About this blog

I eat a lot of bánh mì. More than is strictly sensible, if I'm honest. I've had them across cities and continents — Toronto, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, up and down Vietnam — and somewhere along the way I started keeping track of which ones were worth it and which ones weren't. This blog is that record: part diary, part ranking, part excuse to keep eating sandwiches and call it research. If it helps someone else find a good one, so much the better.

It started the way these things tend to — by accident. A single sandwich at a cafe on Bloor Street showed me there's an art to a good bánh mì that I'd never found in any other sandwich. I've been chasing it ever since.

One rule, and I try to hold to it: the place has to be serious about bánh mì. I'm not interested in pho restaurants that have bánh mì on the menu as an afterthought. At those places I usually order pho. If it's not in the name — or at least advertised in the window like the shop means it — I'm probably not ordering it. I bend this occasionally, when somewhere surprises me or a trip leaves me no other option, but when I do, I'll say so plainly. A rule you never admit to breaking isn't really a rule.

The benchmark is Bloor Street, Toronto — specifically Rustle & Still Café and Lamhan Bánh Mì, a few doors apart, both excellent, both Vietnamese-run. That's the fixed point everything else gets measured against. I didn't pick it because Toronto is the centre of the bánh mì universe. I've had better — a couple of other spots in Toronto, and the genuinely great ones abroad. I've had worse, including, yes, some places in Vietnam itself. So Better Than Bloor Street is my unit of measurement.

Below is a map to get you started: a search for bánh mì near Bloor Street, which is as good a place to begin as any. The rest of the blog is just me, a long series of sandwiches, and an honest answer to the same question over and over — was it better than Bloor Street?

A Google Maps search for bánh mì near Bloor Street.