Spud Sunday: Sippity Spuds

There’s this guy. Let’s call him Greg (for that, indeed, is his actual name). He is, however, also known to at least some of you as Sup from the rather excellent Sippity Sup.

A few weeks ago, the alignment of the planets was such that myself and Greg were in San Francisco at the same time. I cannot tell you how excited I was when I discovered, via Twitter, that, for a few days, we would be within a few blocks of each other. A few messages were exchanged and a lunch date set. There was some discussion of Vietnamese food and specifically bánh mì - Vietnamese-style baguette sandwiches containing, among other things, a goodly dose of sweet pickled veg, chili, coriander, mayonnaise and your protein of choice (classically pork). Greg even went as far as to wonder whether I knew that such fare would not involve much in the way of potatoes. Clearly he feared that I might suffer from a deficiency of spuds whilst on my foreign travels. The concern was touching, though he really had nothing to worry about on that front.

In the end, you could say that we met, not for lunch, but for lunches, because we followed a trip to the lovely Zuni Café with a visit to Saigon Sandwich, a little hole-in-the-wall joint, to sample some first class bánh mì. You can read what Greg had to say on the subject here but, suffice to say that, while it may have been my first bánh mì, it was most certainly not my last.

Fast forward a few weeks and I am back at home base, suffering from bánh mì withdrawal and thinking that I should, in Greg’s honour, do a Spudly take on those fine Vietnamese concoctions. My first thought was to go the route of bánh-mì-meets-chip-butty, replacing the pork with chips and the baguette with toasted batch bread and creating what might well be the world’s first bánh butty. In fact, next time I’m feeling the need for a little carb-on-carb action, I think I will make just that.

Baked potato with a bánh mì twist

What I made today, though, wasn’t a sandwich at all, but a baked potato stuffed with some of the things you might otherwise find gracing your typical bánh mì. A bit of an east-west mash-up you might say. It won’t ever take the place of the experience that is a visit to Saigon Sandwich, but it made for a tasty lunch all the same.