Banh Mi Cali

10503 Kingsway NW, Edmonton AB

The half-dozen or so shops that specialize in Vietnamese sandwiches in Edmonton are quite consistent in quality and style. I have no special allegiance: I like them all, and they all merit a visit.  That being said, if there are two things that distinguish Banh Mi Cali from the others, it is their bread, and their headcheese.

Cali’s baguettes are a near-perfect expression of banh mi bread: long and wide as a rolling pin, exquisitely crisp, with a moist and tender crumb.  Stuffed, tightly rolled in checkered parchment, and secured with a rubber band, they are undoubtedly one of Edmonton’s premier sandwich breads.

If their bread is a few degrees better than the other shops, the headcheese that they produce on site is totally unique.  Order the house special and your sandwich will have liver pâté, cha lua sausage, and not one, but two types of headcheese.  The pinkish one has the familiar pieces of shredded cured pork, and fine, interstitial pockets of gelatin.  The red one is something I have not seen before, a ruddy terrine woven through with strips of pig’s ear cartilage with a distinct crunch.  Interesting textures abound in Vietnamese headcheese, but in Edmonton they usually come in the form of slightly rubbery pig skin.  Cali has crunchy ear, and it is marvellous.

Cali is narrowly focussed on sandwiches: there are no soups or rice bowls or green onion cakes here.  In fact the only non-sandwich offerings are cans of pop, Vietnamese coffee, and fruit smoothies.  The sandwich menu is small, maybe ten options, and over the last year the juicy meatball and tofu have only been available intermittently.

As long as the house combo remains, I will not complain for lack of meatballs.

Banh Mi Cali is located in the Kingsway Mews strip mall, just south of Kingsway station and the Royal Alexandra Hospital.