'Wich Hunt

If you know anything about Vietnamese food in San Francisco, then you won’t be surprised to hear that my first stop was Little Saigon. Nestled in the welcoming, transgendered bosom of the Tenderloin, this area boasts approximately eleventy billion spots for banh mi. There’s also great pho, Burmese, and Thai. But I had the banh mi blinders on – I was a man on a mission.

My first stop was the de facto heavyweight champion of the field, Saigon Sandwich. Most weekday lunchtimes, this storefront sprouts a long line of business types happily waiting for banh mi at about $3.25 a piece. But when I arrived right at noon there were only a few fellow sandwich freaks ahead of me. Two brusque professional ladies held down the tiny counter, which was stacked with items that both tempted (shrimp chips!) and plied customers with wildly different impulses from mine (anonymous hunks of dried seafood!).

Out on the street I was ready to chow down, when the Tenderloin delivered one of its most delightful gifts: the insane overheard conversation. Two women walked past as one explained how her boyfriend had cut off her ponytail while she was sleeping. Maybe I was in a Proust story after all…

Any doubts that this nugget of lunacy was a sign that I was exactly where I was meant to be were dispelled as soon as I returned my attention the BBQ pork banh mi in my hands. The bread was near perfect, the pork salty and flavorful. There were only a few radishes, no mayo, and the Maggi sauce had been swapped out for something a little sweeter, closer to teriyaki. But this, my friends, was an auspicious beginning. Also, sorry to repeat myself, but HE CUT OFF HER PONYTAIL WHILE SHE WAS ASLEEP!

I walked east one block to Mong Thu Cafe, a tiny spot with a diner-like feel and the most colorful cast of patrons I had seen yet. The star was a tiny, ancient woman who all but danced around the room, entertaining one and all as she sipped coffee and caged cigarettes from people that had to be 60 years her junior. I sat and was instantly served a free glass of hot tea while I waited for my sandwich, which featured pâté and steamed pork along with my traditional BBQ. (This was because the small menu offered one choice for me: pork banh mi for $3.25. Done and done.) The bread was warm and crispy, the pickled carrots mouth-puckeringly tart, and the different styles of pork created a wonderful range of textures in my mouth. I let the ancient lady upsell me on some iced Vietnamese coffee to go. Good news: It was perfect. Bad news: I was getting extremely full.

As I sipped my sweet pick-me-up, I walked north to Geary toward Hoang Dat Coffee Shop. It was bigger than anywhere else I’d visited and, like Mong Thu, offered table service. I ordered the combination pork and, on an insane, probably meat-triggered whim, the meatball banh mi as well. I was so happy I did. The combo pork ($3) offered a lot of flavor and a similar range of texture to the offering at Mong Thu Cafe, even though it was obvious that the BBQ-ing had not been done on the premises. But the meatball ($2.75) was a revelation; it was a giant, deliciously juicy package of pork, chives, and a secret spice mix that would make the Colonel weep. I wanted to eat the whole thing, but I was worried I might explode like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. I live dangerously.

I was seriously full, but this hunt wasn’t over, not by a long shot. I needed to regroup, refocus, and get back out there when there was more real estate in my stomach.