Banh Cuon Thanh Tri

Over the past 50 years, Orange County became home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam, which created Little Saigon – an unparalleled collection of restaurants and shops ranging from generalists who do a bunch of things well to specialists who do one or two things fantastically. Banh Cuon Thanh Tri focuses almost exclusively on steamed rice rolls, banh cuon (pronounced bah-n coo-n), and has established itself as one of the top two restaurants in the area for this unique item.

Unlike more commonly known Vietnamese spring or summer rolls, which are easily made using mass-manufactured thin, translucent rice paper discs, banh cuon rolls are thicker, typically hand-steamed individually in a kitchen, and used to hold bean sprouts and either sliced meat or fishcake. After the rolls are sliced into bite-sized pieces – an optional step at some restaurants – fried garlic chips are placed on top to offset the soft rolls and firmer meats with crunchy texture.

Armed with lots of serve-yourself sweet fish sauce and spices while you wait for your order, you should prep a dunking bowl to your preferred level of heat. When rolls arrive, you break off and dunk pieces into the customized fish sauce, then revel in all the salty, savory, sweet, sour, and spicy flavors at once.

Thanh Tri’s rice rolls tend to be perfect, and the garnishes excellent. That said, the pork and fishcake fillings are both only pretty good – almost as tasty as at our #1 banh cuon pick – but there’s another version, egg banh cuon made with egg wrappers, which you won’t find everyplace else. And there are other variations, including ones with shrimp and other fried ingredients, that can be ordered for DIY assembly (typically called banh uot).