Viet French Cafe and Sandwiches

Came here on a Sunday afternoon with a friend who met a Vietnamese food connoisseur at a random Vietnamese restaurant who suggested this place. Apparently this Vietnamese food connoisseur claims to frequent different Vietnamese restaurants in Philly just to find the best kind of Vietnamese food. He said Viet French Café has the best banh mis because the bread is very fresh.
Well, I had high hopes due to this suggestion but boy was this place a let down. The bread was not fresh at all. What I got was old, dry, hard bread. The toppings weren’t the best I’ve had either. They were pretty stingy with the filling/​filling, so the ratio of meat to bread was low. I’ve been to some places where the meat in the sandwich (such as grilled chicken) came out piping hot and overstuffed the bread. It was not the case here.
My friend took a gamble at their fermented rice wine dessert, made with brown rice, something I’m not familiar with. I have had the Chinese version called jiu niang, which I love. This should be similar, but this tasted nothing like jiu niang! The fermented rice stuff was not sweet like I thought it should be and smelled like nail polish! I’m pretty sure it was a bad batch where the yeast went bad. My friend had to chuck it and we didn’t bother asking for a refund because the woman behind the counter wasn’t too friendly. Either that or her english wasn’t very good so she was annoyed we weren’t Vietnamese and was asking her too many questions.
I also got the three color dessert (Che Ba Mau), one of my favorite things to get at vietnamese cafes. At first, I was impressed they put in the coconut milk and shaved ice on top after you order it instead of making it before hand. That turned out to be a disappointment, too. The green jelly was too hard, almost crunchy, and cut up all wrong so I got long pieces and short pieces and triangle pieces. They didn’t even bother cutting them into noodles. The shaved ice they put on top was inconstant and had ice chunks in it. The texture of the dessert was all messed up. They also added sugar to the coconut milk which made the whole thing way too sweet for an Asian palate. This was the worst che I’ve ever had.
One thing I will say that is good about this place though is I bought a prepacked portion of grilled pork vermicelli noodles (bun). It was only $ 4 and tasted pretty good.

Use to be my little study spot and banh mi spot while in school… not open Thursday??? what? Lol. Good banh mi’s. Quiet cozy place… that not many people know exist. More food for me. Haha. :P

Looovee the drink selection. The sandwiches are super yummy. Love their Veggie option, fantastic for vegetarians.

I used to love this place, but I think the quality of their hoagies have gone down lately. I like to get the sausage and egg hoagie for breakfast– not too heavy.

Price was right, the bread was bad. Bread tasted day old. Fillings were good and plenty of jalapeño. This can’t make up for bad bread. I’ve been on a bahn mi kick lately, having tried 4 Philly and 2 LA joints in the past two weeks and this was the worst bread of them all. QT and Huong Lan are better options by far. I may return, however, for some of their noodles.

I went in prepared to be WOWed, so maybe I had unrealistic expectations. We always get the tofu version of bahn-​mi. I just wasn’t very impressed. The sauce on the roll was sweet, not spicy. And the tofu wasn’t the yummy marinated kind. It was a weird pressed roll, made to resemble «pork» and not in a good way. It tasted ok, but again not great.
The rolls are baked fresh there & they were good. The veggies were fresh & the service was really nice. The woman who made our sandwiches was strikingly beautiful as well. Anyway, on the whole a decent bahn-​mi that tasted better after some doctoring at home with siracha mayo.

$ 3.75 doesn’t get you much these days. You can get a large specialty coffee drink, a cheap beer, or a smirk from a high end call-​girl. Sadly, none of these things are very useful if you are a hungry person who’s appetite exceeds that of a palm squirrel.
Viet French café serves up an excellent banh mi at a price that, to a city slicker such as myself, seems insanely low. It probably helps cut down cost when you’re in a shopping complex containing an Asian grocery store but that’s besides the point.
The bread here is what really let’s Viet French stick out amongst the competition. It’s light and fluffly with a tiny bit of crunch. I get tired of banh mi where the bread is so tough that I more «rend» the bites from the sandwich rather than «bite» them off.
It’s a little out of the way unless you’re running errands in that IKEA/​Best Buy/​pier area, but there’s plenty of parking and it’s a great lunch.
Interesting note: The Vietnamese Iced Coffee is $ 3 and it’s pretty good. I have to hand it to them for this kind of innovation, as this is a great way to make up for lost profits due to offering such a cheap sandwich.

