Ba Lee 1 Finally Opens

By: Mr. T on April 14, 2010
As some of you may have noticed, the Vietnamese sandwich joint in downtown finally opened about 2 weeks ago. I was able to run over for the first time today and pick up a few sandwiches. Those of you who have been to southern California or other areas with large Vietnamese communities may be familiar with these sammies. They are basically meat with pickled veggies, peppers, cilantro, and various spreads, on oven-baked mini-French baguettes, and they have a distinctive sweet, salty, and hot taste to them. They are also characteristically less expensive than typical restaurant-style deli sandwiches. At Ba Lee 1, they are also pretty inexpensive - $2.75 per sandwich. But here is the kicker: I ordered 2 sandwiches this afternoon – barbecued beef and chicken – and these sandwiches were HUGE. I would say they were easily 7-8 inches of goodness on freshly made French bread rolls. Each sandwich came with generous dobs of mayonnaise, butter, veggies, peppers, as well as meat. I had ordered 2 because I had thought they would be small, but I could only finish one and a half (and I can eat a lot). Here in town a few of the grocery stores have (or at least had) these sandwiches in stock as deli items. The Little Saigon grocery store at Vina Plaza on 27th comes to mind. The ones at Ba Lee 1 are about 50% bigger, no exaggeration. Of course, size doesn’t always equate with quality. But I found the bread to be fresh and crusty, the veggies were plentiful, flavorful, and crunchy, and the meat quite tasty indeed. Juice from the barbecued beef practically soaked my hand and nearly destroyed my dress shirt. I’m not going to try and describe the taste, but I’ll just note that folks familiar with that distinct sweetish, slightly hot taste of Vietnamese sandwiches won’t be disappointed. I had originally thought that there was no way Ba Lee 1 would be able to survive in the downtown lunch environment. But I am starting to have second thoughts. This IS a quality product, and a novel one for Lincoln. For the size and price, its very hard to beat. The challenge will be whether or not these sandwiches will appeal to our relatively conservative tastes. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me. If we have an opportunity to go back to Ba Lee 1 soon we’ll try and post some photos of these babies. EDIT: Long-time reader Gene is at Ba Lee 1 right now, and sent this photo of his lunch (below). Thanks Gene! image

Comments

See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.

JT
April 15, 2010 at 12:59PM

Me and a buddy ate there the day after it opened. He had the grilled chicken and said it was great. I had the special and very strongly not recommend it. I bought two specials and gave him the extra and he agreed it was pretty awful. So, stick with the grilled chicken or other options.

CS
April 15, 2010 at 4:59PM

what was in the ‘special’?

Gene
April 15, 2010 at 5:21PM

I went there today based on this review. I’m eating the Bahn Mi Thit Nuong (BBQ Pork) right now—it’s so good. 😊

Karin Dalziel
April 20, 2010 at 5:50PM

Tried it today (got the BBQ Pork) very tasty! Has anyone tried the teas?

Share your thoughts with the community.

Commenting is no longer permitted on this post.