7-Eleven Japan now has Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, but how do they taste?[Taste test]

Vietnam’s star sandwich reaches a new milestone on the road to mainstream popularity in Japan.

I’ve had a lot of people in Japan ask me what foods I miss from my hometown. Usually they assume I miss hamburgers, and as someone who grew up in southern California I do have a lot of fond memories of In-N-Out (and, as a cultured native son of San Dimas, I have especially fond memories of Bravo Burgers). But high-quality burgers aren’t all that hard to find in the Tokyo area, and the sandwiches I most often find myself missing from back home are banh mi.

Not that banh mi originated in the Los Angeles area, but the size of the local Vietnamese population means that you’re never too far from a shop or restaurant where you can pick up one of Vietnam’s representative sandwiches, consisting of a sliced baguette filled with meat, vegetables, and cilantro. But while banh mi have gotten more popular in Japan in recent years, they’re still generally something you have to go out of your way to find here, so it’s a potential sandwich game changer that 7-Eleven Japan has now started selling them.

7-Eleven’s banh mi debuted towards the end of June. Priced at 430 yen (US$2.75), it’s not exactly a bargain, but also not as startlingly expensive as a lot of convenience store fare has become over the past year. One thing that might be a little jarring for banh mi veterans, though, is that 7-Eleven’s banh mi come cold, since they’re kept on the stores’ refrigerated shelves, but that’s probably unavoidable since they’re pre-made.

Out of the wrapper, this isn’t a bad-looking banh mi at all. There’s a nice contrast of colors between the nicely browned bread, ham, diced carrots and radish, and cilantro.

Things are pretty good size-wise too. Some Japanese convenience store specialty sandwiches are woefully undersized, but by Japanese portion standards, this is a decent deal.

Taking a bite quickly reveals that the baguette is soft, not crusty, but still with more substance to it than a generic subway sandwich roll. Once you’re through the bread, though, you’re going to be met with quite a lot of crunch from the vegetables.

The carrots and radish were firmer than I’d expected, and their texture was all the more noticeable because of the tenderness of the sliced ham, since with something heftier, like barbecued pork, the veggies’ crunchiness probably wouldn’t stand out quite so much. Similarly, while there is some cilantro in here, it’s a pretty small amount compared to non-7-Eleven banh mi. That’s probably something that I should have expected, though, since with cilantro being a pretty divisive food in Japan, it makes sense that 7-Eleven would want to err on the side of caution to avoid putting in too much for most of their customers’ tastes. Still, the small amount of cilantro means that 7-Eleven’s banh mi doesn’t have much leafy texture either, once again making the vegetables’ feel even crunchier.

In addition to being crunchy, the vegetables are also surprisingly wet. They’re treated with quite a lot of vinegar, and that gives them a noticeable pickle-sourness, though thankfully it’s not too sharp or overpowering. There’s also extra moisture from the sweet chili sauce that 7-Eleven uses for this sandwich, which adds a little bit of heat, but not so much that you’d call this an out-and-out spicy sandwich.

All that makes for a comparatively wet and crunchy banh mi without a particularly strong aromatic herbal aspect. However, everything that is here is rather tasty, and it delivers that satisfyingly filling but not heavy or bloated sensation that makes banh mi a great meal choice.

Overall, 7-Eleven Japan’s banh mi might not be something you’d feel obsessively compelled to go super out of your way to get, but with how many branches 7-Eleven has in Japan, odds are there’s not going to be any major detour involved in procuring this sandwich. As something you can quickly pop into a convenience store and grab on your way to/from work, school, or sightseeing, this is a viable option in terms of taste and quality, and more intriguing that a plain old ham-and-cheese or tuna mayo sandwich.

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