A number of Vietnamese restaurants were already selling banh mi when this little outfit began specializing in the sandwiches. Resembling poor boys, bahn mi are filled with as wide a range of ingredients as poor boys are. But very different ingredients. Instead of lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and mayo you get lettuce, pickled carrots, cucumbers, fresh herbs, Sriracha-style hot sauce, and a few other things about which the less you know before you try your first one the better. "Bahn mi" is a general reference to the bread, but it's understood you want a sandwich. Here, that's really all they have, or need.
To Nguyen began selling bahn mi from her home not long before the hurricane. The operation graduated into a food truck. It hit the big time during the first Po-Boy Festival on Oak Street in 2007, when many people who had never ventured out to New Orleans East for a sandwich heard the buzz and tried a bahn mi. I was one of the judges that year and voted their Vietnamese ham (really, it's a cured mystery meat) sandwich the best of the entire festival. And with every major poor boy maker in town there, that was saying something. By then they were in a little storefront on Chef Menteur Highway. They also turn up at all the food festivals around town.
Banh Mi Sao Mai has always been primarily a take-out place, but the utilitarian little place can give you a place to land.
Note that they only accept cash. The restaurant keeps traditional Vietnamese hours, opening fairly early in the morning (around seven) and going only until five in the afternoon.
| Attitude | 1 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 0 |
| Hipness | 2 |
| Local Color | 0 |
| Service | 0 |
| Value | 3 |
| Wine | 0 |
