Green Leaf Bistro

Address: 1684 Douglas St.
Phone: (250) 590-8302
Price: $6 sub + drink
Notes: Just reviewing the bahn mi for now - stay posted for more!

I have heard lots of great buzz about the Green Leaf Bistro. If you can't picture it, it's on the little strip of awesome restaurants just near City Hall/Spirit Square. I'm not sure if they're new on the food scene or if it's just one of those places that wasn't on my radar pre-foodblogging or because I clearly had more to learn about the best places in Victoria than I thought when writing this blog (I guess I need to do a review of some humble pie? *rimshot*)

A more full review to come - definitely want to check this place out more. The first impression was really good - pretty busy for 11:30 on a Thursday. The place was quite nicely decorated and I coveted the uniforms of the servers.


Service:
June 2, 2011
The service was a bit slow considering they were pretty much just making a sandwich, but it may have just been I was rushing to grab something quick and then get to a meeting across town so every second screamed at my rising anxiety about being late (I wasn't. But barely.)


Food:
June 2, 2011

Pork Bahn Mi via foodspotting.com

For those of you who haven't tried a bahn mi (also called a "vietnamese sub") you should, because they're pretty fantastic. There aren't very many places to get them in Victoria, the only other place I know of is Foo, but my coworkers who are formerly from Calgary tell me that Calgary is bahn mi mecca/heaven/central and that someday I must go there so that I can truly know the glorious magic of this post-colonial foodstuff (duly noted!). I didn't see it on the menu at Green Leaf - in fact I only knew that it was there because my coworker texted me. Maybe I just didn't see, though...

This was a pretty good sandwich - it was a bit small, but it was $6.61 including tax for the sub and a pop so I feel like the value is there. I was pretty freaking hungry later though. Maybe two is the answer?

The meat in this was incredible - it had a magical sauce on it and was lovely and tender. The bun was very good. I'm curious to know if it's the more "authentic" Vietnamese baguette - at the time I had forgotten this was a criteria for a good bahn mi and I was eating on the run so I admit I didn't pay attention to it too much. The toppings were good - pickled carrot and I think daikon? It was definitely missing cilantro but I think that perhaps this was an oversight because I saw another picture on foodspotting that had cilantro for sure. Also, no pate which is apparently occasionally included in a bahn mi (baguette and pate being the French colonial influence parts).