What’s that? You’ve never had a Vietnamese sandwich? You think it’s some sort of euphemism for sex with 2 Vietnamese child prostitutes? Well I was right there with you until this weekend.
First off – how did I find this place? It’s not like Viet sandwich cafes litter the streets, and Vietnamese restaurants typically limit their menus to pho and combination plates. I was in Denver for Pugs Day at the Park – aka Smeagol and Stella’s (my black and fawn pugs) favorite day of the year.
For Pugfest, hundreds of Denver-area pugs and their owners (or guardians, depending on how big of a hippy you are) take over City Park for an afternoon of games, socializing and stepping in pug poop. My pugs especially enjoy the eating contest. Smeagol won his first year at Pugfest, but fell to second place last year and slipped to third this time out (finishing just a second behind his much smaller sister, Stella).
After the pugs ate their hot dogs, I got hungry. Parking downtown didn’t seem very appetizing, especially with Octoberfest and the Great American Beer Festival going on this weekend. I first drove down Colfax, which is Denver’s sex-shop and drug-deal central. Or I should say was. While you can still catch a peep show 24 hours a day, the re-development of Colfax also means that you can score a really tasty meal at any of several excellent restaurants that have recently moved in. However, on this particular day, nothing was beckoning to me. Nope, I heard the siren call of Federal and, like Ulysses, was powerless to resist.
Federal Boulevard might be even more run down than Colfax. It houses significant minority populations, which means one thing in my book – phenomenal, authentic ethnic food. This is the taco cart, menudo, noodle and pho capital of Colorado. There may be bars on the windows and a distinct lack of English, but you can bet your bottom peso (or dong or yuan) that there’s good food to be eaten inside.
I drove down the street – which feels about 1,000 miles away from my suburban neighborhood but is in actuality only 20 – struggling to decipher the restaurants from the payday loans and liquor stores (I don’t read any Asian languages and it’s been a while since high school Spanish). The taco carts looked most appealing, but I didn’t have any cash after paying the pugs’ entry fee into the hot dog eating contest, and I assumed that an eatery on wheels wouldn’t take Visa.
And then I saw it. Not just Vietnamese – I’ve got lots of conventional Vietnamese restaurants in my ‘hood – but Vietnamese sandwiches. Something different. Something tempting. Something I had to try.
Inside they helpfully had photographs of all my sandwich (or banh mi) choices. Being a bit trepidatious of meats I’m unaccustomed to, I ordered 1 chicken and 1 BBQ pork. Each was just $2.75 and more than adequate to satisfy someone with a normal appetite.
Chicken, BBQ pork? This isn’t sounding so exotic. What is it that makes a Vietnamese sandwich Vietnamese, you ask. First, I’ve got to give credit to France. Yes before their days of “I surrender,” France controlled Vietnam. The French supply the crispy baguette and the Vietnamese added in local ingredients like cilantro, spicy peppers, pickled carrots and a variety of meats.
Some varieties spread on goose pate (trust me it’s good – even if you don’t like pate) and/or spiced mayonnaise. You can even get head cheese in it (Note: head cheese has nothing to do with cheese and a whole lot to do with head). All in all it’s a big punch of flavor wrapped up inside something so simple as a sandwich.
After I finished them I wondered what it was that made these sandwiches so much better than the deli ones I’m used to. Most of the components are the same as what I’m used to, and the ones that are different aren’t exactly different in a good way (ahem, goose pate). But somehow it all comes together to create something bigger, and tastier, than its parts. I’m not saying this will change your life, like Marco’s coal-fired pizza or dim sum will, but it will change your lunch hour. 
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