The Eden Center Part 1, Song Que

Over the weekend this blog's co-author and I took a nice Saturday drive out to The Eden Center in Falls Church, VA. For the uninitiated, The Eden Center is a 120 store, 24 restaurant Vietnamese emporium. It is run by Vietnamese and caters to a Vietnamese clientèle. Walking through The Eden Center I felt very much like I was back in a strip mall in China--in a good way.

Despite feeling mildly out of place among the crowds of Vietnamese speaking customers, there was no acknowledgement by the shops that my-cowriter and I did not belong. We began the afternoon with pho, to be reviewed later, and finished it at Song Que Deli.

Song Que Deli specializes in banh mi sandwiches but also has a variety of bubble tea flavors and iced cream that would rock your world. If you think that I'm joking, then muster the courage to try some durian iced cream and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Along with the deli options, Song Que offers a wide variety of prepackaged foods to pick up, typical Vietnamese fare packed on styrofoam and wrapped in saran. The selections looked pretty great, and I might pick some up in the future, but it was the squid jerky that caught my eye. It is exactly what it sounds like and tastes just like you might imagine it would. In Japan it was used all the time as a beer snack and it is right at home in my cabinet being used for the same purpose here in America.

Given the rare of find spicy squid jerky I was prepared to be blown away by my bahn mi. I ordered the Vietnamese ham and pâté, my accomplice ordered the shredded pork with pork skin.

The sandwiches game with the traditional garnishes of jalepenos, pickeled, carrots, fish sauce, cilantro, and few other goodies. They were $3 a piece and extremely reasonably priced for what I'm accustomed to pay for a sandwich. I'll say, though, that despite the parts being delicious, the whole fell short. It was a failure of one ingredient and one ingredient only. The bread. It took a lot of effort to chew through the very dry and firm crush and get into the ingredients. And, given the overwhelming amount of work it took to chew the bread, I lost out on a lot of the goodness that would have been in the sandwich because I was so distracted by flying pieces of bread crust and the herculean jaw muscles I needed to eat the bahn mi.

My bottom line on the Song Que deli is this, go for some bubble tea, some squid jerky, and maybe even some ice cream (though I didn't try any) but think twice before grabbing a sandwich, even if they are only $3.