Banh Appetit — Restaurant in Portland

This bahn mi, Viet food shop is the BEST! This is a definite find and we are so fortunate to have them in the neighborhood. This is a testament to entrepreneurial spirit. The family is wonderful... the mom who cooked and owned Huongs on St Johns St..., is now cooking at this location and this is so good for us lovers of Vietnamese cuisine.

She sold the restaurant recently and is now working with her daughter Snow. Therefore, we are going to get treated to her marvelous food!

The variety of bahn mi are delicious, the cold cut bahn mi even has house made pate. My favorite is the grilled pork bahn mi, with fresh and crunchy veggies... the bahn mi rolls are crispy and delectable... great for a quick lunch and accompanied with a Thai Iced Tea or iced Viet coffee is perfection.

The shrimp summer rolls (2) are tasty and go well as a starter. The steamed buns stuffed with pork and a quail egg are satisfyingly delicious.

The other daughter Tran has the Pho Shop upstairs at the Monument Sq Market... yummy food and friendly employees.

I admire their hard work and dedication to their customers...and me, being their #1 fan..., wish them all the best for future success. It's also OK to let them know that Steve sent you... I'm happy to know them and promote the...

Ok, so we've been here three times now and one word can sum them up-superb. I've said it before in my reviews of Vietnamese restaurants and I'll reiterate, we've been to a great many Vietnamese restaurants, and we know what great, authentic Vietnamese food is/should be. This place is that. The bread is perfect, the meat is moist and seasoned with authentic flavour and not overly salty. The ingredients are there! Some won't understand how important this is or may take it for granted. We've been to both excellent and terrible Vietnamese restaurants and, unfortunately, even in many great restaurants they are lacking in some of the important authentic herbs and vegetables, and/or in the quantity. Banh Appetit has all of the ingredients, fresh, and in generous/perfect quantity. The portion sizes are perfectly sized and you feel like you're getting great value-unlike some places we've been, it might be a great-tasting banh mih for example but the size and price don't correlate. There's just no question, this place has it on authenticity, flavour, freshness, and value. (Sorry it took me this long-I've been meaning to give a rave review since the first visit, and I'm missing a picture of a lemongrass beef and shrimp banh mih that was...

Bun toppings were good, with the meat and small egg rolls on top. However, the rest of the takeout box was completely COLD cooked rice noodles. Not just cold, but served in a big, gelatinous, hard CLUMP. Not very appetizing. Needed some sauce on the noodles. It was refrigerator cold and plain pile of sauce-less noodles. In addition, the cold noodles were all stuck together like GLUE and like bad spaghetti. I could not separate them, so I had to try to cut them with the small plastic knife and fork, which didn't work very well. And because they were cold, the consistency was hard and very dry, especially around the edges. It was like they had been sitting in the refrigerator for days, hard edges that were not edible. I threw half of them away. The small container of light sauce wasn't nearly enough for the huge pile of cold, hard noodles. Yuck! Not very appetizing, with no flavor, at $17 for completely cold and crunchy noodles! So many other good places to go...