This is the place with what Astroboi and I would call, the "groovy love beads".
It used to be the old Da Kine's in the 90's...
In fact Hawaiian travel posters are still in their bathrooms.
I liked the smiling octopus decor on top of their already crowded counter. Funny!
Our fried egg rolls. The sauce was on the weaker side. Not that much flavor.
Bert ordered pho tai (rare steak) and in my quest to try different versions of egg banh mi, ordered it here. Uh...what's wrong with this picture?
Holy $%#@, that's the most greenery/veg I've ever seen on top of a banh mi sandwich. Was this a salad or what?
The eggs were fried hard the way I liked them but they were hard to see underneath all of the chopped onions, cilantro and pickled carrots and daikon.
I ended up taking off most of the vegetables and putting them on a separate plate. Good gosh, were all of these that necessary? A good banh mi sandwich should be about balance of flavors and textures and this version had waaaaaay too much going on.
This was more manageable after removing that huge clump.
Let's compare the different egg banh mi I've tried this year so far. This one is from Tan Hoang Huong in Tustin. This was on the sparse side. Fillings wer ejust sliced cucumber, a sprig or two of cilanto and two jalapeno slices. No pickled daikon or carrot. Their egg was seasoned well though and fried over hard which I LOVE.
(photo from my "Mini Roadtrip -First Stops: Cream Pan and THH", February 2012)
From Cali Baguette in CV...You'll see that like THH, they also use the long French style baguette. The cucumber was a bit wide but still thinly sliced.They ask you here if you want jalapenos or no as well. This came with the pickled vegetables unlike THH.
and the now defunct Van Hoa (which Kirk reported is now Banh Cuon Ha Long). This was my first time trying this style of bread which is a thicker and more rounder loaf rather than the long baguette. I did like the bread because it held up well with the fillings.
(photos from my "Egg banh mi sandwiches from Cali Baguette and Van Hoa" post, June 2016)
I liked Van Hoa's version but now that they've changed names, I am not sure if this is even offered anymore.
More recently, I had this version from Dragon Express. It's actually not on their menu, but the guy said they'd made it for me. The bread is the rounder bread and their eggs are not seasoned with Maggi sauce (or anything).
(from my "Dragon Express" post, June 2016)
Of all of the banh mi's I tried, I liked Dragon Express the least because the egg was cooked scrambled and also because it was bland.
Previous visit to Pho Mai Calli:
June 2016
Pho Mai Calli may need to rethink how they dress their banh mi sandwiches. I was very surprised to see all of those "toppings" obscuring the sandwich itself. It could have been anything under there, ha ha. I'm still on the hunt for a great egg banh mi sandwich in SD. If you have any recommendations, please send them my way.
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