A couple of weeks ago, while having my SPAM® and Egg Banh Mi and Baguette Up I suddenly realized that perhaps Mira Mesa had the most Banh Mi shops on one single stretch of road in the greater San Diego area. I could recall at least seven places; which sounded just enough to do a super-duper crawl/comparison.
And my good friends, bless their hearts, are always game and up for something different, and have been with me on different food excursions, crawls, and meals. Since I've done a shorter rendition of this before, I pretty knew what I wanted to do. There would be two cars; we'd meet in the parking lot of Lucky Seafood. We'd order the "special" at every stop, and get it just the way the sandwich is served. We'd hit BaLe, Tan Ky Mi Gia, and Express Deli first since it's in the same parking lot.
I handed out pens and sharpies to mark each restaurant with the name and prices. Of course I didn't count on PeterL writing the wrong prices down on a sandwich (it's a darn good thing he's got Angela to keep things straight), but I remembered the prices anyway. There were also some timing glitches since Express Deli seemed to have a thousand sandwich orders and took a while to make our sandwich. We headed off across the street to Cali Baguette Express, while TammyC and MrC headed off to a place I'd seem recently called Corner Sandwich & Cafe, located behind Popeyes in the same mall as Seafood City. We hit Baguette Up, while the other team headed to the finish at the other end of Mira Mesa Boulevard and Sorrento European Bakery. This was our meeting area as the food court is empty on Sundays, giving us ample room to do a tasting.
We had come prepared; disposable cutting mats, paper towels, knives, and water. And PeterL was our "cutter" and displayed great skill in cutting each Banh Mi into six pieces. In order to keep things as fair as possible, we ate the sandwiches in chronological order…. not quite FIFO, more like FIFI – first in, first in. I've been told in emails and some comments that the differences in Banh Mi are so small that it's really not worth mentioning. While I've always believed that I could make out differences in various sandwiches. And this tasting bore that out; and I was very surprised at how significant the differences were.
For the sake of time; I'll spend most of the post on the two favorite, and the two that we thought really weren't to our tastes. Strangely enough, the voting was unanimous on the two best, and the two worst.
The two favorites:
Express Deli:
Even though our sandwich took forever, and what's up with giving us mostly stems of cilantro(?), we really enjoyed Express Deli. The portion seemed on the small side, meat cut into very thin slices, but you make out the flavors of the Jamon and other meat, and the bread was toasted perfectly, making this heck of a good Banh Mi. Proportionally this was our favorite….plus the pickled carrots and daikon tasted good.
At $3.25, it's one of the more affordable sandwiches.
Express Deli
9326 Mira Mesa Blvd (inside Lucky Seafood)
San Diego, CA 92126
Cali Baguette Express:
I like the sandwiches from the El Cajon Boulevard location, but haven't tried the Mira Mesa location until today. Like Express Deli, Cali Baguette Express was either first or second on everyone's list.
At three bucks this was the cheapest sandwich. Cali Express makes their own bread, so even though we noticed that they didn't toast their banh mi, it was still slightly warm when we ate it. The bread is pretty light, and even though it's nothing close to what we had in Vietnam (what is?), the crust was flaky, and the bread to fillings ratio was good.
It was a long, but not huge sandwich, which looked the prettiest of them all when unwrapped……
Cali Baguette Express
9225 Mira Mesa Blvd #106
San Diego, CA 92126
And much like the two favorite, the two we enjoyed the least was also a unanimous vote. Sadly, the second to last was…..
Sorrento European Bakery:
**** Sorrento European Bakery has closed
I've had some pretty good sandwiches here before, but the bread on this day was especially stale……. and having had six sandwiches before this one, everyone noticed right away.
We all oohh's and aaah'd at the chunky pate, but it had no taste. The probably from a can pate on the Express Deli sandwich had more flavor. Actually, the flavor of the cucumber over-powered everything else in the sandwich.
Sorrento European Bakery
6755 Mira Mesa Blvd #117 – in the Sorrento Plaza Shopping Center
San Diego, CA 92121
The unanimous last place, and I do mean for all six of us was…….
Corner Sandwich & Cafe:
Corner Sandwich & Cafe has closed
This was a mystery place, as I've only passed it once. It looked like one of the Viet coffee places with all the older men hanging out outside. The Banh Mi here tied for the most expensive at four bucks.
The sandwich itself looked promising when opened up.
And then it happened, as we each took our first bite of the sandwich. Starting with MrC, then Angela…. an "whoa, this tastes really fishy". And yes indeed, there was fish cake in this one. The bread also seemed a bit old…… but the fishy taste pretty much overwhelmed everything.
TammyC was the last to have a bite…. she was taking notes, not fooling around, was she? We pretty much agreed with her notes on this one.
"Nuoc Mam Taste……fish cakes….bread sucks….." She never finished her slice……
Corner Sandwich & Cafe
9005 Mira Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92126
As for the rest? I'll just keep this short:
BaLe:
Bread was on the mealy side, kind of hard overall. PeterL and Angela said they got an "eggy" taste, probably from the spread that BaLe uses.
Ba Le French Sandwiches
9396 Mira Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92126
Tan Ky Mi Gia:
**** Tan Ky Mi Gia has closed
Had the most hefty sandwich of the bunch.
The crust of the banh mi was too hard and chewy….it was also a bit too bready and dry for us along with not being toasted. This Banh Mi was tied at the most expensive at four bucks. We all liked the choices of meat in this sandwich, but there was just too much bread.
Tan Ky Mi Gia
9330 Mira Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92126
Baguette Up:
**** Baguette Up has closed
Even though this sandwich had the nicest looking Thi Ba Chi (roasted pork belly), TammyC in her notes summed it up for us….. "bland". Nothing really there to make this sandwich stand out. I will say, that along with Cali Baguette Express, Baguette Up has the nicest service…..
Baguette Up
8155 Mia Mesa Blvd. Suite #3
San Diego, CA 92126
This was a fun time, and also an eye opening experience, especially for JohnL, PeterL, and TammyC who are Vietnamese and have grown up eating Banh Mi. We never expected such great differences, but each sandwich was very different from the other!
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I've been blessed to know folks like JohnL, PeterL, Angela (whose warmth and graciousness always keeps us going), TammyC, and MrC! So what's next guys????
I think you can tell the problem I had with this sandwich……man, it was so D-R-Y….really. The proteins had the texture of rousong, which I guess is ok if you like the stuff. And you may well like it that way, since I've been told by Kirbie that I'm the only person she knows of who doesn't like the stuff! It's also pretty flavorless. Look, I'm the first to say when there's too much mayo or spread on my banh mi, but this was just too dry. What mayo the sandwich had was spread over one thin line near the edge of the bread. Even the cilantro looked wilted….
This time along with the bread, everything else seemed a bit fresher, but the cha lua, which has almost a light smokey flavor to my palate was like rubber and the cha tom, while decent, having a mild shrimpy flavor, this still didn't satisfy me.
