I Review Something

Oh Mai Vietnamese Sandwich Kitchen
3425 S. State St.
801-467-6882

6093 S. Highland Dr.
801-277-9888

It’s a joyful thing when a local business becomes a regular haunt because they make consistent, amazing product.

Oh Mai has become one of those for me. It’s a rare week that I’m not there twice buying two sandwiches at each visit. I eat one for whatever meal I’m servicing at the time, and put one in the fridge for the next day. It’s immediately a better day if I wake up and remember that there’s Oh Mai waiting for me in the chill chest for lunch.

My family loves it, too. I get sandwiches, my wife is stuck on pho. My daughter devours the Mai Roll, expertly gutting them for the shrimp, and then slowly deconstructing them from there. My mom goes there constantly, too.

Their newest creation is the chicken shiu mai, a chicken meatball sandwich. As is the norm for their food, it’s a complex dish. The ethereally tender meatballs swim in a delicious, dark red tomato-based sauce and are topped with a dark soy sauce that, when I first opened the little to-go container to assemble my sandwich and took my first whiff, smelled almost like chocolate. Add to that the usual cucumber, pickled carrot and daikon, cilantro, and jalapeno and you have a really fantastic feast.

Oh Mai sandwiches all exist on a spectrum between fairly clean like the S2 roast pork, and a dripping, delicious mess like the S12 brisket pho. This newest sandwich, due to the combination of sauces, is definitely on the messy end of things. I was glad that I got mine packed with the sauces and vegetation on the side. Eating it there wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

It takes a lot to break me out of my usual “S2 and S5 with extra pickled vegetables” habit when it comes to Oh Mai, but I’m already looking forward to tonight’s chicken shiu mai special.