Bun Mii on George Street is a Vietnamese Café serving up a small menu of classic dishes from Vietnam. I came here a while back in November 2017 when I tried out the Pho (read more about that here).  It was pretty good and I always meant to come back and try everything else.

It has taken me a while but I finally made it back to check out the rest of the menu sampling  one of the Banh Mi sandwiches and a bowl of their Bun Thit Nuong noodles (on different days ! honest! 🙂 )

Bun Thit Nuong noodles

The Bun Thit Nuong is another Vietnamese Classic that they serve here at Bun Mii , on the menu board they describe a bowl of “Vietnamese Rice Vermicelli noodle with BBQ Pork”.

It sounds so simple and perhaps it is, but the combination of the noodles, the meat and all those very fresh vegetable and salad items produce something really quite special.

There is this fantastic contrast of textures between the cold and crunchy salad; piles of green salad leaf, thin sliced strips of fresh cold cucumber, a mix of pickled carrot and white daikon, a handful of fresh coriander and mint and some beansprouts. Then to that add the soft slippery warm noodles, and the hot spiced slices of pork that are chewy and meaty and you have one helluva bowl of food.

Fresh, fragrant, cooling and gently spicy! When you eat this dish it is hard to know which way your taste buds need to turn to tell your mouth and your brain what is going on. Often I find that the meat and the noodles can take over and just steal the show, but with this dish, oh no, not this time, all that other stuff in the bowl had a role and a place in making this a great bite of food.

I mean don’t get me wrong that Vietnamese style BBQ pork cooked with chilli and lemongrass and topped with sesame seeds is pretty tasty all by itself, but it needs it’s backing singers to really shine.

OK so I have never been to Vietnam so have no real point of reference to say if this is the real deal or not. But whatever it’s provenance, I like it and on a hot summer day all that salad and spice actually has a very cooling and refreshing  result.

Banh Mi

So after I had tried that noodle dish I figured that I still needed to come back ‘again’ to try out one of the other Vietnamese classics the Banh Mi sandwich. I know my life does sound so tough sometimes 🙂

Here at Bun Mi they offer four fillings, ‘Meat balls’, ‘Veggie Balls’, ‘Spicy Chicken’, and that ‘BBQ Pork’ that I had before with my noodles. It was a tough choice , but that pork had been so good in the Bin Thit Nuong, that I wanted to see how well it fared inside two layers of bread, was it going to be a one trick pony?

As a sandwich there is a lot to like, the bread is basically like your French baguette, a nice crunchy chewy crust and a soft springy and airy bit of white bread.  Traditionally the bread for the Banh Mi is a slightly different bake, I am not sure what they were using here at Bun Mii.

Fillings wise, it was good but there did seem to be more bread than filling which is very much the British way of making a sandwich. I did like the crunchiness of the pickled vegetables and the spicy mayo type of sauce that was smeared in there was pretty tasty as well. The BBQ pork was still good but it did get a little bit lost inside that big chunk of bread.

It was a decent sandwich I just wanted a lot more stuff packed in there. I have had Banh Mi in the states and they are often overflowing, but then again most American sandwiches do, so that is probably not a true test 🙂

I liked it, and perhaps need to try another one with a different filling to give it a fairer assessment

I do like the simple classic menu at Bun Mii, I like that the prices have stayed the same and that it all still feels pretty reasonable value for the quality of food and flavour that they are serving up

I really enjoyed revisiting the Bun Mii Vietnamese Café. The food all looks good and tastes good, the Pho was good the first time and I am definitely keen on coming back for the Bun Thit Nuong.

Ok so I might not be running back for the Banh mi, but I still didn’t try the Summer Rolls, so I really do have to come back anyway 🙂

Bun Mii are Located at 38 George Street, NG1 3BG in Nottingham. Check them out on their Facebook Page