More reasons to hate food blogging (Bánh Mì Saigon)

Remember a while ago when I talked about how much I hate food bloggers? I bet you probably thought my 24 pack of Haterade™ had run dry, but you'd be wrong. This shit is real, this shit is happening - I'm making an addendum to my somewhat exhaustive list. Reason number - er... whatever it is, I lost count - to hate food bloggers: they're fickle-ass motherfuckers. Equipped with memory capacities only slightly better than those of common goldfish, a lot of bloggers drive food trends for a couple of months, writing fervently about a single dish or cuisine as if it were truly the apex of culinary innovation, before quickly switching to a new "golden topic" of the day. Remember when cupcakes were all the rage? Then people decided that they wanted artisan pies? Which was followed by a sudden "renaissance age" of doughnuts? Well that shit is stupid. It's not like cupcakes suddenly started tasting like stale bread frosted with crap or that pies became second-rate desserts, it's really just that people tend to have a sheep-like tendency to do the popular thing. Not me though. I'm a shark. Sharks are winners, and they don't look back because they have no necks. Necks are for sheep.

Just like bánh mì. Two years ago, there wasn't a single person who wouldn't shut up about bánh mì. Then slowly, everyone made a mass exodus to some other hot issue in the very important world of food blogging. Probably something stupid like ramps.



Now I'll be straight with you upfront - I really don't know jack shit about Vietnamese food and I really don't know that much about bánh mì... so I'm not gonna tell you some nonsense like where to go for the best one (let's be honest, everyone knows how much bs those lists are anyway). What I will do, is tell you that Bánh Mì Saigon (located in the back of a jewelry store) makes some bombin' sandwiches in general. Also they're cheap. That's always a plus in my book.



That would be $4.25 worth of sandwich. Their most popular sandwich is probably the bbq pork one. It's pretty simple really, just a plain baguette that balances a nice crispness with compliance that's sliced and stuffed. The filling is fairly... subtle. The roast pork is a loose ground meat mix that's semi-sweet, semi-savory, and relatively tender while possessing an unexpected crusting from the cooking process. Combined with cucumbers, radishes, cilantro, carrots, and all the standard accouterments (don't ask me what else goes inside)... this is a pretty damn tasty sandwich. With the cucumber slivers, daikon, and cilantro there's a certain refreshing lightness to the taste profile, and with the roast pork, pate, and mayo-ish sauce there's definitely a contrasting dense part to the equation. When added together and put on fresh bread? It's like seeing baby unicorns prancing across rainbow bridges suspended on puffy clouds - goddamn magical.

In closing, I'm actually gonna throw some more salt in your game by giving you a bonus reason to hate food bloggers. They steal shit. All the time. Ideas, content, photos... you name it. I wasn't actually gonna write this post for a few weeks, but you know what spurred me on? When I found out some asshat on Tumblr jacked my photo. My copyrighted photo. That little 'c' in a circle on Flickr? That means you should probably ask my permission before posting my shit on your demented blog. Just because you posted my Flickr username doesn't mean you credited me, it just means you just have the slightest bit of moral sense to admit that you didn't take the photo yourself. You're probably thinking, "bro you should chill out, you download shit all the time... what's one photo in the grand scheme of things?" Well first of all, it's not exactly an isolated incident. People take my photos all the time without asking. It's the fact that they don't even respect my content enough to at least ask to paste it all over the internet. What really boils my britches though, is the fact that the photo in question now has 2400+ pageviews. Pageviews that asswipe-content-stealer got that should've been going to me. Fuck this. I don't take pictures so other people get praised for shit. I do that for me. Frustrating.

Right. So in case you didn't feel like reading all that jazz (don't know why anyone would skip my Pulitzer-caliber writing...) tl;dr - a lot of food bloggers are like sheep because they have necks. There's a tendency to follow a retarded mob mentality and to forget that newer doesn't exactly = better. Also, some food bloggers are assholes and jack content like there's no tomorrow, stealin' mah pageviews... and stuff. Finally, Bánh Mì Saigon makes really good sandwiches that all cost less than $5. It is awesome. Also you can shop for jewelry while you wait for your order.

Bánh Mì Saigon
198 Grand St, New York, NY 10013