Update 4/2/09: Baoguette has opened up an East Village location.

In terms of bang for your buck, it doesn’t get any better than bahn mi. These famously cheap Vietnamese sandwiches combine French ingredients like baguette, pate and mayo with far-east flavors like pickled veggies, daikon, and grilled pork. Most bahn mi shops are tucked into storefronts in Chinatown and the LES, but Baogette brings the kickass snack uptown, to Lexington Avenue.

I ordered a classic baogette which came stuffed with the above-mentioned ingredients, in addition to cilantro, hot peppers, pork belly slices, tofu strips, a dash of sriracha (on request), and something I can only describe as a vaugely fishy aura, which must be a splash of fish sauce. All this cost a mere $5, which is actually a little steep for bahn mi, but the ingredients were clearly high-quality and the portion was quite large.

My gripe about the baogette is its proportions were off–too much carrot and daikon, not enough pork, and a bit too much pate for my palette (I admit, pate is not one of my favorite foods). The baguette is from TomKat Bakery (the same bread used in Cafe Condesa’s french toast); it was so hard I had difficulty biting into it. A few little adjustments and this could be a terrific sandwich, but this qualified as okay-for-five-bucks. I guess after reading excellent reviews on SeriousEats and elsewhere, I was expecting something more.

Ah, well. I still might head back to try the less-traditional “sloppy bao,” with curried beef and green mango!

Baogette
61 Lexington Avenue at 25th Street. Mon-Sat 8am-8pm