Bánh Mì San Jose

In 2015 a walk along Story Road between numbers 990 and 1210 passed three bánh mì counters, and each had settled on a house signature. Thanh Son Hien Khanh, at 990, toasted skinny torpedo rolls, kept the filling sparse, ran its grilled pork very spicy, and served its special combination without headcheese. Thien Huong, at 1181, sold baguettes straight from its own bakery case and packed them with cucumber spears and diced scallion. Phat Tri, at 1210, charged about five dollars for a foot-long and built its special around a coarse, grainy pâté that sat on the tongue like a country terrine. Thien Huong and Phat Tri had no seating at all, so the sandwiches left in paper to be eaten twenty minutes later in a parked car or an office, and the crust had to survive the ride.

That crust is the whole contest on a street with this much competition. A baguette kept warm in a small oven keeps a dry, loud shell that cracks at the first bite and showers the lap, and Thanh Huong, on Senter Road, ran exactly that arrangement in 2015. A roll bagged while still steaming goes leathery inside the hour, the failure every counter works to avoid. Toasting a split torpedo, as Thanh Son Hien Khanh does, drives off the last of the moisture so that the pickle and the spicy pork meet a surface that still rasps against the roof of the mouth. A heavier filling needs a firmer crumb, and a counter that stuffs generously has to sell its bread within hours of the oven.

The older center sits a few miles away at Lion Plaza, on Tully Road at King Road. In 1982 the developer Jerry Chen converted a 27,000-square-foot former Safeway into Lion Market, and the first Phở Hòa opened in the plaza by 1984 or 1985; the grand opening in April 1988 counted sixty shops. Kim's Sandwiches, at 1816 Tully, works from the back of that plaza: a small family counter with no seating that fills rolls with pork belly, charcoaled shredded pork, or pork meatball over a butter-and-mayonnaise spread. The smell of charcoal pork and warm bread carries into the parking lot, and a sandwich bought here is a short walk from the aisles of Lion Market.

The commercial center then settled at the corner of Story Road and McLaughlin Avenue. Accounts date the Grand Century Mall to 2000 or 2001, and the larger Vietnam Town development followed in the 2010s. Saigon's Bakery, at 953 McLaughlin, sold the standard baguette alongside a squat short roll, with a deal of two short-bread sandwiches and a third free and a barbecue pork with a sweet, creamy glaze. The choice of roll is part of the order. Huong Lan, on Tully, topped grilled pork with peanuts for a second crunch, so a customer there gets two textures, the shell of the baguette and the snap of the nut, from one bite.

Downtown, Dakao, at 98 East San Salvador Street, sold its bánh mì on a baguette or a croissant and has long been a lunch stop for students from San Jose State. The croissant shatters in flakes rather than crackling, and the butter in the layers meets the pâté in a way a plain crumb cannot. Its pork with pork skin was the standout, the skin giving a slow, gelatinous chew against the crisp shell. A student can pick the loaf by how much noise the lunch should make.

Lion Plaza, Story Road, and a street-name vote

San Jose took in Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon in April 1975, and later waves in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s were mostly relatives of those first arrivals. Lion Plaza became their commercial meeting place, and as the Vietnamese population grew, many of the plaza's Chinese American shops passed to Vietnamese shopkeepers. By the early 2000s the commercial center had moved to Story Road.

In 2007 the city moved to name a business district along Story Road. In November of that year the City Council voted 8 to 3 for the compromise name Saigon Business District, a proposal from council member Madison Nguyen. Many Vietnamese Americans had wanted Little Saigon, and protests at City Hall continued for months. On March 4, 2008, the council rescinded the name without adopting Little Saigon and proposed letting business owners choose district names themselves.

A recall petition against Nguyen was submitted on April 22, 2008, and qualified on October 9, 2008, for the ballot of March 3, 2009. Voters rejected the recall, 55 percent to 45 percent. The counters on Story Road had gone on selling sandwiches through all sixteen months of the argument, under whatever name the signs carried.