Heaven Itself

I am perhaps the only person I know who looks forward to jury duty. Not for the two days spent in a dingy jury room in lower Manhattan, but for the two hour lunches that permit me to ramble through a neighborhood I have loved for more than thirty years-Chinatown. On my first day, after escaping from voir dire in a child molestation trial, I figured I needed a reward, and given the semi-decent weather, went to one of my favorites in the neighborhood, a tiny Vietnamese sandwich joint, Banh Mi Saigon, on Mott just downtown of Grand Street.

For those of you who have never eaten banh mi, it is the perhaps the finest refutation that colonialism was all bad. The mission civilisatrice of the French Empire may not have ended that well, but damn, they taught the Vietnamese to bake. Bread, that is. These are the finest baguettes I've had outside of Paris.

I first made my acquaintance with these loaves and sandwiches in my dear former home of New Orleans. I was escaping a court appearance on the piquant West Bank, where lawyers from New Orleans proper were regarded as a dangerous virus from a half-mile away across the Mississsippi, and I needed some proper sustenance. My sister, who worked on behalf of battered women nearby, agreed to meet me, and suggested a Vietnamese place in the shadow of the bridge over the river-Pho Tau Bay.

I was intrigued by the menu heading "Vietnamese Po-Boys." I ordered a spicy chicken specimen, and encountered the fantastic product of the clash of civilizations-Vietnamese herb marinated chicken, pickled vegetables, fresh mint, hot peppers, with the eggiest of home made French-style mayonnaises on perfect, crisp French bread. Three bucks for two worlds between two pieces of bread. Needless to say I was addicted, and when a branch of Pho Tay Bay opened near my own office a few years later, I went for lunch almost every day. (Falling in love with three or four of the staff-Cathy, Anne, Alice and Vy, je t'aime!-didn't hurt either).

Further, shockingly, it was the best bread in New Orleans. Despite the City's vaunted Creole heritage, the bread at even the most ancien Creole restaurants was mediocre. The scandal of New Orleans bread was an open one. Like a beloved uncle with a drinking problem, it was apparent whenever one sat down at table, but never spoken of.

Regrettably, I left New Orleans. Even more regrettably, most of Pho Tau Bays restaurants, which had grown to four in number, all incredibly successful on the backs of those sandwiches, folded after damage from Katrina. Vy Banh and family I believe are making them now in a restaurant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania-I think it's called "Rice and Noodles"

But New Yorkers can get an approximation of what I loved at Banh Mi Saigon. It ain't as good. the bread is close, the fillings are close, but there's no yellow mayo, or Cathy or Anne to flirt with.

But it's still the best damned sandwich in the five boroughs