A coin-shaped griddle cake with a crisp, buttery batter shell and a molten mozzarella center, baked in a round embossed mold so it emerges stamped like a giant coin. Pulled apart while hot, the cheese stretches into long strings — the whole point of the snack and what made it spread on video. It is not a traditional Vietnamese dish but a recent street-food import: the cake originated in South Korea and became a viral craze in Vietnam in late 2023, sold by the bagful from stalls and shopping-mall carts to a young, phone-camera crowd.
Banh dong xu pho mai is a modern trend dish, not part of Vietnam's traditional repertoire, and its recent emergence is well documented. The cake originated in South Korea — reported to have appeared in the city of Gyeongju around 2019 — where its coin design imitates the South Korean 10-won coin (sipwon), down to the seokgatap pagoda stamped on the original. It spread through tourist photos and short video, and was introduced to Vietnam in late 2023, where it became a craze among young people in Hanoi and other cities; reports from that season describe customers queueing for hours at stalls in Hanoi's Old Quarter and outside shopping malls. Because it is so new and imported, it has no deep Vietnamese history; its story is the story of a 2023 social-media food trend.
Eaten the moment it leaves the mold, while the cheese is still liquid. The shell is thin and crisp at the rim, softer toward the middle, faintly sweet and buttery like a waffle. Break it and the mozzarella pulls into long elastic threads — diners lift the two halves apart to stretch the cheese as far as it will go before it cools. The contrast is the appeal: a sweetish crackling crust against a stretchy, mild, savory-salty cheese core. Once it cools the cheese stiffens and the magic is gone, so it is strictly a fresh-and-hot snack.
The stretch depends on mozzarella, whose protein structure, when heated, softens into long aligned strands that pull into threads rather than breaking — the same property that gives pizza its cheese pull. The cake must be eaten hot because as mozzarella cools below roughly serving temperature the proteins tighten and set, and the threads stop forming. The batter is a simple sweet flour-milk-egg mix poured into a hot embossed mold and baked from both sides so the surface crisps and takes the coin imprint while the inside stays soft enough to hold the melted cheese.
Variations
The plain mozzarella coin is the standard, but Vietnamese stalls quickly added fillings to set themselves apart — corn and cheese, ham, sausage, or a sweet-savory mix; some dust the finished cake with chili-salt or drizzle condensed milk. Sizes range from a single large coin to bags of small ones. As a fad dish its forms shift quickly with the trend rather than following any fixed tradition.
On the Palate
Where Banh Dong Xu Pho Mai sits in the Vietnamese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 2
How it's made
7 steps · 20 min active + 5 min waiting
- 14 min
Whisk a batter from flour, milk, egg, sugar, and melted butter until smooth.
- 23 min
Heat the coin-shaped mold and brush it with butter or oil.
- 33 min
Pour batter into the bottom mold to coat, then place a slice or ball of mozzarella in the center.
Watch outUse mozzarella and nothing firmer — its protein is what pulls into long stretchy threads; a cheese that won't stretch kills the whole point of the cake.
- 41 min
Add a little more batter over the cheese to enclose it.
- 55 min
Close the mold and cook over heat, flipping, until both sides are golden and crisp.
- 61 min
Open the mold and turn the cake out; it should be stamped with the coin pattern.
- 71 min
Serve immediately while hot and pull the cake apart to stretch the cheese.
Watch outServe and pull it apart the instant it's out of the mold — as the mozzarella cools below serving-warm the proteins tighten and the cheese stops threading.
