Spring Break
Local hole-in-the-wall eateries
Allie Clark
Issue date: 2/6/09 Section: Diversions
I first heard about Baguette from a friend of mine who works downtown. We were decrying the lack of cheap good food around, and then she told me about Baguette - a tiny sandwich shop shoved into the towers down by the river, where, although the most expensive item on the menu is $4.25, the taste is explosive. I'd never tried a Vietnamese sandwich before, but since I'm an adventurous eater who's short on cash, there was nothing that was going to keep me from Baguette now.
When you walk into Baguette, you know it's small. The space available for patrons probably adds up to about the space you have in a dorm room with two beds on the floor - the small dorm rooms, not the nice ones in Halsell. But size definitely doesn't matter with this place. I checked out the menu, which offered breakfast sandwiches with eggs, regular chicken sandwiches, barbecued pork, and on the other end of the spectrum, pate and head cheese. The prices all hovered around $4. I ordered the chicken baguette on the white baguette "to go" for $4.25.
The first bite was just bread - delicious French baguette bread, yes, but it was still a bit anticlimactic. Then came the second bite. It was an explosion of chicken, julienned carrots and cucumbers, steamed onions, cilantro and a tangy, sweet, spicy sauce. It blended together with perfect complexity, the perfect meld of crunchy, chewy and mushy, where the sauce melts into the bread. In a word, heaven.
In my opinion, the best food should stop you in your tracks. This sandwich made me actually sit down and savor every single bite. Oh, I still paced like usual while I was chewing, making ridiculous sounds of enjoyment, but when it came time to take a bite, the sheer flavor would make me flop down on the nearest surface. Well done, chicken baguette.
After that amazing experience, I decided to go back and try some of Baguette's sweet buns. In a fortunate accident, I misspoke and said, "taro, uh, coconut," which sounded like "taro and coconut," so I ended up with two buns instead of just a coconut bun. The buns are small and sticky and cost $1.50 each. They also offer larger buns filled with things like sausage or mushrooms for $2.50.
When you walk into Baguette, you know it's small. The space available for patrons probably adds up to about the space you have in a dorm room with two beds on the floor - the small dorm rooms, not the nice ones in Halsell. But size definitely doesn't matter with this place. I checked out the menu, which offered breakfast sandwiches with eggs, regular chicken sandwiches, barbecued pork, and on the other end of the spectrum, pate and head cheese. The prices all hovered around $4. I ordered the chicken baguette on the white baguette "to go" for $4.25.
The first bite was just bread - delicious French baguette bread, yes, but it was still a bit anticlimactic. Then came the second bite. It was an explosion of chicken, julienned carrots and cucumbers, steamed onions, cilantro and a tangy, sweet, spicy sauce. It blended together with perfect complexity, the perfect meld of crunchy, chewy and mushy, where the sauce melts into the bread. In a word, heaven.
In my opinion, the best food should stop you in your tracks. This sandwich made me actually sit down and savor every single bite. Oh, I still paced like usual while I was chewing, making ridiculous sounds of enjoyment, but when it came time to take a bite, the sheer flavor would make me flop down on the nearest surface. Well done, chicken baguette.
After that amazing experience, I decided to go back and try some of Baguette's sweet buns. In a fortunate accident, I misspoke and said, "taro, uh, coconut," which sounded like "taro and coconut," so I ended up with two buns instead of just a coconut bun. The buns are small and sticky and cost $1.50 each. They also offer larger buns filled with things like sausage or mushrooms for $2.50.
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