Erik L.
Yelp
Saw this in SGV Eats. I was definitely like I hope this is not overblown.
But I dare say this is one of the best banh mi's I've had. In a long time if not forever.
I've had many growing up. I wouldn't say I'm a well-versed in banh mi but I've had a range of them in LA and also Philadelphia where there's also a large Vietnamese population and even had banh mi in Vietnam.
When you get the sandwich. Honestly it looked dry from the outside. And it looked kind of sad and naked. It comes unassembled which was new to me. Not sure I'm crazy about assembling things myself but whatever, small inconvenience. I think this prevents soggy bread if you want to eat your sandwich later, it allows for people to pick and choose their toppings, and it saves the shop time by just bagging all your veggie accessories in one bag. Then when you load the sandwich with the vegetables and the sauce, the whole thing magically comes alive.
The bread is deceiving. It looks stale and dry, but it's actually crispy on the outside and chewy/soft on the inside. I almost want to say thinly pillow-soft on the inside. I feel like they must have hollowed it out a bit. Despite the bread being massive, the proportion seemed right. Whatever they're doing to the bread, I would say it's almost the star of the show here.
The crispy pork. It was crispy, salty, greasy, fatty. Tasted like it was just fried. The grease was soaking into the bread for some heavy goodness. Exactly how I wanted it.
The cucumber, cilantro, pickled radish and carrot were great. And the sauce they give you (it's some garlic sweet soy sauce mashup I think) pairs perfectly.
9.5/10 for the banh mi.
I got there at 2pm about. The downside was there was a line almost out the door. And when we ordered we had to wait maybe 20 minutes to get our food. They don't just call out your order number every 5 minutes or so. They seem to make a large batch and call like 10 numbers in the span of 5 minutes. Just hope you get lucky being at least the last person the next batch that comes in instead of the first person in the following batch.
Waiting for banh mi this long is like going to a fast food restaurant and waiting for your cheeseburger for 20 minutes. You shouldn't be waiting this long for banh mi.
6/10 for the wait time.
The two cashiers were really nice though, offering people free tea and smiling and being nice despite how intense it's getting for them.
8/10 for customer service.
The price was great. $7.5 for the crispy pork.
8.5/10 for price.
Definitely would get it again. But I would time it somehow to avoid the line of people. *update: I went again and asked the guy working there if he takes phone orders. He said yes but he does not want to take them when it's busy because it's unfair to the line of people physically there, which I can understand and respect.
Oh and by the time I was there, they were already counting how many rolls of bread they had left to the amount of people coming into the shop. They've been around only a few months and seems like they're always selling out of banh mis!
