Vietnamese hoagies 2 ways

Passersby on 13th Street near Sansom at midday last Friday may have spotted a line spilling out the door at Sampan, the trendy, "modern" Asian spot recently opened by Michael Schulson.

The draw was for something that's said not to exist, at least not outside the imagination - a free lunch.

In this case it was a Vietnamese hoagie called a banh mi, offered gratis as a one-day special to promote Sampan's new lunch service.

Schulson's careful upgrade of the traditional sandwich - he uses freshly grilled marinated Berkshire pork belly (not lunch meat) with the shred of tangy carrots and cucumber - had already won it something of a cult following.

So it was no surprise that, by the 5 p.m. cutoff, Sampan's kitchen had gone through 10 eight-pound pork bellies, giving out 368 of the normally $7 sandwiches to foodies tipped off by buzz on the blogs, Twitter and Facebook.

If they had ventured six miles east across the Ben Franklin Bridge, they would have encountered a somewhat different, though also visibly modern Asian trend.

Along Route 38 in Pennsauken sits a workaday sprawl of a shopping center called Saigon Plaza, which 15 months ago took over the space of Flower World, the weary discount plant market.

No major buzz on Twitter about Saigon Plaza. But the Vietnamese, Chinese, and other Asian immigrants who have settled in Pennsauken and Camden, Woodbine and Maple Shade on the edge of Cherry Hill have found it just fine.

They shop for huge sacks of new-crop rice in the Sunseng Supermarket where long aisles are taken up with potato leaf greens and yu choy, and baby bulbs of bok choy the size of ping-pong balls.

There are crabs of every persuasion bobbing in their tanks, and hunks of strawberry fish and butter fish, red-fleshed shark steak and clams far larger than one would want to swallow whole.

And so on - petite roasted quail hanging next to hefty slabs of roast pork. An extraordinary selection of baby corn. Trays overflowing with the feet of pigs and chicken.

Holding down the far end of Saigon Plaza is a banquet-hall-sized restaurant called Pho 38 specializing in the traditional, Vietnamese beef-noodle soup.

(No, "Pho 38" isn't named for Route 38, said Howie Diep, the owner: "3" and "8" are lucky numbers in Vietnam, and he was 38 when he opened it.)

Sandwiched between the supermarket and Pho 38 is a no-frills, easygoing lunch place called Century Cafe. It has the usual menu - spring rolls on vermicelli, charbroiled pork chops over broken rice, egg noodle soup and rice flake with shrimp cake.

You can also get very decent, if workaday banh mi on a toasted baguette - meatball in ketchup sauce, charbroiled chicken, or a ham-and-pork-roll lunch-meat special.

That last version is wrapped in paper and stacked like cordwood next to the cash register, as you'll find also at bakeries in Chinatown and along Washington Avenue.

It goes for $3.25 and it's not as spiffed-up as the Sampan jobs, which now include a fried fluke variety with bacon from Nueske's, the venerable Wisconsin smokehouse.

But if you buy four, the cafe throws in a fifth one for free.

Every day.

5201 Route 38 West
Pennsauken, N.J. 08109EndText