Roast Pork – Saigon Sandwich, Larkin St, San Francisco, CA

Posted on by

Saigon Sandwich Shop is spoken of as a hole-in-the-wall, but it’s really more of a place that just stuck their counter right at the top. There are a pair of seats facing out of the front window, but you’re really meant to take your sandwich and be on your way. That’s precisely what I did, picking the roast pork from the simple menu board and heading to a local park to enjoy. Before that, though, I watched the sandwich being assembled and wasn’t particularly thrilled with what I saw. Most bánh mì sandwiches have a bit of a rakish angle to their construction, built from the inside out on bread that isn’t sliced all the way through, this can have a negative impact. Sometimes it’s enough to just poke things around a bit and get a perfectly acceptable construction, but other times things stray too far from ideal and there’s no getting them back. Sing Sing was too far gone, and though Saigon Sandwich Shop was not, it wasn’t through the effort of the person putting it together. The construction was quite haphazard, with the sandwich being stuffed at lightning speed, a bunch of each ingredient grabbed with a pair of tongs and stuffed into the sandwich, only secured by the next bunch coming in after it. Luck was on my side, though, and the sandwich came together fine.

Perhaps the luck carried through from the construction, because this was a pretty good sandwich. The bread was some of the best I’ve had in a bánh mì, with a very strong crust but a moist, full bodied interior. Many bánh mì baguettes become efficient husks, minimalist wrappings to celebrated interiors. The baguette at Saigon Sandwich Shop stands up on its own. The meat was moist and there was plenty of it, and the mayonnaise had a nice flavor to it. The veggies & cilantro could have been more flavorful, but taken as a whole the sandwich had good balance and was mighty tasty. Eating so many bánh mìs the quality spectrum begins to blur, and it takes a particularly good sandwich to stand out. Saigon Sandwich Shop has just that kind of sandwich.

Grilled Pork – Paris Sandwich, Mott St, New York, NY

Posted on by

Paris Sandwich is around the corner from my beloved Bánh Mì Saigon, and was my first stop in the neighborhood. I hold the sandwiches at Bánh Mì Saigon in high regard, of course, and I was very curious to see what kind of sandwich shops made it their business to stand in direct competition to what I see as the finest possible sandwich. I wondered how they might attempt to set themselves apart, in what ways they might try to gain a leg up. One thing Paris Sandwich does is serve a lot more food. Where Bánh Mì Saigon serves sandwiches, spring rolls and a few dishes with noodles, Paris Sandwich has all that and more, with rice dishes, Vietnamese waffles, curries, all manner of things. One thing in particular that jumped out at me was, beside the listing of Vietnamese sandwiches (labeled as such), there was list of “Euro-Asian Sandwiches,” which contrasted the standard Vietnamese mayo, pickled carrot and daikon with American mayo, lettuce/tomato/onion and cheese. Lee’s offers American style sandwiches as well, but they seem to understand them as separate sandwiches, constructed in their own right sometimes on a baguette, but other times on a croissant. Paris Sandwich seemed to posit bánh mìs and these Euro-Asian Sandwiches as direct cousins. I tried to conceive of any of the fillings I’ve had on a bánh mì pairing with lettuce/tomato/onion and a slice of cheese, and the resulting mental picture was not a pretty one. Perhaps someday in the future I’ll give one a go, just to find out if it’s as off-putting as it seems to be, but it can certainly wait.

As for the sandwich I did have, Paris Sandwich proved no match for my favorite. The baguette was nice and crispy, but the pork had a strong teriyaki taste to it, a flavor I’d never before encountered in a bánh mì. The veggie mix was a bit out of proportion, leaving carrots overpowering everything else. This was a much better sandwich than I found at Sing Sing, but the conclusions remains the same; with better options just down the block, there’s no real reason to stop here.

