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Originally designed to lure diners inside, The Banh Mi Shop’s sandwiches turned out to be perfect to-go meals when the pandemic hit. | MABEL SUEN
[REVIEW]
Breaking Bread The Banh Mi Shop dazzles with thoughtful and delicious Vietnamese cuisine Written by
CHERYL BAEHR The Banh Mi Shop 567 Melville Avenue, University City; 314390-2836. Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. (Closed Monday.)
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rowing up, Jimmy Trinh ate banh mi almost every day. His parents, Vietnamese immigrants who also owned a restaurant, made sure that his lunchbox was always packed
with pate-stuffed and pickled-vegetable-adorned baguettes before they sent him off to school each morning. Sometimes, they were topped with his mom’s fragrant lemongrass chicken or leftover beef stew they’d had the night before — a meal that, by today’s standards, would make him the envy of every little gourmand in the cafeteria. He hated it. Trinh laughs when he recalls unwrapping his sandwich and being perpetually disappointed that it wasn’t bologna on white bread, remembering a desire for American-style processed meat that had little to do with his food’s taste and more to do with wanting to fit in. However, that negative perception of his family’s cuisine would change after Trinh graduated from high school and took what was supposed to be a threeweek trip to Vietnam — one that turned into a yearlong sojourn into the food of the homeland he left when he was a baby. There,
he gravitated to the banh mi and developed a passion for the sandwich that he hasn’t since shook. After returning to the United States from his trip, Trinh was determined to open a banh mi shop of his own, even as his parents attempted to dissuade him. As he saw it, the food business was in his blood, having grown up sleeping on the rice bags at his parents’ restaurant. Though his mom and dad hoped that experience — and watching them work seventeenhour days — would persuade him to take another path, Trinh jumped into the industry at the now-shuttered Tani Sushi Bistro, where he found success for a decade as its sushi chef and general manager. Trinh left Tani in late 2019, determined to make his dreams of opening a banh-mi-focused restaurant a reality. After searching neighborhoods throughout the St. Louis area, he found the Delmar Loop to be the perfect fit for the fast-casual
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concept he wanted to run and secured a spot on Melville in a small storefront that was most recently the Indian restaurant Taj Mahal. He freshened up the space with a coat of soothing gray paint, blackand-white photographs of Vietnam and some bright red stools (a nod to the typical street-food stall seating he noticed throughout southeast Asia), then opened the doors to the Banh Mi Shop on February 25, 2020, prepared to shake hands with passersby and welcome guests into his restaurant. What he wasn’t prepared for was a global pandemic. As Trinh explains, his vision for the Banh Mi Shop was of an old-school, mom-and-pop-style quick-service spot where he would get to know his guests through in-person interactions. He didn’t have a phone or a website — he didn’t want them. Instead he hoped his restaurant would be a place that people would wander into and learn about by word of mouth.
MARCH 10-16, 2021
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