Let Me Tell You About a Sandwich I Had Recently

July 1, 2006

This is an entry about Banh Mi with no comments

Readers from the 2005 era will remember the sandwich I had on Martin Luther King’s birthday.

Now, deep into 2006, At least six months had passed since my last trip to Oakland’s Chinatown for such a sandwich and that experience was such a complete disaster (wrong place, wrong assembly) and left me bitter and sandwich-shy. Would the Vietnamese sandwich ever be able to redeem itself?

I had hopes of erasing that horrible experience, and on Friday I returned to a tiny little place on Market Street that had run out of the specific item I wanted earlier in the week…a place where the owner saw me react in a “pissy” manner when I stormed out and resorted to buying a Cliff Bar at Walgreens for lunch. Yet because I’m a believer in the spirit of mankind I decided to grace the tiny cafe once more. The guy remembered me as the guy who “seemed mad the other day” [could describe anybody], but name me one person who doesn’t get irritated when tofu is all sold out and they won’t just make you a “wish sandwich.”

But he made me a sandwich! And it was great! Not Cam Huong good; what is really? But decent enough. Enough for a side-by-side sandwich study at some point in the future.