Bahn Mi

My first banh mi experience occurred at an impromptu lunch this week with the hubby, who was looking for a lunch companion via Facebook, forgetting that I regularly stalk him via social networking.

After strong-arming him into lunch, we agreed to meet in north Austin's Chinatown at Lily Sandwich. It's an unassuming little shop, not terribly clean but certainly not dirty enough to sound any alarms.

It's possible I couldn't really distinguish the three different types of "meat" in my sandwich. But I loved the fresh cilantro, pickled carrots and cucumber, and their crunchy-soft baguette. I also loved the budget-friendly price ($3.25) and getting to see Mike for one of our rare lunches together.

Their baguette was so fresh, we bought a few loaves (made in-house) to take to a friend's house for dinner later that evening -- and I'm pretty sure I'll be asking Mike to bring some home on a semi-regular basis as Lily isn't far from his office.


Side note: One Yelp reviewer mentioned that the guy taking their bubble tea order tried to gyp them out of a couple of bucks. The same thing happened to us, and my guess is that their bubble tea guy is the same guy who made our sandwiches. We ordered two sandwiches at $3.25 each, plus a can of soda. I figured that would come to no more than $8-$9, yet the man behind the counter simply said "Ten dollars." After a couple of minutes - we stood watching while he made our sandwiches - another guy rang us up with an actual calculator. Even with a last-minute egg roll thrown into our order, our real total came to just under $9. So, sure, the sandwich maker was trying to make a couple extra bucks off of us. Not cool, sandwich guy. But I'll keep going back, and I'll just call him out on his erroneous math if it happens again.