Ba Le Deli & Bakery

Ba Le Deli & Bakery @ 701 Kingsway

The other day we were looking for some food and happened to be in the Kingsway area, and I remembered Ben of Chow Times mentioning this place Ba Le had great banh mi that must be tried, so I thought we'd give them a try.

It's weird because I've driven past this shop all the time but I never noticed it was there. Something about the homogeneous look of the signage of the Vietnamese restaurants along this strip of Kingsway makes them all look the same to me.

This place is different from Tung Hing and Kim Chau in that you can actually sit down at a table and eat there. That's what we did. Usually it's just a counter.

The place was pretty hopping. There were people coming and going constantly. Kweepo bought a packet of the pate they use in their sandwiches. It was only about $4. It looked amazing and would be great for preparing a quick sandwich at home.

They have a cooler with drinks as well as some funky Vietnamese desserts like sweet rice with coconut cream. We each got a sweet rice dessert, and I got a crysanthemum tea drink:

It was artificial tasting like these kind of drinks usually are, but when in Rome...

Both of the sandwiches were very good. The pork slices in the sandwich pictured here were soft and really interesting and unlike the other banh mi I've had elsewhere, possibly the best. My only beef with this sandwich is that my bread was a little stale. And the bread isn't as big as the one at Tung Hing. I tasted a bit of Kweepo's sandwich, which I think was beef, and it wasn't nearly as good as mine.

Out of all the banh mi places I've tried it's hard to pick a favorite. I'd say I like the filling of Ba Le but the bread of Tung Hing and the sauce of Kim Chau.

Ba Le has the largest selection of sandwiches of all the banh mi places I've been to so far - about 10 versus the five or so at Kim Chau and Tung Hing. (Xu Hue only had two, though they weren't primarily a banh mi place)

Ba Le will definitely be worth visiting a few times to try out all their sandwiches. They also happen to be closer to me than the other places - they're right near Les Faux Bourgeois.

I live in the west end, so all of these banh mi places on Kingsway are still a long drive to go get a simple sandwich, but sometimes you're just in the mood for a good banh mi. It's nice to know there are several reliable places and lots more to explore if you want.