-21). The death of clubs was ransomed by the birth of an ultra-competitive, ethnically varied and internationally renowned dining scene.

So important is the sector now that a senior executive at Tourism Australia tells me it is a “driver” for key international markets. Hage astutely diagnosed in the 1990s that eating had in fact become “the prevalent form in which multiculturalism is conceived and expressed in everyday life in Sydney”.

This should come as no surprise to the contemporary Sydney resident, whose weekend plans, irrespective of “nights out”, are largely determined by eating and the accompanying pageantry.

It’s not enough to eat, one must consume a range of different cuisines and boast of an insider knowledge on which Thai restaurant is more “authentic”. Eating out carries virtuous hallmarks of the now defunct neoliberal, right-side-of-history that our free market ethnic entrepreneurialism is based on.

As nationalist populism animated by settler-colonial spirit grows unfettered in global politics, and new right-wing talking heads wage their culture wars around points most of the left assumes are without rapprochement, Sydney’s dining scene must confront its own liberal limits.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a growing interest in the expression of ethnic differences via culinary offerings. For instance, Hage praises Australia’s appetite for the “new”, which gave entrepreneurial opportunities for migrants selling the “weird raw beef” that is also known as kibbeh nayeh. This has become a well-received and creatively potent opportunity to reconcile the dissidence between the now distant motherland and the suspicious, adopted fatherland.

An uncomfortable problem with this popular narrative of racial coherence and representation makes itself known in its inability to establish political programs and protect those precariously placed.

The most pernicious example of this failure within Australia is the periodic vilification of migrant workers for contributing to the housing and cost-of-living crises. The very same migrants are the labour force of yet another Italian restaurant or responsible for our weekend “authentic” dining experience. They are the ones denied voting power and held hostage by capped earning capacity.

Whereas more subtle but culturally pervasive examples are the projects of “local knowledge” media columns or “food safaris” – a concept that renders the lives of working-class migrants and their children as a glorious moment in the wild to be understood and captured as game might be on the Serengeti.

The late cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s assessment of capital’s absorption of political and economic systems outside itself must always serve as a reminder of the fabricated and “gotcha” nature of consumerist choice. The search for dining options can be earnest, yes, but it is a material response to the reduction of cultural horizons within Sydney. It’s a comforting but fruitless product of Australia’s small business politics and manicured multiculturalism.

Pursuing a perfect banh mi for your lunch is a fine expression of a certain kind of civil liberty within a market-based economy, but when a simple event like the removal of bread as a lunchtime offering is met with such an impassioned response it reveals the uncomfortably exploitative nature of a relationship we are taking for granted.

The decision by Alex ‘N’ Rolls to stop selling banh mi throws the image of the good-serving subject back in the face of the fatherland’s always present and patriarchal threat. It abruptly short-circuited the surveilling eyes of inner and outer suburban consumers. More than that, it inserted genuine agency back into the equation, reversing Hage’s critique and centring the ethnic feeder as active subject.

Prior to the roll refusal, there was little to no acknowledgement or discussion of the workers. Post bread disappearance, the Facebook page slowly became alight with more sightings of and interactions with the owners, calls for “support groups” and a desire to bring this breadless reality to the prime minister himself.

Alex ‘N’ Rolls stopped playing the “part” of ethnic difference and cultural provider. In turn, the Facebook group customers shifted from naive consumption to attention and care for the people behind the bread.

By way of denial, an example of racial harmony across class lines burst into existence through commerce. It was not the simplistic project of “buying your politics”, but one that forced a self-analysis, raised consciousness and even attempted to elevate ethnic entrepreneurialism to the lobbying level of a sociopolitical project.

Imagine what else would be possible if we all stopped simply playing our consumptive “parts”. Instead, what if we demanded the government take seriously the significance of the hospitality sector we religiously patronise, through meaningful subsidies for energy, waste management and organic farming goods, as well as support for businesses to ensure the protection of workers’ rights, both temporary and permanent.

The disappearance and eventual return of Alex’s rolls showed the multicultural compact goes beyond straight consumption. Serving, eating and discovering cuisines in our suburban backyard is not enough to promote and maintain social cohesion. We need a reimagining of the increasingly inequitable reproduction of social relationships along class and ethnic lines.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 28, 2025 as "Love it or leaven it".

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