{"id":62095,"date":"2025-11-20T14:48:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/62095\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T14:48:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:48:13","slug":"a-data-driven-vibe-coded-quest-to-find-san-franciscos-best-bahn-mi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/62095\/","title":{"rendered":"A data-driven, vibe-coded quest to find San Francisco\u2019s best bahn mi"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a bright Sunday afternoon in early November, a cluster of strangers gathered in Civic Center Park. The group settled into a loose circle, each holding a paper-wrapped bahn mi. At the front of the pack was Cow Hollow native Gavin Pola, who turned to the small crowd and clasped his hands together: \u201cShould we start?\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, a banh mi debate erupted.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good, but the bread is kind of mid,\u201d one person shrugged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pork itself had good flavor, but it didn\u2019t really need the sauce,\u201d said another, prompting nods and hums of agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no daikon either, that\u2019s missing,\u201d someone chimed in from the back.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there is daikon. I had one long piece!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe workers might\u2019ve liked you better than the rest of us,\u201d another joked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And so went the first meeting of the San Francisco Bahn Mi Club. The group continued to go around, dissecting the strengths and weaknesses of their Vietnamese sandwiches, sharing laughs, strong opinions, and the small joy of dining together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Source: Jason Henry for The Standard<\/p>\n

It all started on Instagram, where Pola, the club\u2019s organizer, saw a video about the Marin Burger Club, a group of food-obsessed North Bay dads. The group, established 12 years ago, meets each month to calculate bun-to-patty ratios with a special \u201cburgermajigger\u201d measuring tool, then compiles the ratings into spreadsheets. <\/p>\n

Inspired by the idea of using data to evaluate a dish, Pola started his version, dedicated not to beef, but bahn mi. He hopes members will meet monthly at various Vietnamese sandwich spots until they\u2019ve tried every one in the city. Pola acknowledges that this could be a years-long undertaking, but the point is less the destination than the journey itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been really into food my whole life,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s one of those great art forms that really brings people together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Gavin Pola, organizer of the San Francisco Banh Mi Club. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard<\/p>\n

Pola chose to focus on the classic Vietnamese sandwich because it\u2019s accessible, affordable, and consistent enough to compare, while leaving room for restaurants to showcase some personality \u2014 perhaps with an extra generous portion of protein, or the addition of a housemade sauce. <\/p>\n

Pola vibe-coded a website, accessible only to attendees, so club members the group can log and aggregate scores across a range of custom criteria, including flavor, baguette quality, value, overall execution, and whether or not the sandwich appears neatly assembled or sloppily rushed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was going to use Beli, a very popular restaurant reviewing app, but what I really want to do is have very tailored, specific metrics,\u201d Pola said. \u201cWith Beli you can give it a score, but it\u2019s very subjective. Whereas with this, we\u2019ll have key metrics that we\u2019ll use across all the restaurants we rate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He organized the first Bahn Mi Club meeting for Nov. 2 and asked attendees to bring cash and their appetites to Saigon Sandwich, a decades-old institution in the Tenderloin, on the border of Little Saigon. But he didn\u2019t anticipate how quickly the Partiful invite would gain traction. Within two weeks of posting about the event, he had 110 RSVPs.<\/p>\n

\"\"Roast pork banh mi at Saigon Sandwich. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard<\/p>\n

\u201cI put it as a public event, and a lot of people started reaching out,\u201d Pola said. \u201cYou never know what the actual conversion rate will be between interest versus who will actually go. But it was pretty insane.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saigon Sandwich\u2019s menu is straightforward, with all six bahn mi options \u2014 including the house favorite, Thit Cha, or \u201cfancy\u201d pork and roast pork combination sandwich\u2014 priced under $8. Some attendees loved the creamy pate, but thought the bread lacked crunch; others found the lack of spice underwhelming. Still, most agreed that for the price, the shop\u2019s banh mi was hard to beat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the sandwich is good. I\u2019d rate it high because of the value,\u201d said Hector Miramontes. \u201cI was able to buy three sandwiches for $20, which is wild to me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As an event planner for tech companies, Miramontes embraces the city\u2019s \u201c996\u201d mentality and keeps his calendar full with tech-related events. He found Pola\u2019s club while scrolling through Partiful and was interested in what he saw as a low-pressure opportunity to meet new people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Hundreds RSVP\u2019d for the club\u2019s first meeting in early November. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just looking for something different,\u201d Miramontes said. \u201cI\u2019m still working on building community, so I really liked how Gavin\u2019s club is super casual and based around bahn mi.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time Pola, who works as a management consultant by day, has turned his love for food into something beyond a personal pursuit. At 10, he competed on Gordon Ramsay\u2019s TV show \u201cMasterChef Junior\u201d, where his chocoholic delight cake and sage butter tortellini earned him a fifth-place finish and plenty of compliments from the famously tough celebrity chef.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s been a huge movement toward online communities and virtual communities, and the amount of time we\u2019re all spending in virtual environments is pretty insane,\u201d Pola said. \u201cIf you have any interest in trying some cool food, meeting some fun people, definitely come out. Food is only great when you share it with others.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

San Francisco Banh Mi Club Meeting #2Date and time1 p.m., Sunday, Dec 7<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a bright Sunday afternoon in early November, a cluster of strangers gathered in Civic Center Park. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[18929,413,101,103,102,104,106,105,32884],"class_list":["post-62095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-clubs","tag-food","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-vietnamese-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}