How anyone could give less than 5 stars is beyond me. The PO is great with just enough tripe to make a perfect balance. The people are very nice and its very clean. I can’t figure out a bad thing to say sorry but even the portions are huge. Take how is a must with all this food.

Little bahn mi shop tucked into a shopping center on Oregon Avenue. Bahn Mi was cheap and decent. I tried the «vegetarian pork» which was a marinated and spice tofu flecked with black pepper. For under $ 8 for 2 sandwiches and 2 sodas you could do alot worse in the area. Not my favorite.

Best banh mi sandwich ever!
After buying the first sandwich, I ended up eating it in my car since we were traveling and ended up going back to purchase 5 more sandwiches. My favorite is the grilled pork sandwich. They make their own bread so you won’t find a roll that is anything like it.
The prices were great at $ 3.50 per sandwich and the portion of meat is awesome. Other banh mi sandwich places are really skimpy on the meat and overcharge so I couldn’t believe how fresh and delicious these sandwiches are. Whenever I’m traveling through Philly I will make a pit stop here for sure!

Great food for good prices! Love their sausage & chicken fried rice.

Call me greedy… but I always get two sandwiches when I go… The grilled chicken w/​pâté, and the bbq pork… sometimes the bacon, which is more like an asian style pork belly… all great though.
I’ve been stopping in here for lunch for the past couple years when I’m in the area, which is a few times a month.
Their rolls are baked fresh on site, and are good just by themselves…
The chicken noodle soup is about as good as you’ll find at any phở restaurant. And the curry beef soup doesn’t disappoint either…

I think a delicious sandwich on an extremely fresh roll for $ 3.50 deserves 5 stars. ‘Nuff said.
(edit)
Michelle C. asked me to «pump up» my review and I will comply.
The entire story is that I walked in extremely intoxicated after Wing Bowl and ravenously hungry. I handed some money to a friend and he ordered all of us the same sandwich. I DON’T remember exactly what sandwhich I ate. I DON’T remember what the rest of the selections are (they are just pictures on a board in a photo I took). I DO remember the sandwich was delicious and on an extremely fresh roll (as stated above) and I DO remember that ALL of the sandwiches were the same economical price of $ 3.50 (which is a helpful fact, I hope). I also DO remember that the one employee was a very attractive young lady and we all loudly pointed this out to each other. And I DID choose brevity in my initial review because of all of the previous memory lapses and embarrassments!

Of all the banh mi places in South Philly, Viet French Café has the best service, hands down.
Their sandwiches are affordable and solidly delicious. Not the biggest fan of the Italian rolls they use, though they’re hollow and moist, and fresh. The fillings are pretty good; Viet French Café offers quite the variety.
There’s no need to make a special trip here for their banh mi, but I do recommend stopping by for their baked goods and other savory dishes that you can enjoy there, or take to go.
Find Viet French Café in the Oregon Market shopping complex.

How to stand out in a crowd of South Philly banh mi shops? A cubby-​hole in one of the best Asian shopping plazas doesn’t hurt. Neither does a more or less exclusive focus on the hoagies — twenty different varieties! Each for $ 3.25… I’d say every block should have a Viet French Café, but than the novelty would probably drip off like Kennedy Fried grease.
About that $ 3.25, it gets you a warm, crusty baked French roll, medium sized, filled but not overflowing — so each individual ingredient is accentuated. And there’s a lot to accentuate!
The bundle of explosive flavors and varied textures demands small nibbles, slight pecks. Take monstrous bite after bite and you might as well stick the hoagie in a blender. Each ingredient served in moderation, or maybe even hints, gestures, flirts of each ingredient, to leave you like a puppy begging for another sandwich, tongue dangling.
Fresh jalapeño slices deliver a snap of heat intense enough to put hair on an eunuch’s chest. Which temper stinky, lacy cilantro leaves. Which compliment a fishy, salty mush of warmed sardines. Refreshed by the crunch of moist cucumber and the tear of bright carrot. Held together by that flaky roll which tends to make a mess of crumbs on your friend’s car seat if you can’t wait until you get home.
And that’s only one out of 20. Fried eggs with Chinese sausage, vegetarian steamed pork, dried shredded pork… sound sooo good!