Me: I ended up not getting bahn mi. I got Portuguese bbq chicken at the market.
Friend in Niceville, Fla: Showoff. You people and your "big cities" and your "ethnic foods".
Yeah I guess we're pretty lucky. I didn't have the heart to tell her the next door Jewish deli counter Mano's (ob refrain: Manos hands of fate) is run by Koreans and serves up bulgogi on a bun. That might just send my Niceville, Fla (I'm not even making that name up) friend over the top.
$5+coins gets you a Big Mac sized hunk of BBQ chicken, lettuce, and sauce on a bun. It's juicy. It's sloppy. It's hard to find a place to sit down and eat it. It's a nice break from a Wendy's triple. I went with the cornbread on the side. Of the many things I used to hanker for in Korea was some nice cornbread (you could buy cornmeal in Korea but it was sold in little packets for $5 a packet and really only good for dusting the bottom of your pizza tray). So naturally if I ever see cornbread as a menu option I always take the cornbread. The guy behind the counter warned me it wasn't like American cornbread. It was Portuguese cornbread. Okay. Whatever. Cornbread me.
The cornbread was a bit of a disappointment. It's not the yellow, moist johnnycake I was expecting. It was a bun with a very very hard crust. One could barely tear it apart. Maybe I'm approaching my Mr. Burns years but I found it hard to tear apart.
I should have gone for the fries. Oh those fries. Big paper sack of fries. Mmmmm.