Kat Food

People used to always rant and rave to me about how wonderful Vietnamese sandwiches are. Cheap, filling, and…healthy? I wasn’t convinced though. I’ve never had a ‘great’ Vietnamese sandwich. To me they looked like stale sandwiches with hard bread and overstuffed with veggies.

Until now. Maybe now I can finally see the light. In honor of sandwich month, I agreed to go with Teal to try a Vietnamese sandwich. She Yelped a local sandwich shop called Cam Hung in Sunnyvale. It’s small, tucked into a strip mall that promises to sell you insurance and alcohol, and is across the street from a Subway (another ‘healthy’ sandwich shop that’s cheap but on a chain scale).

The inside is a hodge podge of sticky chairs, packs of cookies and banana peppers, and coolers full of Asian-esque drinks like coconut milk or soy milk. The colorful menu of sandwiches is prominent. In addition to sandwiches, there are spring rolls, rice dishes, and other deep fried goodies.

I ordered the 4b, which is a sweet BBQ pork banh mi. It was huge, warm, and only $3.00! I have to admit, before I took the first bite, I was pretty hesitant. What would this Vietnamese sandwich give me that others didn’t? Surprisingly, a lot! The BBQ pork was tender and moist, it wasn’t hard and dry, and the crispy bread with the soft and fluffy insides was a great complement to the fragrant cilantro, sharp onions and crispy daikon pieces. It was a revelation.

Teal’s sandwich also looked very tasty, though I didn’t try a bite because I was too busy scarfing my own down. She really liked hers! This was the 4a, which is the regular BBQ pork (savory, not sweet).

All in all, a good eye opening experience to a new world of inexpensive eats. I don’t see myself craving Vietnamese sandwiches on a regular basis, but at least I’m not completely out of the loop!