Chef Mike Nguyen assembles Godzilla. Photo by Pat Padua

[Ed. note: As we were in the process of preparing this post for publication, we learned that Ba Bay had abruptly closed for business.]

As a connoisseur of fried-egg sandwiches like Spike’s Sunnyside and Paila‘s Chemilico, I recently took on a new contender in this unfairly maligned category: the Godzilla at recently-shuttered Nouveau Vietnamese joint Ba Bay.

Chef Mike Nguyen told me that this extreme banh mi comes, like its namesake, by land, air, and sea: meatballs (land), fried chicken and eggs (air), and whole fried catfish (sea). Fried pickles are a nod to Nguyen’s Texas roots and at the same time suggestive of the scaly one’s daggered maw. These motley ingredients add up to one monster sandwich. But is it as forbidding as it looks, or is it like Godzilla, subject to unexpected moments of tenderness?

The sandwich began as an in-house joke in the Capitol Hill restaurant’s kitchen, according to Nguyen, and Ba Bay owner Khoa Nguyen (no relation) was initially resistant to making the Godzilla. But a taste test persuaded Khoa to give in. An intimidating photo of the sandwich appeared on Ba Bay’s Facebook wall during Veteran’s Day week, but the restaurant did not plan to officially add it to the menu.

RIP Godzilla Banh Mi. Photo by Pat Padua.

So what did such a massive sandwich taste like? The size was forbidding, but it’s less food than comes on a typical Cracker Barrel dinner platter.

The baguette was the hardest part, and squishing the ingredients together into a manageable stew required plenty of napkins. This sandwich may have required ordinary mouths to grab it from a variety of angles; but this turned out to be a feature, not a bug, as the different elements achieved a separation not typical in sandwiches. The chili mayo that lined the top baguette half could be distinguished from the sambal jelly, a chili-based paste on the bottom. The pickles added sweet notes to the typical pickled banh mi fixins. Finally, the fish dominated, as does the sea over our planet.

Semioticians and culinary historians could have had a field day with the Godzilla Banh Mi, and I am fortunate to have been one of only a handful of customers to stumble away shrieking electronically, “Great Sandwich!”

Rest in peace, Godzilla Banh Mi — you were too delicious for this world.