Sometimes the best food is to be found right under your nose. Hidden in plain sight. In the case of the queue that snakes out of Listo Burrito on Oxford Street at lunchtime (and on the day I dropped in, the queue was obstructing the entrance to Banh Mi Cô Ba next door) this is quite literally the case.
Everyone in that queue had the possibility of a better lunch right under their noses. The burritos at Listo Burrito are decent.
I had one to check what the fuss was about, and it was totally fine. Nothing wrong with it at all.
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But what this brilliant little Vietnamese spot is doing right next door is just... better. Many would not have spotted it sprouting up. It opened pre-lockdown, so perhaps when commuters returned to the office, they might not have realised it was there.
This can, should and hopefully will be remedied from now, because Banh Mi Cô Ba - Cô Ba meaning ‘father’ and banh mi being the national sandwich of Vietnam - is a certified cracker. That’s not to say it’s not already busy. Trade was constant on a lunchtime visit last week.
Brisk, approaching frisky, with lightning quick service as folk come and go, leaving armed with crisp baguettes filled with pickled carrots, cold cucumber, hot grilled pork and chewy tofu or boxes stuffed with salad. But by rights, it should have next door’s queue emerging from its own doors all day long.
Inside - and outside for that matter - the signage is pleasingly basic and functional, the menu unfolding in red and white, like a cut price Five Guys. No frills here, the endeavours appear to be solely focussed on dishing out very tasty Vietnamese food quickly and without fanfare.
A robust order is placed at the counter, and we take a bench. Cơm tấm (£8.50) arrives, a dish of ‘broken rice’, made from the grains that are broken during hulling but that give a softer final product. It’s topped with fried salt and pepper tofu, striped with sriracha and with a salad and a tangy sauce waiting to be lashed all over it.
Tofu, so often sadly flavour-absent, to put it politely, is delicious here, chewy and heftily seasoned. For a quid or so more, you can have a fried egg thrown on too, and that’s happening next time.
A bún salad (£9), with vermicelli noodles, is loaded up with chunks of sweet-spicy, skewered, grilled pork, and another tangy sauce for thorough drenching. Caution is recommended with the chillies, which look like they're the ‘not very hot ones’, but can catch you out quite easily.
Their summer rolls (£4.20), stuffed with noodles, tiger prawns and sliced pork, come with a ‘special peanut sauce’, and it really is special. While lesser banh mi act all bafflingly squeamish about a smear of the all-important pate, for proper Vietnamese authenticity, these ones do not, and ours (£8, the most expensive, most are £6.50) comes with braised sliced pork and Vietnamese ham too, like circular slices of luncheon meat. That makes it sound a bit ropey. It really isn’t.
Everything so far gets five stars, but it wouldn’t be a proper Vietnamese without a cauldron of phở with flat rice noodles, from the ‘special menu’. This one is layered with sad-looking slices of grey beef. Appearances can be deceptive, very much so in this case. This brisket melts, and the broth is soothing to the point of making me feel sleepy.
It’s got depth from six hours of simmering, which comes through more and more as it cools down. The gent opposite is studiously finishing his as ours arrives. He’s going in, spoon after spoon after spoon, his face inches from the bowl.
He pauses for a second, to gather breath like a swimmer, and then goes in again until it’s all gone. This takes about three minutes in all, and he doesn’t look up once in that time. If that’s not an endorsement of a good broth, then I don’t know what is.
Banh Mi Cô Ba doesn’t have all the branding and livery of the burrito joint next door, nor the snazzy menu, the logo-ed up staff or the queue heading down the street. But it’s like the crappy old wooden cup in the climactic scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It might not look like the best option. But it totally is.
Banh Mi Cô Ba, 87 Oxford St, Manchester M1 6EG
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