Fried Oyster Po'Boy at Quality Seafood Credit: Photo By John Anderson

Char-Grilled Pork Sandwich

Tam Deli and Cafe

8222 North Lamar, 834-6458

Wed-Mon, 10am-8pm

Although we tend to think of fusion cooking as a relatively new thing, banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) are a legacy from the French presence in Vietnam that began in the mid-19th century. Tam Deli serves one of the best anywhere — a fresh, warm, perfectly crusty mini-baguette loaded with tender strips of grilled pork, julienned pickled carrots, jalapeño, cucumber, cilantro, mayonnaise, and a few glass noodles added for good measure. The resulting mouth experience interweaves complex combinations of soft and crisp, sweet and hot, spicy and cooling. This sandwich delivers. — MM Pack

This article appears in May 18 • 2001.

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MM Pack is a food writer/historian and private chef who divides her time between Austin and San Francisco. A regular contributor to The Austin Chronicle and Edible Austin, she’s been published in Gastronomica, The San Francisco Chronicle, Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America, Nation’s Restaurant News, Scribner's Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, The Dictionary of Culinary Biography, and Southern Foodways Alliance’s Cornbread Nation 1.

Rachel Feit is an archaeologist by trade who worked her way through college in kitchens in Chicago and Austin before discovering that dishing up words was more satisfying that dishing up meals. She has been writing about food and restaurants for The Austin Chronicle for more than a decade, but still loves to cook.

Mick Vann is a retired Austin chef who is a food writer and restaurant critic, cookbook author, restaurant consultant, and recipe developer. He moonlights as a University of Texas horticulturist with a propensity for ethnic eats and international food, particularly of the Asian persuasion, but he also knows his way around a plate of soul food or barbecue.