The Banh Mi Shop

Look, we all know what restaurants are dealing with right now. It’s brutal. Even the most successful restaurants are more or less on life support—and with winter coming, things are looking grim. That’s why it’s more important than ever to continue supporting the places you love in whatever way you feel comfortable. You don’t need to dine in. Get food to-go or delivered. Buy giftcards. Just make sure you’re allocating your dollars to the businesses you want to see survive Covid.

For me, one of those businesses is The Banh Mi Shop. Chef/owner Jimmy Trinh opened the restaurant in late February, and being the lil’ banh mi boy that I am, I went immediately. The curry chicken banh mi and the lemongrass tofu blew me away. Like, I went back a few days later and got two sandwiches good. Then Covid hit.

What I’ve admired about Jimmy during all of this is that he never seemed bitter or fatalist. If I saved up enough money to open a restaurant and immediately had to close it and deal with Covid restrictions, I’d have probably been a whiny asshole. He put his head down and just kept trying to improve. Better, faster sandwiches. Weekly specials. Secret menu items.

The food though…man, is it good. The menu is made up of three main sections: banh mi sandwiches, spring rolls, and noodle bowls. The bowls and rolls are good, of course, but it’s the restaurant’s namesake that we’re all really going for.

In my opinion, banh mi sandwiches are the most underrated and under-appreciated sandwiches out there.

Not by me, obviously. This is a blog post about them, after all. But probably by you.

What makes them so good is the balanced complexity that you find in so much of Southeast Asian cooking. Sweet, bitter, salty, sour, umami. Crunch, softness.

As Jimmy once said to me, a perfect banh mi baguette’s crust shatters like glass when you bite into it, but the bread underneath is pillowy and buttery. Their custom ordered bread nails that.

The standard ingredients go on next: pickled daikon and carrots, sprigs of cilantro, slices of jalapeño and cucumber, and then their rich house aioli. The Banh Mi Shop has 8 fillings listed on their site, then there are two secret off-the-menu specials: the breakfast sandwich with fried eggs and their Saigon Classic on a croissant.

I cannot recommend their lemongrass chicken and tofu enough. The flavor is absolutely spot on, delivering that floral, citrusy true lemongrass flavor that I find irresistible. Close behind is the curry chicken sautéed with yellow curry and coconut milk—as you can probably imagine, it tastes similar to the lemongrass, but with more spices. If I’m not getting one of those three (which is very rarely the case because I have a lemongrass addiction), I go for either the soy sauce glazed grilled beef or pork. Because grilled meats are delicious.

To wash it all down, grab a glass of their CocoCane (also off menu)—one part coconut water, one part sugarcane juice. It’s almost as addictive as the sandwiches.