Bánhmì11

Unfortunately the worst tasting Phở I’ve ever experienced, in fact it only resembled Phở due to it being a soup.
The beef was just about beef? certainly not fresh as Phở should be, no control over how spicy you want it as they add the spice, no usual condiments to add yourself to your taste.
I ordered an iced coffee for £2.80, very small cup and 2 ice cubes, the coffee resembled dish water and indeed tasted the same.
I did not try baguettes (Banh Mi) but they looked the better option, do not expect authenticity…
I will not be returning…

Two delicious sandwiches at 10 to 10pm? Oh yes! The spice was good, the taste was good. The best we have ever had — no BUT I would go again as everything is homemade and the staff were nice (plus free wifi and we felt like chilling out was a a-​ok thing to do)

Shockingly bad for vegetarian. Absolutely amazed that they advertise their vegetarian credentials. After buying the tofu banh mi with noodles (as they had run out of buns) all I got was 3 pieces of bland tofu on a bed of unflavoured noodles and cabbage. Really bad. If your veggie save yourself the money and go elsewhere, I’m off to subway to top off this crap meal

Perhaps I didn’t hang around often enough in the Vietnamese areas of London but my good Unilocal friend Lolia S introduced me to the joys of banh mi only 2 years ago on my trip to San Francisco
Banh mi is a true fusion dish, marrying French bread and pâté with Vietnamese pickled vegetables and meat to create a superior sandwich
I had my first London banh mi this week. Banhmi11 is a true independent business located between Old Street station and Shoreditch It has a slightly curious odd contradiction — a lot of thought has gone into the menu and the décor but they’ve altered mis-​spelling on their menu on the large blackboard by letters and arrows rather than rewriting the words
Anyway, onto the food. I went for the banh mi but they also have phở and the banh mi fillings can also be served with rice. I’m a sucker for pork belly and so, it had to be the crackling pork belly. The sandwich was made to order and customisd with just the right level of chilli sauce for you
I loved the pork belly. Crispy skin with moist meat acccented with Asian flavours. The other components are also there in the mix — freshly toasted bread, pâté and pickled veggies. The only improvement for me would be to make the bread a little smaller so I can get my mouth round it and also to make assembling the components easier — the current version makes it hard to get a bite of everything together. It’s the balance of the moist meat, creamy pâté and sour pickles enveloped by warm crusty bread, which makes banh mi perfect and this is a possilble improvement but I’ll be back to try their other fillings

I wish to give this place 4 stars, I really do: the staff is very friendly and smiling, the place is incredibly clean (probably the cleanest viet restaurant around here!) and my beef com had a wonderful sauce.
So why is it a ³⁄₅? (Yes, I love to answer to my own question!) The problem is the beef: first of all, if I’m ordering a beef com, I want some beef (2 small pieces is not an acceptable amount), second, damn did you even look at it before buying?! it was just a piece of nerves and fat, NO meat around it! come on, the sauce was so good, but this is just crazy! It’s like going to a seafood bar and receive a dish of empty mussels! get together folks!
Apart from the most important thing, everything else is really good, the sauce (maybe you noticed, but I really loved it!!), the spices, fresh vegetables, rice. Everything was just perfect, but that damn thing is able to drop down the entire rating!
What a shame!

Decent sandwiches but service could have been faster. We probably waited about 15 minutes for our sandwiches to be made as the person prior to us had a large order. A few customers came in and ended up leaving due to the wait.
In addition the girl taking our order was not listening as one of us ordered bun and one ordered a banh mi but we were provided with two banh mi sandwiches.

Hmmm, I really want to like this place. Just popped in there for lunch and got a crackling pork belly banh mi and a mini beef phở. Layout of the place is great, everything looks really appealing, just good feel period. And the Australian fella working the counter (Anthony? Damn I’m terrible with names…) was hands down the highlight of the place — super friendly. The prices were solid (£5 for the sandwich, £3 for the mini phở) and it’s right around the corner from my office.
The only problem is, it wasn’t really all that good. Having lived in San Francisco, which for whatever reason can churn out a ridiculous amount of good Vietnamese food (seriously, hit up Phở Garden in the Outer Richmond and thank me later) I have a somewhat decent palette for the flavors. The banh mi was the better of the two (although there really wasn’t much crack in that belly), and it had good texture (solid bread, crispy veggies, all that shenanigans) but the flavors fell flat. The soup was definitely a bit of a let down, both because the noodles were soggy, and because I couldn’t tweak the broth to my liking. Q’s phở broth has an excessive amount of lime, with a healthy serving of Sriracha, and a dab of hoison. Apparently that isn’t allow at Banhmi 11 — the owners feel it ruins the sanctity of the broth or some such silliness. The broth was decent, don’t get me wrong, but for me, it would have been better with my chosen fixings, and c’mon, it’s a business. It’s a casual, cheap, healthy fast food-​esque type business with nothing over £10 on the menu. This isn’t high dining. I’m not asking to modify one of Adrià’s ridiculous works of food art or telling Jiro to cut me another piece of fish because this one looks funky. I’m asking for a few condiments that are pretty much universally associated to the dishes I ordered. If I ordered fries and got denied ketchup, that’d be weird right? Right. So, if a guy wants to slather up his sandwich and soup with some Sriracha, let the man do it.
Alas, ’tis against the rules apparently. Which is a shame because I really would go to this place all the damn time if I could get the food the way I like it. Cool vibe, good prices, friendly people, but missing the mark on the most important bit: it’s gotta taste good. In this neighborhood (which has a decent phở place and a pretty solid banh mi place within two minutes walk) you gotta bring your A game. For me, that involves Sriracha, lime and hoison.