Chả Lụa – Sing Sing Sandwich Shop, Hyde St, San Francisco, CA

Posted on by


Sing Sing was a bit of an odd experience. Stepping into the store, I saw a few tabl
es covered in plastic checkered table clothes a few scattered cigarette holes burned in each one. A refrigerated display case stood opposite the tables, stacked with foil logs marked chả lụa. The back wall of the room stopped three quarters of the way across, and behind it sat another room. It was unclear whether that was somewhere a customer might venture. Absent any staff and any further instruction, I just stood there a moment. Soon enough, someone came from behind the wall. “Yes?” they asked. I told them I’d like a sandwich. “Pork?” they asked. I told them pork was fine. “Stay or go?” they asked. I told them I’d take it to stay, and I sat down. They moved behind the refrigerator case, slid a baguette into a toaster oven and began to make my sandwich. That was it. No menu posted, no menu handed out. As far as I know, Sing Sing only serves one sandwich. Chả Lụa is pork roll, meat ground to a paste, flavored a bit, then wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed or boiled. It has the texture somewhat akin to roast beef, rather than the unsettling unified texture of a ham. The flavor is closer to a roast as well.

Sing Sing Sandwich Shop is located in “Little Saigon,” and that’s ultimately what damns the sandwich. It’s not very good, and given that there are much butter, significantly less disorienting options just down the street there’s no real reason to make this your destination. The typical bánh mì is usually loaded a bit skewed, but a bit of shifting a poke here and there set things right. Not so at Sing Sing, where one half of the sandwich had mayo and pate, and the other had cilantro and vegetables. Short of cracking the sandwich all the way open and reassembling it, I couldn’t figure out any way to keep from dealing with a bite of all mayo and pate, then a bite of all everything else. I have no doubt that chả lụa has its devotees, but I’m not one of them. A cold cut by any other name, in my estimation. Many a bánh mì has a crisp crust, but this was the first one that I’ve felt was genuinely sharp, sharp enough that a corner of the bread cut a small hole in the roof of my mouth. Should you ever find yourself on Hyde street, in the mood for a bánh mì, walk past Sing Sing. Or turn around. Or cross the street. Really, anything other than stepping inside should set you right.

Classic Vietnamese Sandwich – Vicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches, E 2nd St, New York, NY

Posted on by

Vicky’s conception of classic is roast ground pork, Vietnamese ham, and pâté. That’s not what what I know as classic; perhaps it’s a regional thing. Regardless of whether it is or it isn’t, this sandwich won’t be ranking as a classic with me. As has become a refrain this month, it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great. The roast pork was a texture I hadn’t come across in a bánh mì before, and I didn’t care for it. In contrast to Lee’s mushy meatball, it was a mealy rough texture. Both sandwiches miss the mark of contrasting crust and tender inside that one finds in a meatball or meatloaf, and these two strikes are enough to get me to steer clear of this sort of thing in the future. Meat in most bánh mìs is shredded, chopped or sliced, and it seems to me that ground isn’t an option that needs including. On the upside the ham had a nice bright flavor, the mayo was buttery, and the sandwich had a nice peppery flavor overall. It was also served piping hot, the hottest I’d ever had. A good bánh mì is warm, and this one didn’t lose anything by being warmer than the average. The more sandwiches one eats the more divergent one’s experiences will be, and as my list of shops gets longer, some places will have to find a place at the bottom. As it so happens, Vicky’s is one of those places.

Grilled Pork & Pork Meatball – Lee’s Sandwiches, E Santa Clara St, San Jose, CA

Posted on by

In my review of Bánh Mì Zớn, I spoke briefly about the future of the bánh mì. “It involves significantly more widespread availability,” I posited. “It involves evolution, offshoots and different takes. It involves franchises.” Lee’s is that future. With at least 41 domestic locations stretching from California to Oklahoma and a handful of international locations, Lee’s 20 years of existence have been fruitful, seeing the kind of rapid spread one might expect from the purveyors of fine sandwiches. The establishments seem built for expansion; there are bright, English signs, most stores are spacious and clean, they offer traditional American sandwiches as well as the standard offering of Vietnamese.

I’m not inherently opposed to the idea of a franchise. They’re not my preferred place to get a sandwich, but I think they serve a purpose and, evaluated on their own terms, they have a decent amount of value. A Big Mac tastes like a Big Mac no matter where you get it, no matter how long it’s been since you last had one, it’s always exactly what it was, exactly what you would expect. I can understand why some people find this objectionable, but I can also see the perverse appeal in it. So there’s a logic and a role to the franchise, even if it isn’t the most noble role around. Think about it; associates have written me as this month has progressed, bemoaning the lack of bánh mì options in places like Fort Wayne, Indiana. So if we hope that there will come a day when people in mid-range and far-flung corners of this country can get their hands on a delicious baguette full of well seasoned meat and fresh vegetables when they want them, can we really turn our noses up if it takes a homogenized, repetitive establishment to achieve that? I would say not.

