Gion Banh Mi & Tea — Restaurant in Seattle

Update 8/30/24:

I was craving a banh mi and not wanting to battle finding a parking spot at Natalie's on alki. I gave this place another shot. Ordered the chicken banh mi with no pate stuff. It turned out DELICIOUS. fantastic and much better if I order without all the pork or pork pate spread. Very yummy. Staff is kind and my order was ready when I came back from using the restroom at PCC (note there's no bathrooms here you have to walk a block to PCC).

Original review 5/2024

There are a few yellow tables to sit outside and enjoy there's no indoor seating. Staff was very nice and I ordered with the staff not on the touchscreen (I prefer human interaction and to help keep jobs).

I ordered the classic banh mi sandwich. For me, that was a big mistake. There was a really weird tasting pork pate as a spread instead of mayonnaise, pork roll, shredded dried pork, and BBQ pork. I really wanted to send it back and get something else but decided to just save money (and food) and modify. I scooped off the pate as much as possible and the pork roll. Weird textures and flavors. The pork pate was like cat food. I couldn't handle it. The rest of the sandwich without it and the pork roll was pretty decent.

I ordered a milk tea to get rid of the taste. The milk tea was good.

Needless to say, I definitely won't be ordering the classic again. I'll stick to the tofu, BBQ chicken, or BBQ pork options. The taste was too different for my palate. The pork roll meat was good, but just Odd. It's the same meat used if you ask for pork meatballs in Pho. It's the herby Grey meat with a baloney texture. It's not my favorite.

I'll try this place again with a different...

As a Vietnamese-American born in the 80’s and raised in the Vietnamese Centric city of Houston and now living in LA I consider myself a relative connoisseur of Vietnamese food. Now if you are like me and see a $10 banh mi, your initial reaction is to scoff. Sadly the days of 3 dollar banh mi’s are long gone and in LA you can get a solid one for about $6 in the SGV or Chinatown. So as expected we last minute opted to get one from Gion as a snack on our flight back to LA, as we figured this is still cheaper than airport food. Expectations were not very high, but as we took a bite into our traditional banh mi and lemongrass tofu banh mi our minds were quickly brought back to the homeland. Keep in mind lemongrass tofu banh mi’s are not traditional by any means, but when in west Seattle, one must adapt to the non-meat eaters. I kid you not, in the week we were in Seattle, this probably the best meal we had.

The traditional banh mi was well made with everything one might expect of a banh mi. The meat was generous and the baguette was crispy. I could have sworn they had pork floss in it as well which was a nice touch. The tofu sandwhich was well flavored, although the lemongrass flavor might have been more suttle than what I would have wanted l, but nonetheless was also very tasty.

And for $10 for a sandwhich it’s a steal compared to the prices of everything else we had in west Seattle, Ballard, Fremont, and other trendy spots. Nowadays it’s impossible to get a sandwich for less than 15 dollars unless it’s a subway sandwhich.

The only regret is waiting until the last hour of being in Seattle before trying this...

Meh. I so wanted this place to be good. We were down in West Seattle hiking Schmitz Park (which I do thoroughly recommend). When we saw there was a Banh Mi place with great reviews, we were really stoked. We ordered our sandwiches and eagerly waited outside the charming little space the 10 minutes or so it took to put them together, went outside to the little table they have set up on the street, opened them up, bit into them, and...meh. Now I have to admit that we are vegetarians, so technically, I can only speak to the lemongrass tofu sandwich here and meat-eaters may have a different experience, but I think the reasons it was underwhelming would apply to any menu item. Some of the main things I expect from a good Banh Mi is a healthy dose of vinegary pickled vegetables offsetting a creamy mayonnaise on a fresh, fluffy French roll. In this case, I couldn't find any pickles at all. The mayo was overwhelmed by a very miso-heavy "special sauce" that gave the whole thing a blandish, beany flavor, and the roll, while crusty, was as dry as something I'd pick up in the Fred Meyer day-old section. I was legitimately confused that anyone could say this was better than Saigon Deli. I noticed they changed their name recently, so maybe this is a case of new ownership impacting what was once a great spot, or maybe my expectations are just different from the average West Seattleiete, but I can only say we ended up tossing these after two bites and I have to recommend that if you're in West Seattle and need lunch, make your way down to Marination Ma Kai or suck it up until you can get to the ID for a...