The sandwich might be the perfect vessel for food. It is where you get everything you need in your diet. You get your carbohydrates, vegetables, protein, fat, salt, and mustard. It’s versatile and adaptable. It is portable, shareable, and when you save a part of it for later, it’s the best thing you've ever eaten.
The sandwich is also a cross cultural delicacy. Every part of the world has a version of it. Many have brought their version from one culture to another and embraced it as if that particular sandwich has always and will always exist there. That is what happened when the first Vietnamese immigrants brought the banh mi to Seattle. People here love it so much it became the city's unofficially official sandwich. It’s a very simple design: French bread, protein, mayonnaise, jalapeño, pickled daikon and carrots, cucumber, and sometimes pâté. Every Vietnamese restaurant has their own take and every aficionado has their favorite.
There are so many favorites and lists of favorites, and many more that the lists of favorites leave off their lists, that the internet research to find a really great banh mi can get overwhelming. Plus, how far do you really want to go for the best? Many of the sandwiches on these “best of” Seattle lists were one or two cities removed. Going to Lynnwood for a good sandwich is fine for some people, but it is not feasible or practical for the majority of us in the city. So, when coming up with my own roundup, I stuck to a few rules. The first was that this was a list of terrific Seattle banh mi, and so should stay within city boundaries.
The second rule was that I stuck with one protein as a sort of easy way to judge from shop to shop. I chose pork. I remember that the first banh mi I ever had was pork, so to me this is the classic. There were two exceptions to this rule, and one is when I tried the sandwich at a vegan restaurant.
The last rule is that the sandwich is the king. Whatever else the restaurant had, chips, fries, pho broth, or Thai tea were all superfluous to the true journey. Though, if you want to know of a good non-dairy Thai tea in Georgetown, I have a recommendation.
My study was as scientific as I could make it, but like any list of this kind, it is only my opinion. These are sandwiches I enjoyed at a specific point in time, with my taste buds in a certain order, and with a cook who was on their best day or their worst. It’s really a subjective matter of, well, taste. So, instead of imploring you or trying to sell you on a particular restaurant, I will give you five options. These five options will not be numbered, but instead be given a category of honor that describes the place, the sandwich, and why I favored it.