It is by these standards that Lee’s falls short, unfortunately. Lee’s started as a catering truck in San Jose, and I dearly wish I’d been able to sample the wares from that truck. That is a privilege that has thus far escaped me in life, to watch an establishment grow, changing over time, meeting advantages and disadvantages along the way. All I can do is examine the product as it stands today. And I would tell you how the product fares today, but tragically it all depends on from which Lee’s you order your sandwich. By design, the Lee’s franchises vary in three major ways. There are so-called production units, where baguettes are baked and ingredients prepared both for sandwiches sold on-site and to be distributed to other Lee’s in the surrounding area. There are non-production units, where these ingredients are received and then sent out again, and finally there are mall units, non-production units situated in food courts. As you might imagine, food quality is typically highest at a production unit, and it can vary considerably at other locations, based on their proximity to a production unit, their average sales volume, and who knows what else. So Lee’s falls short in what is perhaps the sole truly redeeming value of a franchise: consistency. Subway may charge you $5 for a big pile of salt, but it’s the same pile of salt every time. Even within a single Lee’s, the sandwiches vary considerably from day to day. The grilled pork sandwich pictured at the top of this page was flavorful and with a crispy baguette, a reasonably facsimile of a proper thịt nướng sandwich. But on other days the sandwiches have been dry, with tough baguettes and sparse filling. The second sandwich pictured is xíu mại, which had a texture not so much of broken up meatballs but just a mushy pile of meat, an extremely salty one at that.

Tragically, as the bánh mì makes its way in the larger world, the strongest wind in its sails is a sputtering one, one of inconsistent vision and execution. Maybe these are growing pains, and as Lee’s settles in things will start to smooth out. I suppose that’s a possibility, but that might be asking more patience than your average sandwich enthusiast can muster. I know that someday someone to whom I have extolled the virtues of the bành mì will try one and not be impressed. To my knowledge it has yet to happen, but it’s inevitable. While it would be disingenuous to deny the self-interest in that idea, it isn’t really about me. It’s about what I know about the bành mì, the heights I know a sandwich can reach, and my sincere desire that any and all interested persons experience those heights. Anyone who loves sandwiches deserves to have a really great bành mì. Lee’s works to put this farther out of reach, and for that I cannot forgive them.

Tofu Hoagie – Fuh Wah Mini Market, 47th St, Philadelphia, PA

Posted on by

As something of a coda to last week’s post on the vegetarian bánh mì, I present to you the tofu hoagie. On my last trip to Philadelphia I found myself in an unfamiliar neighborhood, waiting upon the arrival of an associate. Luckily, they had told me beforehand that there was a fine sandwich to be had at the Fuh Wah Mini Market, the tofu hoagie. Imagine my surprise when I found not a generic sandwich starring tofu, but a bánh mì. While it’s true that this bánh mì is a tofu hoagie, in the same sense that a croque-monsieur is a ham sandwich, it doesn’t really properly express what’s going on. The first time I spoke about Philly cheese steaks on this blog, I criticized an establishment for a “misguided but strong provincialism [that seemed] exactly Philadelphian.” I thought back to that phrase as I ate my sandwich, having a good laugh. I imagined an enterprising sandwich shop nearly going broke trying to sell bánh mìs, watching Philadelphian after Philadelphian walk by, glance at their shop with a confused look, and move on to lunch somewhere else. Finally, realizing their mistake, they re-categorize their wares under the familiar “hoagie,” and the business is saved. To say “only in Philadelphia” would be trite, but imagining that situation in any other city I know of seems absurd. In Philadelphia, it seems vaguely reasonable. You can find a lot of people who will say a lot of things about Philadelphia, friends, but you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who will say it isn’t special.

The sandwich itself was tasty, with considerably more pepper than you find in most bánh mìs. To tofu had a fairly firm texture, having (presumably) been drained and well cooked. The baguette was crisp, and the veggies fresh and crisp. Everything I previously said about vegetarian bánh mìs applies here, but that doesn’t mean that the sandwich didn’t hit the spot on a warm afternoon in the city that loves you back.

