Restaurant Review
17 Mar 2009

Bánh Mì Mỹ Tho – Alhambra

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A couple weeks after rocking the party at Disneyland to celebrate my birthday, The Astronomer and I returned to Anaheim to cash in our 2fer California Adventure passes. Disney has been most generous to us this month. Grazie!

Sticking with tradition, we stopped in Alhambra to pick up some Vietnamese sandwiches for lunch and dinner. An amusement park outing just wouldn’t be complete without our third wheel—banh mi.

Bánh Mì Mỹ Tho was recommended to me by gas•tron•o•my reader William. “My favorite banh mi shop is Bánh Mì Mỹ Tho,” he writes. “The shop is small, but the taste is big at this place. I think they have the best tasting banh mi around. Even better than the fancy schmancy Mr. Baguette.” I really do love receiving reader recs, especially from folks who hail from the San Gabriel Valley. Thanks, William!

The petite shop was was crammed with banh mi-goers and prepared foods the morning we stopped in. In addition to sandwiches, Bánh Mì Mỹ Tho also sells com tam (broken rice plates), bun (vermicelli rice noodles), and banh uot (thin rice noodle sheets).

Not knowing how huge the sandwiches were going to be, The Astronomer and I purchased four of them to-go. I dug into the banh mi thit nguoi ($2) on the car ride down to Anaheim for breakfast. The array of cold cuts present were plentiful and mild in flavor—even the pate was quite subdued. The bread was firm and substantial.

The banh mi xiu mai ($2.25) was the tastiest of the bunch. The bits of ground pork were sauteed in a sweet and savory marinade with onions. The saucy marinade served to flavor the meat and moisten the bread.

The banh mi thit nuong ($2.25) was sweet and savory as well, but not executed as successfully as the xiu mai. We prefer our thit nuong with a deeper lemongrass flavor.

The banh mi nem nuong ($2.25) was decent—the meatballs provided more texture than flavor due to the overly bread-y baguette.

From what I’ve sampled so far, the downfall of banh mi in the San Gabriel Valley are the baguettes—they’re far too large and much, much too thick. A proper Vietnamese baguette is made entirely of rice flour, which yields a crisp exterior and hollow center, thus allowing the fixins to really shine through. (See: A Chau in San Diego and our banh mi thit nuong vendor in Saigon for some perfect specimens.) The banh mi makers in this town need to move away from super-sized baguettes because the resulting product packs a watered-down punch. Quality always trumps quantity, and good taste rules all.

The banh mi I’ve tasted in the San Gabriel Valley are good, but I’m looking for stellar.

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Bánh Mì Mỹ Tho
304 W Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA 91803
Phone: 626-289-4160

Banh Mi My Tho on Urbanspoon

Banh Mi My Tho in Los Angeles

Restaurant Review
16 Mar 2009

V.P. Tofu – Monterey Park

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When it comes to desserts, there’s always room for tofu. I’m not one for drawing broad conclusions, but I’ve tested this truism across several continents and countless meals, and it has never failed me.

After cramming in one too many “bread foods” at Qing Dao Bread Food, The Astronomer and I headed up the street to V.P. Tofu for dessert. Following a porky and greasy Chinese feast, the thought of warm silken tofu was downright soothing and endlessly appealing.

V.P. Tofu is a Vietnamese-run establishment offering all sorts of soy products, including fresh tofu, deep-fried tofu, and soy milk (or “soy juice” if you’re in Tony C.’s camp). There’s also a selection of Vietnamese sweets like sticky rice (xoi) and tapioca cakes (banh da lon) strewn across the counter.

We ordered two small containers of sweet tofu ($1.10 each)—one with ginger syrup and the other with pandan essence. Both were served in Styrofoam cups to protect our hands. There’s no seating for patrons inside V.P., so The Astronomer and I took our sweets to the streets—Asia-style.

The texture of the tofu was perfectly smooth and light, while the flavor was clean and mild. The ginger syrup wasn’t as intensely spicy as the ones made by our favorite street side tofu vendor in Saigon, but definitely flavorful enough to sweeten the gentle curds nicely.

The pandan tofu was delightful as well. I was skeptical at the start due to a previous bad experience with a pandan imposter, but was very pleased after my first bite. The pandan tofu was topped with creamy coconut milk.

This place is a keeper.

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V.P. Tofu
237 S Garfield Avenue
Monterey Park, CA 91754
Phone: 626-572-9930

Potpourri
14 Mar 2009

Pi (π) Day

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Pi, Greek letter (π), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi = 3.1415926535… Pi Day is celebrated by food lovers and math enthusiasts around the world on March 14.

I’m gonna grab a slice at Pie ‘n Burger. If you’re in the neighborhood, I highly recommend doing the same. Woot!