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| - Talk about a "little, out of the way place!"
After driving through the cold, dark streets of Cleveland, I parked in a dimly lit gravel parking lot, and walked into the back of a building, down a strange hallway to get to my table. I kept thinking it was a little like a noodle shop in "Blade Runner," and I'd look over and find Deckard and Gaff chowing down on a bowl of noodles before heading out to find an escaped Nexus 6.
Anyway...We sat down and our waitress was over to our table with water almost instantly. We browsed the menu for a second or two...but I knew there was only one thing I really wanted...a banh mi. We ordered two of them and a bo bia as an appetizer. Within a matter of minutes, despite being a surprisingly busy Sunday night, our food appeared from the back. The banh mi sandwich was great! Roasted pork, pork pate, veggies, a mayonnaise sauce, fresh herbs and some unadvertised, but always welcome, hot chili peppers, all inside a perfectly crusty, 6-inch baguette.
The bo bia are rice paper rolls, with noodles, thinly sliced Chinese sausage, egg, lettuce, Thai basil, and lettuce stuffed inside. It comes with the ubiquitous peanut dipping sauce, but it didn't really need any help in the flavor department. Very tasty!
There was a giant bottle of Sriracha sauce on the table, but neither the sandwich nor the bo bia needed any help.
The decor was a little bright and cliche with giant, generic "Asian-style" fans on the walls, and a picture or two of some non-specific Asian places. But at the end of the day...it's all about the eats...and I'm not eating the decor!
This place is really good! I can't wait to go back and try something else on the menu, although the banh mi is going to be hard to pass up.
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