Thịt Nướng & Gâ Châ Bóng – Dakao, E San Salvador St, San Jose, CA

Posted on by

Having reached the middle stretch of a month of bánh mì, I find myself presenting sandwiches about which I do not have a tremendous amount to say. In other contexts I might simply elect to not say anything, as it is never my intention to bore readers or to waste their time. But Dakao is one of the few bánh mì options in downtown San Jose, so it probably justifies a few words. Thankfully, given that it is one of the only available options, Dakao makes a decent sandwich. It’s nothing spectacular, another establishment coasting on the high floor of the bánh mì, but it’s good enough. The pork was tasty but a bit sparse, leaving a sandwich where some bites were all flavorful pork and some were mostly Vietnamese mayonnaise.

The main fault with the shredded chicken lay with its lack of flavor, as it comes in a bit bland. All things considered, especially that you can get a sandwich for less than three dollars, the sandwiches are good enough, and some days that’s all you get.

Vegetarian Bánh Mì – Hamilton’s Tavern, San Diego & Tofoo Com Chay, San Jose

Posted on by

The veggie grilled pork sandwich at Tofoo Com Chay in San Jose

I first ate this sandwich over two years ago, fairly soon after I decided to start a sandwich blog. It’s a fairly standard vegetarian bánh mì: fake pork, cucumber, carrot and plenty of cilantro on a crusty baguette. It’s a good sandwich, but I ate it very soon after one of my experiences with the best sandwich in the world, so I had a fresh memory of a really great (pork containing) bánh mì to compare to. I wasn’t quite sure what to think. Was it fair to compare the two sandwiches? What were their relative strengths? Was I even capable of objectively considering it in its own right? That was in December of 2008, and I’ve been ruminating on the answers to those questions ever since.

This is the “Banh From the Pubs,” from Hamilton’s Tavern in San Deigo.  Cucumbers, carrot and daikon slaw join red onion, basil, cilantro and a house made hotsauce. In contrast to most bánh mìs, the bread here was sliced all the way through and the ingredients piled high. Bánh mìs are a lot of things, but “stuffed” generally isn’t one of them. I ate this over ten months ago, and my thoughts on the original sandwich joined with thoughts from this one and began to crystallize. Finally, I know what I want to say.

I feel as if I am on shaky ground, making this declaration and making something I love so much off limits to so many people. But I’ve thought about this a lot and I feel like this is the right thing to say. I was a vegetarian for seven years. I have nothing but respect for people who make what is a legitimate ethical concern their foremost concern in what they eat. But if we sit down and plot where their world intersects with mine we cannot just place things wherever we like. We must place them where they belong.

Imagine listening to La Traviata, only one of the channels in your stereo has gone out. You are still hearing beautiful, wonderful music but it is incomplete, doomed. At the height of Act II each cry from Violetta would go unanswered, she would plead with no one, finally agreeing to sacrifice her greatest love, giving in to non-existent demands, an empty hissing sound. That isn’t art, it’s tragedy. Someone asked me about the sandwich from Tofoo Com Chay. “If I’d never had a regular bánh mì,” I said, “I’d think this was a really good sandwich.” But I have had one, and I cannot help but think that one without meat is irredeemably flawed.

It might seem silly, at first, to suggest that people who do not want to eat meat are missing out because they aren’t eating meat. But knowing this sandwich both with and without meat I cannot help but define those without by what they lack. Consider a person who drives a convertible, and more than that refuses to leave the house when it rains. The only decent thing to do is to respect their choice, but I have no obligation to think it complete. Moreover, I wouldn’t suggest they approximate the experience of sharing a kiss in the rain by necking under the shower head. The meat, the pâté, it’s all missing here, and it’s a striking absence. People who don’t eat meat make a choice, one I respect and understand. That choice includes giving certain things up, and I suggest that bánh mìs should be among them.

The two sandwiches make my point in different ways. The sandwich from Tofoo Com Chay presents a fake meat in place of pork, meaning it is aping the particular style of bánh mì that I love so much. This is directly what I am addressing above. The sandwich at Hamilton’s, meanwhile, forgoes any mimicry and just rachets up the heat. Making a sandwich more spicy can improve it, but it can’t save it. If this is what your sandwich needs to be interesting, good, or  seem worth what you charge for it, I suggest you have gone wrong at some early step and ought to revisit the whole thing. So two bánh mìs attempt to solve the problem of being incomplete in different ways, and both come up short. Their problem, I feel, is that they have taken on a challenge that cannot be met.

