Yesterday, I attended a half-day retreat at work. The best thing about these meetings is that it means free lunch! Usually, this is some sort of standard boxed lunch: a salad or sandwich. These lunches are rarely amazing, but they do provide a pleasant diversion (kind of like how you get excited about airplane food, no matter how gross it is, just because it breaks up the trip.)

This year, we actually got really great boxed lunches! They came from Baguette Box. Baguette Box has two locations in Seattle, one on Capitol Hill and one in Fremont. They specialize in sandwiches inspired by the classic Vietnamese sandwich known as bahn mi. Bahn mi are baguette sandwiches that are traditionally filled with meat or tofu and pickled carrots, daikon, onions and cilantro. Bahn mi are always really cheap; in the International District, you can get one for about $2. Of course, the sandwiches at Baguette Box aren’t as cheap as that, but $4.75 to $6.50 for a sandwich is still a pretty good deal by Capitol Hill standards. Plus, the quality of the baguette and ingredients at Baguette Box is definitely a step up from you what get with typical bahn mi.

My friend and I actually went to Baguette Box for lunch last Friday since neither of us had ever been there and we were feeling the need to try something new (it was during this lunch that we noticed that Baguette Box delivered boxed lunches and we thus decided to recommend it for the staff retreat.) I had the crispy tofu baguette. This sandwich is very similar to a traditional bahn mi. The filling consisted of pickled daikon and carrots, red onion and cilantro as well as tofu that had been marinated in a delicious coconut sauce and then fried until crispy. It also came slathered with a homemade aioli. The baguette was what set this apart from a typical bahn mi. It was hearty and crunchy (but not to the point that it ripped your mouth apart.) The tofu sandwich was really yummy. Other tasty-sounding options on the menu include crispy drunken chicken baguette, braised pork shoulder with red wine baguette, and grilled yellow squash and eggplant baguette. There are also interesting sides available such as truffle fries and beet salad.

Although the house-cured salmon gravlax baguette was tempting, I ended up ordering the tofu baguette again this week for the retreat. This time it was even better than before! The deliveries come from the Fremont location so perhaps the chef there is more generous with the fillings than the one up on Capitol Hill. This sandwich was oilier (in a good way) and much more flavorful than the one I had last Friday. Be forewarned, these sandwiches can be very messy. I dribbled aioli all over my meeting agenda making it more difficult to engage in my favorite retreat pastime – putting giant X’s though the agenda items as we finish them. In addition to the sandwiches, the boxed lunches also came with a nice carrot and raisin salad and an extremely moist banana cake with coconut sauce. It was very rich and filling but oh so delicious!