The banh mi has come a long way in New Orleans from the days when we had to call them “Vietnamese po-boys.” Always a traditional favorite in Vietnamese communities, for food lovers elsewhere these delicious, multi-textured sandwiches have grown from something exotic, to a comfort food craving, to the launch pad for new ideas.
Most Vietnamese noodle shops serve them, of course. And if you visit Dong Phuong, the bakery and restaurant out in the eastern reaches of New Orleans East, you’ll find a sandwich counter with a huge variety and also the operation that produces so much of the banh mi bread used by others around town.
But these days the number and diversity of places where you can find banh mi has exploded across New Orleans. There’s late-night banh mi at Lost Love Lounge, the Marigny bar with a Vietnamese kitchen serving until midnight, and there’s high-concept modern banh mi, as practiced at MoPho near City Park, which has introduced such exotica as shredded duck with banana barbecue sauce or fried oysters with pickled blue cheese as banh mi fillings.
Increasingly, there’s also something I’ve started to call convenience store banh mi. This has come about as more of the Vietnamese families who run so many of the corner stores around town recognize the potential of serving their own food next to the neighborhood standards of fried rice and yaka mein. Singleton’s in the Black Pearl is one good example, and another is Eat Well Food Store, at the corner of Canal and Broad in Mid-City, where they make banh mi on extra-long po-boy loaves, and where you can assemble yourself a banh mi and gumbo combo if you’re so inclined.
Still, even for all this, it was eye-opening, and mouthwatering, to discover the crab boil hot sausage banh mi, a southeast Asia-to-southeast Louisiana crossover hit at Mr. Bubbles Sandwich House.
This walk-up sandwich stand with the cheerful name is in the lobby of the Asian food super store Hong Kong Market, in Terrytown. It turns out the proprietor of Mr. Bubbles, Chanh Nguyen, is a native of Vietnam who has fully embraced the outdoor culinary culture of his adopted Louisiana home, with crawfish boils, pig roasts and such. It didn’t take long for some of that to make it into his eatery. So, they take a beef and chicken hot sausage link, rev it up with more spice, and slather it with aioli, which is further spiked with garlic, chile and, for good measure, Louisiana crab boil.
The result is a multilateral heat pulsing between the fresh crunch of carrots and cucumber and cilantro and the toasty crunch of the banh mi loaf.
Like any good banh mi, it makes a quick lunch or handy snack that’s the right kind of cheap thrill. It’s not exactly traditional, but that also feels appropriate. After all, the banh mi was born from fusion, a baguette sandwich transplanted from France to its one-time colony in Vietnam and changed along the way. Here in Louisiana, another former outpost of French empire, the legacy of change for this delicious sandwich is still on a roll.
Eat Well Food Store
2700 Canal St., New Orleans
14207 Chef Menteur Hwy., New Orleans
927 Behrman Hwy., Terrytown
2529 Dauphine St., New Orleans
Mr. Bubbles Sandwich House
927 Behrman Hwy., Terrytown
514 City Park Ave., New Orleans
Singleton’s Food Store
7446 Garfield St., New Orleans