In attempting to critique my own point, I considered the “So what?” angle. If people like these sandwiches, shouldn’t that be enough? There’s merit to that argument, and if we were talking about any other kind of sandwich I might agree. But there’s a lot of hype surrounding bánh mìs, hype that I help sustain. Not too long ago an associate told me he was off to try one for the first time. I practically held my breath until he delivered his report. I knew what heights the sandwich could deliver but was terrified that a stroke of bad luck might forever sour him on the sandwich I love. Thankfully that story ends happily, but when I consider these sandwiches I cannot help but be concerned. The casual sandwich eater rarely seeks out different versions of the same archetype; They know what they like and when something new falls short they go back to what they know. Imagine some budding sandwich enthusiast takes only a quick glance at the menu, not noticing that there’s no meat involved. They receive this sandwich and think “That’s it?” The idea makes me shudder.

I feel like a bit of a heel, saying what I’ve said here, and I ask that my non-meat-eating friends forgive me. I love sandwiches, and I love the bánh mì above all others. It deserves honest consideration, even when the conclusions I reach cast me as something of a jerk.

Barbecued Chicken Sandwich & Charbroiled Pork Sandwich – Lemongrass Vietnamese Restaurant, Colorado Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

Posted on by

Yesterday I spoke of the bánh mì’s high-floor/high-ceiling, an idea that the average bánh mì is very good, and the best bánh mì almost incomprehensibly so. I also mentioned yesterday that bad bánh mìs, while rare, do exist. This, friends, is them. Lemongrass earns the sad distinction of being the first establishment in which I would, upon being questioned about the bánh mì, tell someone to skip it. It’s a restaurant with a full menu, and the four sandwiches on offer are but a small part of that menu. Being a sit-down establishment, the sandwich runs a bit expensive at $6. To be frank, they shouldn’t have bothered.

The sandwiches just feel limp. The vegetables are scarce, the buttery Vietnamese mayo lacking, the bread nothing notable, the flavors of everything else underwhelming. I hesitated writing this post. Truthfully, I ate these sandwiches some time ago and thinking back on them I think  that they couldn’t have been that bad. After all, high-floor/high-celing, right? The bánh mì itself is so good that any particular bánh mì can’t be terrible. And they weren’t terrible. But it takes a spectacular combination of apathy, bad luck, and willfully sub-par execution to produce a bánh mì better off skipped. I can’t truthfully say I regret eating these sandwiches, but until today I haven’t written about a bánh mì that wasn’t at least worth a stop, provided you were in the neighborhood. There are better sandwich options in Eagle Rock; save the bánh mì for another day, another establishment.

Chinese BBQ Pork & Shredded Pork – King Egg Roll, Story Rd, San Jose, CA

Posted on by

I spoke a bit about authenticity and neighborhoods here, and more recently I was grousing about a bánh mì I felt was overpriced. What today’s post goes to show, though, is that neither location nor price are legitimate markers of quality. They may be clues, but in the end only in trying the sandwich can one find its true measure. King Egg Roll is on the Vietnamese side of San Jose, and the sandwiches are a steal at $2.50 each. The problem, though, is that they just aren’t that good.

The bánh mì is somewhat unique in that as a concept it possesses both a very high ceiling and a fairly high floor; there exist truly bad bánh mìs, but they’re somewhat rare. The sandwiches at King Egg Roll aren’t bad, they just aren’t good. As you might surmise from the name, sandwiches aren’t the main attraction at King Egg Roll. Fried rolls and shrimp balls get top billing, and sandwiches appear to be an afterthought. Perhaps someone took the high floor concept for granted, and figured any old sandwich they slapped together would excel. That wasn’t the case, but it’s a testament to the sandwich (as a concept, not in this example) that I still left King Egg Roll satisfied. The BBQ pork was a bit dry, and the shredded chicken not particularly flavorful, but a bit of chili sauce gave both some extra kick. Altogether, it’s just tough to go wrong. For $2.50 you get a balanced sandwich on a crusty roll. There isn’t much room in there for complaint.