Why eat greasy fast food when it’s unpretentious and delicious right across the street?

Whether you’ve been eating Vietnamese banh mi since childhood or have just been introduced to this cross-cultural combo from Saigon, now’s a good time to get acquainted with Santa Rosa Junior College’s closest banh mi joint: Kelly’s Sandwiches.

Family-owned Kelly’s opened in 2019 and, luckily for the neighbors, survived the pandemic. Depending on where your class is, the little cafe is about a 10-minute walk from SRJC. It’s located directly across the street from Santa Rosa High School on Mendocino Avenue, between a nail spa and a frozen yogurt shop.

Banh mi is a sandwich with crusty French baguette, pickled daikon and carrots, fresh cilantro, crispy cucumber, jalapeño strips for the brave and, traditionally, in-house prepared pork or chicken. Each shop has its own special fillings and usually offers several options: roasted pork belly, shredded or steamed pork, barbecue pork or chicken.

At Kelly’s you will find the aforementioned pork preparations, a vegetable option and meatballs.

On a Monday night, we tested three banh mi sandwiches: roast pork belly, barbecue pork, and the vegetable option. The sandwiches cost $8.50 each. To complete our meal, we also sampled the shrimp spring rolls ($12.50).

We wanted to try some of Kelly’s desserts, like the Banh Flan (Vietnamese caramel custard), Rau Cau Dua (coconut jelly), Che Khuc Bach (almond-lychee panna cotta), and Che Sam Bo Luong (sweet dessert soup), but by 5:15 p.m.: the store was already sold out of desserts.

Our entire order of four sandwiches and one egg roll came to just over $57, including tax and tip. Kelly made our sandwiches herself in about four minutes while we waited. The spring rolls, which are made in advance in the morning, take about “4-5 minutes” to make, her partner said.

We waited in the modest storefront where the staff had set up an altar near the entrance with an offering to today’s gods of a fresh baguette and a glass of boba tea. The shop has a few tables where you can dine or wait for your sandwiches.

Once, on a memorably rainy day, we waited for our sandwiches while being entertained by the TV, tuned to a travel channel consisting entirely of escapist fantasies in the form of scenic car rides. Captivated by the beauty of the Alps and picturesque European towns with cobbled streets, we wished the staff had taken longer than five minutes to assemble our order.

When our order arrived, the four of us compared the barbecue pork, roasted pork belly, and vegetable banh mi. The French baguette was pleasantly crunchy. Each bite shattered the crust, sending flaky bits flying. It is advisable to eat your banh mi outside during a softball game, for example, or to enlist your dog to help clean up.

Kelly’s banh mi’s include tart pickled daikon and carrot, softened by mayo and fresh cilantro and cucumber. The tasters unanimously preferred the barbecue pork for its crispy grilled texture and sweet taste. Compared to the barbecue pork, the roasted pork belly was salty and less flavorful, and the texture was reminiscent of roasted pork loin. The vegetable banh mi featured fried mushrooms, but was disappointing and bland compared to the pork versions.

A more generous layer of the pickled vegetables would have improved all the sandwiches.

The flavor pop of fresh mint livened up the shrimp spring rolls. The accompanying peanut sauce is sweet, effectively dividing tasters into two camps.

Kelly’s location is an advantage or disadvantage depending on the time of day. At lunch, students from both middle school and high school crowd the store. As we discovered, certain menu items, such as desserts or spring rolls, sold out on some nights before the store closed at 6pm Monday through Saturday.

Our verdict on Kelly’s? Each of the four tasters would “definitely” eat a sandwich there once a week, and one revised his answer to “seven times a week.”

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