The Orlando Banh Mi Showdown: Ranking the Best Banh Mi in the City

This is my definitive GOAT for a banh mi craving in Orlando. Value, taste, quantity, there’s no part of this banh mi that I think falls short compared to the competition.

I never really paid attention to the composition of a sandwich but the assembly here was also the best. Every bite is well balanced and you’re getting a little bit of everything. Texture and freshness from the veggies, substance from the meat, moistness and saltiness from the pate and mayo.

I will say that the bread here is usually solid but this time wasn’t the best, and it could be because it was almost 3 hours later after getting all the sandwiches before getting to eat it since this was the first stop. Usually the bread is crunchy and fresh. An aside about Vietnamese baguettes is that traditionally they are a mix of wheat flour and rice flour which makes the exterior shatteringly crunchy and the interior slightly chewy and lighter than a French baguette, which is like a jaw workout on a crouton that’ll scrape the hell out of the roof of your mouth.

At $8.95 per banh mi and also the heaviest banh mi after weighing it on a food scale, this is the best value for your dollar.

This place has gotten a lot of hype since it’s inside Mills Market and if I’m in the area this would be my go-to since Banh Mi Cali is a bit further out. The filling itself is not too different taste wise from Banh Mi Cali and the meat is a little fattier if that’s your preference, but the bread here lacks the same crunch. The bread is lighter, more chewy, and almost hoagie-like compared to a baguette which I do not like.

This place can be pretty inconsistent. Sometimes the banh mi combo hits, other times it’s too cold, or like this time the bread was lacking. Even in the same sandwich, my portion was good but the other half my friend was eating he said was too salty. The sandwich looks hefty but it’s actually quite light because the bread is very pillowy and taking up a lot of sandwich volume. At $10.95 per sandwich it’s tied for most expensive with Banh Mi Go.

I’ve only been to this place one time when it first opened, and since its opening it’s become a national chain which is insane. I usually won’t review chains but since this Mills location was the original I’ll give it a pass.

First time I had the banh mi here years ago I thought it was just okay, not memorable, and never returned. But I tried it again this time and was pleasantly surprised. It’s the cheapest tied with Bamita at $8.50 and deceptively dense for how skinny the sandwich actually is. It was second heaviest only behind Cali. The bread here was very thin and crunchy, I think they hollowed out a lot of the insides so it’s more like a bread shell.

My complaints are that it’s on the salty side and the way the sandwich is laid out it’s vegetables on one side and the meat on the other. Instead of getting both in one bite it’s more like alternating between flavors and textures. I would say this is on par with Banh Mi Boy.

Full disclosure, the day I was doing this banh mi ranking Bamita was closed so I had to buy this one separately the next day on its own. The Vietnamese auntie running this place barely speaks or understands English and even the little ordering kiosk is all in Vietnamese, so I’d recommend ordering on their website where it has English descriptions. This is a little stall next to the Phuoc Loc Tho grocery store.

The banh mi here is significantly smaller the others and the bread is making up most of the volume. The stall did not have an oven that I could see so they’re not baking it fresh in house, or maybe there’s an oven inside the supermarket. It also helps that I was eating this fresh as soon as I got it unlike the day before when I went around all of Orlando.

Regardless, the bread was surprisingly good. I would have assumed it had been sitting a while and would be stale and chewy. The outside was very thin and crunchy which made a mess in my car, but the inside crumb was airy and soft and not as bread-heavy as it appears. Not sure if my taste buds were crazy but there was also this hint of coconut flavor that I kept tasting with every bite and I think it was coming from the bread. Adds a little sweetness and aroma.

I also got something they call the ta stick, also known as banh mi que, which is like if you split an Olive Garden breadstick down the middle and filled it with pork floss and mayo. It’s alright. I expected the bread to be crunchier but it’s exactly like a breadstick, soft and chewy, and pork floss as the main filling makes it quite dry.

This is the newest addition to the Orlando banh mi scene and I was excited to try it, but while the other banh mis are ranked very closely together and it was hard for me to set the rankings, this place is undoubtedly the bottom rung.

First of all they don’t have a banh mi dac biet at all, which is crazy to me for a place that specializes in banh mis. The closest thing I got was their three meat combo which allowed me to select 3 proteins. I chose the lemongrass beef, roast pork belly, and the meatballs. The flavor overall wasn’t bad but it tasted more like a Westernized banh mi than a traditional one. It was also heavier and greasier because of the pork belly and had too much mayo. Also for some reason there was a fried egg in the sandwich too which didn’t appear anywhere in the description, so I’m not sure if that was a mistake or not.

I also think this place had too many menu items like pho, rice plates, and dim sum, so it took a while to get our sandwich while the other shops were only a couple minutes. I understand it’s their soft opening and they were quite busy, but it’s also a bottleneck when you have a menu with all the classic Vietnamese hits instead of focusing on banh mis like your name suggests. At $10.95 for the 3 meat combo it’s on the expensive end and also the lightest sandwich I got, almost 100g lighter than the Cali sandwich.