Sometimes I think coriander tastes a bit like liquorice. You know what I mean. Or am I thinking of fennel?

Ordered the Phở with shredded chicken (currently priced at £6.50). Asked for a medium level of spiciness, but tasted very mild (so if you want any heat, probably best to ask for it to be very spicy). Excellent leak-​proof container meant I got it back gto the office without spilling a drop. It tasted freshly made and overall was quite decent, but I’ve amazing Phở from other places — this means I can’t give more than 3 stars for their efforts.

Best Vietnamese sandwich I ever had, and believe me that’s a lot ;)

PHO! That is what I need. That is what any «cold sufferer» needs, really.
And of course, I finally catch Banh Mi 11 (not to be confused with Banh «Mill» as I thought when passing the sign numerous times) when they are open one afternoon… and at 13h30, out of all soup. (SOBS).
NO SOUP FOR ME?! No soup for me.
I settled on a BBQ pork banh mi and a hot ginger tea to go (I’d have stayed if soup had been on offer, but I think we have defined it was NOT). The hot ginger tea was made fresh with real chopped ginger, a strong second to crushing a cold, methinks. The BBQ pork banh mi sandwich was prepped fresh and served hot. The bread tasted super fresh and hadn’t quite crossed over into «total flake fest,» which is always good. It had a sauce I couldn’t ID, but all in all a very solid lunch.
£5−6 per sandwich though is a bit steep for banh mi, by my calculations its about double what it should be, as its known for being CHEAP Vietnamese street food, after all!
The girls were nice and I’ll be back in (maybe at breakfast!?) to fetch myself some soup. PHO!
Also note:
*cash only under £15
*I have no idea what the hours are, but they are not open evenings.
*small eat-​in area (maybe 5 seats max)

I got the pork belly banh mih and while the meat was good the rest of the filling was a bit lacking in flavour. £5 is also a little steep. Bread was v chewy so my jaw got a good work out!
Very nice interior of the restaurant, there’s 2 tables at the back and a few seats at the front but it’s mostly geared towards take away. Staff seemed slightly flustered but were really sweet. I’m probably being a bit harsh with 2 stars and I’ll go back to try another sandwich but I did find it a bit disappointing.

Perhaps this review isn’t being very fair, considering I’d just returned from a 3-​week trip to Vietnam when I saw that this place had opened around the corner whilst I was away. Realistically, anything I had in London upon return was going to be a bit of a letdown. That’s not to say that Bahn Mi 11 is a letdown, but perhaps I would have given it a 4 instead of 3-​star review if I had written this before my trip… Who knows.
Anyhow, that said, I had had their Bahn Mi when they were just a food stall and they were pretty good, so I was excited to try their new brick and mortar space. Cutely decorated with minimal (like, one table) seating, this place is primarily takeaway.
They have a variety of bun (rice noodle), bahn mi (baguettes), and a soup of the day (at the time, it was Phở). Interestingly, their least conventional bahn mi was, imho, the best (Coconut chicken). The imperial pork one was ok, and my mother liked her noodles with pork. The baguettes here are closer to the ‘real thing’ than some of the other bahn mi places around this area– a big plus. The biggest letdown was the Vietnamese coffee– not the thick, creamy, sweet kind I had in Vietnam– this was more… an espresso with some milk in it. Too watered down and not sweet enough. Though they have cans of condensed milk on the counter, it tasted like regular milk, so who knows.
I WILL be back and I will write an updated review after they’ve been open a while. Certainly worth another go, but as of now, I’d probably pick Keu or Hop Namo over them for a bahn mi around Old Street.