When it comes to the two great Vietnamese restaurants in KC—Vietnam Cafe and Pho Lan—I prefer the latter, if only for its bun bo hue strewn with pigs’ feet. Still, they’re similar. Both sit in Columbus Park, their dining rooms lined with booth seating, and both offer analogous menus of pho, bun bowls, vermicelli noodles stir-fried with various meats and vegetables, and the like. Recently, however, Vietnam’s culinary influence has been spreading across the metro with the opening of coffee houses (like Origin Coi Nguon off North Oak Trafficway) and other more convenient restaurant models, like BB Bánh Mì.
It should be noted immediately that BB Bánh Mì has a drive-thru, which initially caught my attention when it opened last summer north of the river near Vivion and Antioch roads. The option to grab pho on the run sounds like a dream come true (I mostly abhor third-party food delivery services and their painstaking compromise of quality, so the idea of a drive-thru beyond the usual fast food chains should be celebrated). At BB, you can get star anise-sweetened pho, fresh spring rolls, banh mi sandwiches on housemade bread and fried egg-topped broken rice, all handed to you through your driver-side window.
BB’s convenience wasn’t necessarily intentional. Owners and husband-and-wife duo John Nguyen and Makie Thao Vo, who both moved to KC from Saigon six years ago, opened their restaurant in a former Wendy’s and, due to some food operation laws, had to make use of the drive-thru. They’ve made the best of it, and most everything on the menu is served to-go, even if you’re dining in.
Take the bánh mì, for example. Its pickled carrots, jalapenos and cilantro are packaged separately for you to build yourself. Traditionally, bánh mìs are enclosed in a French baguette (a culinary crossbreed born of Vietnam’s colonization by France in the 19th century), but at BB, you get Nguyen’s freshly baked “Vietnamese bread” instead. Every bite still feels like a feral rip, which is half the pleasure of eating a bánh mì in the first place. Most everything else is served to-go. BB is hardly ever full, even on weekends. If customers aren’t pulling up to the intercom to order, they’ve likely placed their order ahead of time and are only walking inside to pick it up.
You don’t have to dine in. There’s no table service, after all, and the space still looks much like a former Wendy’s, especially the fixed salad bar sitting in the middle, now holding silverware, pho fixins and sometimes a vase of flowers to give life to the otherwise bare fixture. But to enjoy the best of BB’s pho and crispy chicken, I recommend saddling up, relaxing and taking a seat…