One Of NYC's Great Vietnamese Restaurants Just Opened On The UWS

There was already a line heading down Broadway towards 106th Street when I arrived at Banh Vietnamese Shop House about ten minutes before dinner service started last Saturday night. The cheery-looking restaurant, complete with a shimmery outdoor seating area, has received almost no hype, and technically isn't even open yet—this was their third "weekend pop-up" as the team gears up for full-time hours starting next month—and yet somehow it's already the most popular restaurant on the Upper West Side. In fact, they had to stop accepting online takeout orders because the kitchen was so slammed. What's going on here?

John Nguyen, the co-owner of Banh Shop House, tries to explain the restaurant's instant success. "For one thing, the Vietnamese community in this city is tight, and everyone shares on social media, so word got around fast. For another, we're making things that you can't really get anywhere else in the city, not even at our other restaurant, Cơm Tấm Ninh Kiều in the Bronx."

And after making my way through a massive feast here on Saturday, I can say: the food at Banh is straight-up superb. Truly destination-worthy stuff.

The chef and co-owner (and wife of Nguyen) is Nhu Ton, who was born in central Vietnam but moved around that country a lot while growing up, and her ambitious menu here is filled with dishes from many different regions. Even ordering eight different things we felt like we had just scratched the surface, but I would definitely recommend getting the Xoai Xanh Mam Ruoc, or Green Mango Salad, for the table to share as a starter. It's a deceptively simple-looking dish—slices of unripe fruit and a crock of thick, almost clumpy, fish sauce for dipping—but it's sublime in its contrast of tang and funk.

Offal fans will go crazy over Ton's Pha Lau, a wonderfully rich and hearty stew, packed with braised beef and pork intestines, strips of tripe, and chunks of liver. The meat is all very tender, the broth intense, and it comes with slices of oiled-up bread on to which you can pile the offal, open-face-style, and/or dunk to soak up all the juice. Another must-order is the Bahn Cuon Ha Noi, steamed rice rolls stuffed with ground pork and mushrooms and served with chunks of a housemade organ-meatloaf bathing in a meat broth. Our server suggested we dump it all on top of the rolls, and she was correct.

More excellent food: the porky fried Cha Gio (Spring Roll) with a pile of greens and a bowl of slightly-sweet sauce; the Banh Chung Chien, or Crispy Sticky Rice Cakes, which are filled with pork and ground mung bean, steamed in banana leaves overnight, and then fried to a crisp on the outside; and the Bun Bo Bo, a bowl of rice noodles topped with thin slices of well-marinated beef cooked in tons of butter.

There's Pho here, of course, available with beef, chicken, or done up vegan, but for our noodle soup we went with the Bun Mang Vit, the bright broth swimming with chunks of fatty duck leg and garlic bamboo shoots. And there are five types of Banh Mi, including a beef brisket, a barbecue pork, a spicy fried chicken, and an interesting combination of crispy spring roll, smoked sweet sausage, and a slather of pate. It didn't quite work, but it was also the eighth dish we ate, so maybe we were just too full to understand.

Banh's outdoor seating features a semi-heated, semi-enclosed structure across the bike lane on Amsterdam, as well as four two-tops sitting en plein air. There is also indoor dining, though many health experts do not recommend that and the option will likely not be around for long as cases rise.

"In the Upper West Side we see a lovely community that is excited by a Vietnamese restaurant pushing the food and culture forward," says Nguyen. "We live on the UWS ourselves so we’re very much a part of the neighborhood and we are excited to be opening even [during] COVID. We had these plans since last year and strongly believe in what we do, and the pandemic didn’t change that for us."

Banh Vietnamese Shop House is located at 942 Amsterdam Avenue, between 106th and 107th Streets, and you should follow them @banhnyc on Instagram for hours this coming weekend and more opening news (banhny.com)