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Food guide

How to find a good banh mi

A banh mi is one of the best value sandwiches in America — usually five to eight dollars for something built from pâté, cured meat, pickled vegetables, chilli and herbs. And it lives or dies on a baguette that almost no other sandwich uses.

What separates a good one from a bad one

  • A crust that shatters — Vietnamese baguettes use rice flour, which makes them lighter and crisper than French ones and gives an airy, almost hollow interior. A dense bakery baguette makes a heavy sandwich and is the most common failure.
  • Baked that morning, ideally on site — Vietnamese baguettes go stale within hours. Shops that bake their own or take delivery twice a day are the ones to find.
  • Pâté and butter, both — The traditional base is liver pâté and a mayonnaise or butter. Skipping either is a common Americanisation and it flattens the sandwich.
  • Do chua with real bite — Pickled daikon and carrot, still crunchy, genuinely sour. Limp pickles mean they were made too far ahead.
  • Fresh chilli and cilantro at the end — Added to order. If the sandwich is pre-made and wrapped, the herbs have wilted.

What to order

  • Thit nguoi (đặc biệt) — The combination — several cured pork cuts, pâté, the works. The one to judge by.
  • Thit nuong — Grilled marinated pork. The most approachable.
  • Xiu mai — Pork meatballs in tomato sauce. Messy and excellent.
  • Chay — The vegetarian version, usually tofu or seitan, and often better than it has any right to be.
  • A Vietnamese iced coffee alongside — Condensed milk, strong drip coffee. Standard.

Where to find banh mi

Banh mi is mostly found at pho and Vietnamese noodle-soup shops, so that is where to look. Open listings put 6,912 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.

Cities with the most

San Jose, CA 191 Seattle, WA 131 Westminster, CA 128 Garden Grove, CA 128 San Francisco, CA 120 New York, NY 108 Houston, TX 103 Portland, OR 80 Philadelphia, PA 65 Chicago, IL 64 San Diego, CA 63 Los Angeles, CA 59

Campuses with the most within a mile

Seattle U 44 NYU 40 Pace University 27 Laney College 27 BMCC 26 Jefferson 25 The New School 25 Seattle Central 22 San Jose State University 21 Hawaii Pacific University 18

A few to start with

Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.

How Savor Scout looks for it

Banh mi searches read for bakery language and for bread mentions in reviews specifically, because that is the variable people comment on when a shop is good. Many banh mi counters are inside grocery stores or shared spaces, so the matcher does not require a standalone restaurant listing.

Find banh mi near you →

Looking in a particular city?

Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.

All 1,000 cities →

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