By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
YOU could call this Springvale South deep-fried chicken finger-lickin’ good.
Except with the poultry safely housed in a crispy bread roll, there’s little chance of the spoils dripping on your hands.
Tradies are apparently flocking to the Spring Hot Bread bakery for this surprisingly wholesome offering.
The cavernous, crusty roll contains an exquisite combo of light, cool salad and deep-fried chicken pieces.
What sets it apart are the slices of searing Thai chilli salved with coriander leaves and mayo.
Other delicacies at the bakery are steamed pork rolls – popular with farm workers who drop by first thing in the mornings.
Also of interest are the pink-battered pork skewers, as well as rolls filled with barbecue pork and hoi sin sauce or ham with chicken-liver pate.
Customers also snap up the $4.50 packs of six donuts, and 35-cent bread rolls presented warm and en-masse from the ovens with head-spinning regularity.
Anna Nguyen says the roll recipes had just “evolved” since her mother took on the business 16 years ago.
It was the mother’s first venture after leaving her job at a clothes factory that “made T-shirts for K-Mart”.
As she established the venture, she, her husband and daughter worked 14-hour days including long night-shifts baking from 11.30pm to dawn.
“Everyone’s sleeping and we wake up,” Ms Nguyen says.
The bakery is among Athol Road’s market-like hub of butchers, fishmongers and vegie sellers, which seems to attract a crowd of food seekers.
Spring Hot Bread is at shop 9/160 Athol Road, Springvale South.
