Viet Baguette: most of the ingredients, none of the flavour

Some people have a good idea and then fail to have the successive good ideas that make the first one work. This is very much the case at Viet Baguette in Charlotte Place: making Vietnamese sandwiches (banh mi) was a good idea but it needed to be backed up with further ideas like having good ingredients or employing competent staff.

OK, I am not going to fart around here: this lunch establishment had so many problems we may as well get down to them. The staff were hopelessly dizzy, drippy farts who tooled around even though the queue was just getting longer and longer; when we got to the cash desk the poor dear seemed so confused that the prices she charged were effectively random.

But, if the food is good, who gives a tinker’s cuss about the hopeless staff? Sadly the food was boring. It lacked all of the fresh, tangy, savoury, fiery, delicious characters you want in a Vietnamese sandwich. The chilli sauce lacked any form of flavour, the chillies they used were too mild and you had to repeatedly ask for more of them in the hope of getting a bit of heat.

When they are good, banh mi can be powerful, flavoursome entities of raw intensity. But Viet Baguette totally failed to deliver any of this pleasure. They were dreadful sandwiches of raw depression.

I’ve said where they are in London, but don’t, just don’t go.