Lily’s Sandwich
Today for lunch we decided on Lily’s Sandwich in Chinatown Center for bánh mì (Vietnamese sandwiches) and spring rolls. Ashley and I both had the barbecue pork bánh mì ($3.00 each) and shared a package of pork and shrimp spring rolls ($3.65 for 3).
“Fusion” cuisine is one of my pet peeves. I’d usually much rather have good examples of traditional dishes than someone’s attempt at making something new by combining elements of different cuisines. However, in those cases where history and circumstances have created a fusion that has stood the test of time, I’m all on board. The bánh mì is a perfect example of this. It combines the brilliance of a proper baguette with meats and vegetables prepared in a typical Vietnamese style. Yum! Hooray for colonialism! And it of course doesn’t hurt that they’re usually very inexpensive.
I thought the bánh mì at Lily’s was good but not great. The bread and vegetables were solid, but the meat didn’t seem like it had actually been grilled. In this sandwich it should definitely be chargrilled just like you’d find in a nice bowl of barbecue pork vermicelli.
The spring rolls were delicious both with the peanut sauce and with Huy Fong Sriracha (known to some as “Rooster Sauce”), which is my favorite way of eating them.
Though I think of Lily’s as a sandwich place, they have a pretty extensive menu of other Vietnamese items that look worth checking out, including several eel and bi-valve dishes. I predict that we’ll be back. The cooler also contains a nice selection of Vietnamese drinks.
After Lily’s we headed next door to Short ‘n Sweet to get Ashley a taro bubble tea and then to MT Supermarket to buy ingredients for an upcoming udon noodle dish. Besides looking at quail eggs and a few other interesting things, we of course had to walk through the meat and seafood sections.
I stopped being surprised at the meat sections in Asian grocery stores a long time ago, but today I saw pig rectum in the cooler. Color me surprised. Oh, and MT Supermarket looks like it will be a good place to buy bones for Project Bone Marrow (more on that later).
Kyle
