Lunch: a tale of two sandwiches
First of all if you can read French I would like to recommend an excellent restaurant review site mmmm! and yes, that's the name: mmmm! I like the name and for my money it's the best Paris site for restaurants.
I went back to Belleville today and although I didn't eat here this time I'm posting the photo because perhaps it will make you smile.
The Hawaiian restaurant. Look closely at the sign in the upper right hand corner: it's the laughing cow!
Anyway getting down to today's lunch. I decided to do a taste test and compare two Vietnamese sandwiches. They were both purchased on the same street about twenty meters from one another. The first sandwich was purchased here:
And it looked like this:
The "special" for 2,20 euros.
The second sandwich was purchased here:
Panda Belleville? I think this may have been a Chinese place in a former life and they must just have left the sign...ah, the charms of Belleville and mixed Asian neighborhoods.
Here is the sandwich:
Once again the "special" and it cost 2,50 euros (,30 more than at Hoa Hung).
Here are the sandwiches side by side:
The Hoa Hung sandwich is in front and it is slightly bigger than the Panda sandwich. Now for a close up of each sandwich and my review.
Hoa Hung, this sandwich on a buttered baguette contains somekind of luncheon meat (perhaps chicken), sliced pork, diced chicken, shredded carrot, onion, cucumber, very hot chile pepper (yes I am a daring luncher), coriander and some sort of Vietnamese sauce. It tasted good but unfortunately it got points off because the baguette was kind of stale.
And so the winner is:
Although these sandwiches look similar the Panda wins for two reasons. Firstly it was served on a crispy unbuttered baguette, and secondly, it just tasted better. It contained the same luncheon meat, sliced pork, diced chicken, shredded carrots mixed with some shredded white vegetable, cucumber, onion, chili pepper, coriander and Vietnamese sauce. Somehow the white vegetable mixed in with the carrot soaked up more sauce and just gave that little extra flavor. So, for 2,50 this was a good sandwich!
Tomorrow is Easter so I'm going to the big Chinatown in the 13th for Easter dinner.
See you then and as always, happy lunching!
