Cuisine: Vietnamese – Bahn Mi
Average price per person: 15€
Environment: 6/10
Food: 7/10
Service: 7/10
Other: Solo dining
Website: N/A – Instagram
Recently a few of my closest friends visited Vietnam and came back practically only talking about bahn mi, the typical and most popular Vietnamese sandwich. Inspired by them, I visited B-Good Madrid near Plaza Mayor. B-Good serves bahn mi sandwiches, as well as a few other Asian dishes. Those include a variety of dumplings and baos.
Location/Environment
From the outside, B-Good looks more like a convenience store. It is a small place with some basic Vietnamese-style decoration on the wall. It has very limited sitting space inside, but you can also eat on the street or take away the order. We opted to eat one bahn mi there and eat the remaining at home.
Bahn mi
My first option was the bahn mi with chicken satay. After stepping up to the counter and ordering, the bahn mi is prepared and added in almost a microwave-sized oven to warp up the bread. I can imagine that due to the size of this mini oven, if multiple people are ordering, it can take a while.
After it was pulled out of the mini oven, the person preparing it asked me if I wanted spicy sauce to be added (which of course I did). The bahn mi is served in a paper wrap which adds a nice actual street food touch.
All the sandwiches at B-Good include house-pickled daikon and carrot, cucumber, fried onion, cilantro, and sweet chilli sauce. The fact that the first we ate was warm out of the oven and had extra chilli sauce, made all the difference compared to the options we tried afterward.
We continued with the rest at home. Mr Cuongs is advertised as the specialty including a variety of meats. The pickled vegetables gave a great texture contrast and added a much-needed freshness and acidity. I will note that in general, the bread was good but not the kind of you would encounter when you eat the original bahn mi in Vietnam based on my friends’ feedback.
Next came The Original which apart from all the toppings that are common in all options, has Vietnamese cold cuts and braised pork belly.
Finally, the Xa xiu, which is served with grilled pork in a typical sweet and sticky barbecue sauce.
To be fair, since the toppings were similar in all the options, any difference in taste would have to be from the main protein. To me all the sandwiches, if you take out the spices from the sauce, were very similar in taste, so I would have liked to see more differentiation in texture or stronger flavor profiles from the meats.
Other Food options
Apart from the sandwiches, we opted for Bao with pork and Cantonese barbecue sauce. A typical Asian type of bread, this bao has a sweet sauce with onions and very soft pork. The bao is fluffy, almost pillowy and slightly sweet. I found it very tasty and probably my favorite dish among the ones I tried. A pleasant surprise since I wasn’t expecting anything special.
6 gyozas with chicken, spinach, and goji berries. Gyozas are another type of dumpling in Asian cuisine. It was decent, with a good ratio of filling compared to the dough. There was plenty of spinach as well as goji berries that added a slight sweetness to the filling. It was an ok gyoza, but a bit flat in taste. Next time I would opt for the spicy pork ones.
Conclusion
Overall I would say that it is a decent Vietnamese bahn mi Madrid location, as the food is of good quality and there are limited similar options in the area. Nevertheless, I would have liked to see more differentiation in the flavors.
Visit: February 2024