Bánh Mì Phở

A server at East Borough, on Washington Boulevard in Culver City, sets down a brisket bánh mì and a bowl of hot phở broth together, and the table smells like a noodle shop before anyone has picked up either one. The roll is a baguette split around sliced beef brisket, cucumber, cilantro, jalapeño and pickled carrot, with a hoisin-sriracha aioli smeared inside. The broth is the clear, spiced beef stock of phở, star anise and clove steaming off the surface, poured into a bowl small enough to dunk a corner of bread into. The restaurant calls the pairing the pho baguette, and the sandwich is eaten in alternation with the bowl: a bite, a dip, a bite.

The aioli is the quiet connector. Hoisin and sriracha are the two bottles that stand on the table at nearly every phở shop, so stirring them into a mayonnaise base carries the bowl's tabletop flavors into the roll before any broth touches it. Brisket sits in both places, a cut that commonly appears in a bowl of phở too, and the beef in the sandwich tastes related to the beef in the stock. The crust cracks and flakes over the cucumber and cilantro, and a dipped corner collapses into something closer to a sponge: hot, salty, faintly sweet from the spice, with the chew of the crumb still holding underneath the soak.

Timing decides the eating. A baguette left in the bowl for ten seconds is a wet sheet that falls apart at the seam, and the jalapeño slices slide out into the soup. A quick dunk of the crust end, held over the bowl, gives a bite that is crisp on the outside and saturated at the tip, with the pickled carrot still bright against the beef. The broth cools as it sits, so the first dips are the best ones, scalding enough that the steam fogs the cilantro. Diners finish the cup afterward, drinking what the bread has not already taken.

The model for the arrangement is the French dip, where a roast beef roll is dunked in a cup of au jus. Here the jus is phở stock and the roll is a Vietnamese baguette sandwich, with the pickles and herbs of a bánh mì cutting through the beef broth's fat. The logic of the French dip carries over whole: the broth is a sauce that arrives in a cup, the bread is the spoon, and the dunking is done bite by bite so the roll never sits long enough to dissolve. Brisket suits the job, since the long-cooked beef holds its shape in the mouth while the crumb around it goes soft and warm, and the jalapeño adds a clean, green heat that the stock's slow spice never supplies on its own.

The idea travels without much trouble, because any bánh mì with a crisp crust can sit beside a cup of broth. The Costa Mesa shop serves its version with sliced meat, cucumber, cilantro and jalapeño, and a restaurant in La Vista, Nebraska, lists a phở mì dip on its noodle-soup menu, said to have started when a co-owner dunked a sandwich into his own bowl on a whim. A fried-tofu roll with pickled daikon and carrot meets the same bowl at a shop in East Lansing, Michigan. In each, the sandwich supplies the pickle crunch and the herb sharpness, and the broth supplies the warmth, the salt and the spice that a cold-filled roll lacks.

Origin and history

East Borough opened in Costa Mesa, in Orange County, in 2010 as a Vietnamese fusion restaurant, and opened a second location at 9810 Washington Boulevard in Culver City in early 2014. Its menu treats Vietnamese dishes as raw material for reinvention, and the pho baguette is the clearest example: a banh mi built to be eaten with the soup that shares its country.

Whether the Costa Mesa kitchen served the pho baguette before 2014 is not documented. The Culver City version is. By 31 January 2014 it was in print: brisket in the roll, a hoisin-sriracha aioli, broth on the side, and a smell, on arrival, of a bowl of phở.

Within months the sandwich had a national label. By July 2014, food coverage was describing the pho baguette as a banh mi French dip, and the phrase fits the table: the sandwich is the meal, the broth is the sauce, and the bowl is dipped until it is empty.