The city is expensive, but your next meal doesn’t have to be. In our weekly column The $25 Diner, we hunt down the best restaurants where you can eat like royalty for a song.
In a recent video on Instagram, Viet Linh Nguyen, the chef-owner of Gao Viet Kitchen, victoriously serves up what might be the messiest, most extravagant version of the humble banh mi that has ever existed. The sandwich contains the classic pickled carrots and daikon, of course. But it goes way further: a fried egg, a massive piece of dripping beef with a huge rib still attached and a spoonful of bone marrow that’s scraped out tableside.
The pièce de résistance comes when the sandwich is assembled, the bone pulled out clean, and the creation is served with a side of brisket pho broth for dipping. The over-the-top banh mi is the kind of culinary stunt that seems made for social media: kinda shocking and kinda gross. Whether it’s delicious, we can’t say, as the $49 dish vastly exceeds The $25 Diner’s budget. But it’s definitely riveting.
“It’s the most love-and-hate dish I ever created on social media,” Nguyen told us, with a hint of pride.
This from the same man who invented the kiddie-pool-size “Pho-zilla,” which comes with a whole lobster and a $110 price tag. His gimmicks have worked. There are long weekend waitlists at Gao Viet. The Outer Sunset is the restaurant’s second location; the first opened to great fanfare in San Mateo. Because of its larger kitchen, the San Francisco location is Nguyen’s testing ground for new menu items.
Nguyen is aware that the Vegas-esque takes on Vietnamese classics aren’t for everyone. So he recently unveiled a $19.95 lunch special, offered Wednesday through Friday, in the restaurant’s expansive dining room lined on one side with a mosaic of colorful shutters.
“In San Francisco, it’s hard to go to lunch on that budget,” Nguyen accurately noted.
As you might imagine, the lunch options are more demure and accessible — though still generously portioned. They’re a great way to get a taste of Gao without breaking the bank (or passing out at the table).
The specials are presented as a choose-your-own-adventure journey: Select a “dry bowl,” with a base of white rice, garlic noodles or vermicelli, alongside a choice of seven proteins, like smoky, grilled BBQ shrimp and fat-crispy pork belly — or from four noodle soup bases, including deeply flavored pho and spicy bun bo hue.
From the dry options, we chose the vermicelli bowl with five-spice pork belly, which comes with a crispy imperial roll, grilled shrimp and a side of nuoc cham for dipping or drowning. We also tried the garlic noodles, which made a satisfying base for the five-spice chicken (a $2.50 additional charge), roasted and grilled bone-in to keep it juicy. A pork au jus serves as a flavor-boosting dipping accompaniment.
On the noodle soup half of the menu, we got the pho with filet and brisket, the broth slicked with fat from added marrow.
From the soup bases, we went with banh canh gio heo, jiggly tapioca noodles and an unctuous ham hock swimming in pork broth. But the star of the lunch specials might be bun rieu, a steaming, shimmering, orangey-red soup flavored with crab and flecked with melt-in-your-mouth bits of ground pork. On a lark, we added the deep-fried soft-shell crab ($5), dressed with scallions and fried shallots. It was a worthwhile investment.
Pro tips: Use the Yelp app to get on the waitlist before arriving at the restaurant. Eagle-eyed parties of two might nab open chairs at the bar, which offers the full menu. Another great idea? Order takeout ahead of time and enjoy your meal a block away in Golden Gate Park.
Meanwhile, Gao Viet is slated to be a first-time participant in the Sunset Night Market (Aug. 30 and Sept. 27), which, due to popular demand, is returning to Irving Street.
Make a meal out of it:
💰Bun rieu lunch special + fried soft shell crab ($25)
📍Gao Viet Kitchen & Bar, 1900 Irving St., Outer Sunset