Call it khao jee pate or banh mi; by any name, it is simply delicious
The past year hasn't made it easy to look for the silver lining.
It's a year ago this week that Mekong Cafe, like many other restaurants, began taking precautions against COVID-19, even before the state lockdown was ordered. One of its first changes was to have staff serve the food from its enormously popular buffet, back when concerns were the illness would be spread through touching shared objects, like tongs, or serving spoons.
Then the lockdown came, Mekong Cafe and everyone else closed their dining rooms and, although it's always continued takeout, Mekong never did reopen the dining room after lockdown ended.
Takeout, many restaurateurs will tell you, can't take the place of dining in when it comes to revenue. It's been a tough year all around, to put it mildly.
Now Mekong Cafe has gotten rid of the trappings of dining — the tables and chairs, the dishes — to make room for an Asian market (see related article). The restaurant sells rice, seasonings and more while continuing takeout of its dishes from Laos, Thailand and
Vietnam.
And it has added to its prepared foods, including khao jee pâté, the Lao sandwiches akin to Vietnam's bánh mì, as of March 1.
Aha. A silver lining.
Khao jee pâté and bánh mì have to be among the best sandwiches on Earth, combining the elements of crisp bread (à la baguette) and often pâté, remnants of the French colonial era in Southeast Asia, with meats or other proteins or vegetables, and garnishes of sweet-tangy pickled daikon radish and carrot (shredded finely at Mekong), bright slices of jalapeño, sprigs of cilantro.
It's the mingling of textures and the range of flavors that make the sandwiches irresistible.
Things can go awry; the worst offense has to be a squishy-crusted roll for bánh mì, but the torpedo rolls Mekong uses provide good crunch.
I wanted to try some of the sandwiches that seemed most distinctly Mekong Cafe's, different from bánh mì around town, and that meant I had to try the sai oua ($12). Its centerpiece is the Lao sausage with the distinctive flavor of lime leaf; it's made in house from a family recipe, and it's long been a favorite of mine. Mekong is making the sausage in chicken or pork, diner's choice.
The Bang Bang sandwich ($8) was a must-try, too. It slathers on the flavorful house liver pâté and layers it with ham roll, slices of the restaurant's pork roast, and pork floss, the fluffy dried-pork product. Then it adds green onion to the vegetable garnishes and sprinkles on Shark-brand sriracha sauce from Thailand for a little heat and Maggi sauce from Switzerland, used around the world to amp up flavor.
As a point of comparison to others around town, I tried Mekong's Classic ($8), a traditional bánh mì with Vietnamese ham roll and headcheese, pork roast and pâte. It stands with the best.
Served on substantial rolls and filled generously, any of these sandwiches is a meal in itself. But sides are available at $2 apiece, including french fries, coleslaw, fried plantain slices and sweet potato fries. I tried the sweet potato fries — baked, it appeared, a bonus in my eyes. Sliced thin, they pulled off the rare feat of being crisp.
Mekong Cafe has many more sandwiches, a dozen in all that I plan to check off my list. They include a sandwich with fried egg, one for the veggie lovers with red pepper hummus in place of pâté, a tuna salad sandwich, one featuring beef in the style of Vietnamese shaken beef, and two others with chicken, ground or grilled breast meat.
Mekong Cafe even has a burger on the menu, served on a pretzel roll.
I will never not be stunned by the changes this pandemic has wrought, and grateful that at least some of them have been a silver lining.
5930 W. North Ave. (414) 257-2228. mekong-cafe. com
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday to Monday (closed Tuesdays). Order ahead at the website or by calling the restaurant; curbside pickup available around the corner on North 60th Street.
Carol Deptolla has been reviewing restaurants in Milwaukee and Wisconsin since 2008. Like all Journal Sentinel reporters, she buys all meals, accepts no gifts and is independent of all establishments she covers, working only for our readers.
Contact her at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 2242841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.