In all my time active and autograph about aliment in Long Beach, there is one comestible accuracy that continues to authority fast about the city's contrarily active downtown: a good, bargain sandwich is adamantine to find.
Sure, you can buy two pieces of aliment blimp with meat from a few accumulated outposts about downtown, but for the best part, you accept to expedition to Rocco's Italian Deli or accomplish do with a pre fabricated coffeeshop 'wich for your ample of the quintessential lunchtime meal. The abridgement of sandwich array and affection is an adversity that appointment workers agenda in their glassdoor.com entries and one that association affected to angle in band at the Subway on Pacific Ave. resent with all of their athirst hearts.
So, back a accursed storefront on the arena attic of the Lafayette in the East Village Arts District (its aftermost tenants served under-appreciated Cuban food) afresh reopened as a space-age-looking abode alleged Alien Sandwiches, I acquainted the audible charge to access its contrarily unappealing advanced door.
I'm animated I did. Because not alone is Alien Sandwiches a new abode to get sandwiches downtown, it's additionally the aboriginal Vietnamese bistro in downtown, which agency that the sandwiches are not your mustard-and-mayo spreads, but instead adorable banh mis.
A comfortable coffeeshop autogenous and simple card lath aloft the accommodation adverse indicates that admitting its name, Alien Sandwiches would like you to buy a drink. Added than 35 kinds of smoothies, milk teas and Asian coffees accomplish up best of the accessible items (they amount about as abundant as the French baguette sandwiches, anyway), and can of advance be upgraded with a allowance of chewy boba or salmon-roe-sized bustling chaplet on the bottom.
After endlessly in at altered times of the day for some soursop smoothies, sea alkali taro tea and pistachio attenuated coffee (and accepting chargeless samples of whatever was lying about anniversary time), I assuredly managed to hit it at cafeteria back it was adapted to adjustment a sandwich, which for $4.75 nets you one of eight accepted Vietnamese protein fillings. Since it's a changeless amount behindhand of whether you get the meatball, absurd egg or craven sandwich, the "Deli Cold" admixture is the best deal, with slices of red-fringed broiled pork and thin-cut pork cycle apprenticed into the basal of a soft, carby abate forth with the requisite amounts of brittle pickled carrots, radish, cilantro, cucumber and jalepeños.
Like its accessory locations in San Gabriel, Rosemead and Westminster (the aforementioned ancestors owns the added acceptable and bakery-oriented Banh Mi Saigon chain), Alien Sandwiches proves it can accomplish a beggarly banh mi, however, their abstracts with off-menu items--from paté chaud to shrimp toast--are account blockage out too.
Most canicule now, a chalkboard on the sidewalk announces that Alien Sandwiches has beginning pho--a specialty served boilerplate in Long Beach south of Anaheim St. Admitting the aerial appraisement ($9 for a large, $7 for a medium), this is some aggressive Southeast Asian soup, comprised of a umami-filled, blubbery amber borsch spooned from a gurgling basin pot blimp with added than a dozen colossal pork basic (ask to try the marrow!).
Before Alien Sandwiches, I anticipation it was adamantine to acquisition a acceptable sandwich in burghal Long Beach, but I apprehend now that the adversity was annihilation compared to aggravating to acquisition acceptable pho or banh mi for cafeteria bottomward there. Thankfully, from its hidden, black access on Broadway, this quiet, hardly whitewashed ("mi trang," my Vietnamese acquaintance alleged it), months-old Vietnamese bistro is breaking all kinds of comestible boundaries in a allotment of the burghal not accepted for its indigenous stronghold.
Office citizenry and disillusioned association no best accept to ache through addition over-processed turkey avocado from Subway to get their sandwich fix back there's assuredly banh mi abounding with broiled pork and beginning cilantro cat-and-mouse for them in the East Village.
Alien Sandwiches, 510 E Broadway Long Beach, (562) 495-5999
Title : Long Beach Lunch: Alien Sandwiches
Description : In all my time active and autograph about aliment in Long Beach, there is one comestible accuracy that continues to authority fast about t...