banh mi crawl

Inspired by a Portland Mercury story (YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY, BANH MI: The Best French-Vietnamese Sandwiches in Portland) by Evan James, the Portland food group decided to do a quickie banh mi crawl. Banh mi are vietnamese sandwiches, made with french rolls, meat (generally), pickled vegetables, cilantro and jalapeno, and they are generally very cheap ($2.50 or less). We decided to start at the best known of the lot, Cali Sandwiches, which I've liked quite a lot. They have many choices, they speak great English, and they have a couple tables -- however, they're closed on Sundays.

So, on to Maxim's. Close to the Pacific grocery in Rose City, this tiny hole-in-the-wall does have a couple tables, but the space was obviously not built for 9 robust folks, but that didn't stop us. We got a bunch of sandwiches from their 14 or so on the menu, and chowed down. The paté was my favorite, but everything we tried (fish, pork, lemongrass chicken) was good. The bread was wonderful -- good enough to just eat with butter. They were very willing to accomodate our strange needs (no cilantro? no onions?). I wonder if it's wrong to go there for dinner tonight?

Next was Café Be Van, a cute little cafe you might stop at with your mom for a bubble tea, if your mom liked bubble tea. The selection of banh mi were more limited here (8-10), but they do offer a vegetarian version with tofu, as well as the special combo of pork products, and many variants of pork. The sandwiches were bigger, and less traditional (this according to someone who had spent a year in Asia), which didn't stop us. Lots of jalapeno. Yum. We also got a vanilla bubble tea with tapioca pearls -- chewy! but yummy!, a vietnamese coffee, a lychee drink, and sugar cane juice (I'll stick with bubble tea and coffee, thanks), and finished with a durian popsicle that had a nice coconut finish -- at least, that's what I was told. To me, it tasted like the insole of an old gym shoe. The staff here were great, and tremendously happy that we were interested to try all these things. The café also has some free internet terminals and Keno.

Finally, we went to An Xuyen. It's a bakery and tiny. They have one banh mi, with choices of different types of meat -- they also have paté chaud with pork, and hum bao, as well as many kinds of hawaiian breads and asian cookies and cakes. We were slowing down -- we were no longer inhaling the food, but we lingered over pineapple cookies.

Cali Sandwiches
6620 NE Glisan
(503) 254-9842

Maxim's Bakery and Deli
6812 NE Broadway
(503) 257-3868

Café Be Van
6846 NE Sandy
(503) 287-1418

An Xuyen Bakery
5345 SE Foster
(503) 788-0866

posted by vj @ 4:57 PM