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Sandwich options include roast beef, top left, and a grilled pork banh mi, each with a choice of soup or salad, at French Sandwiches on Fredericksburg Road in the South Texas Medical Center area.
Lunch sandwiches on baguettes, a breakfast sandwich on a croissant, French onion soup, a side salad and Cafe Du Monde coffee are all part of the menu at French Sandwiches on Fredericksburg Road in the South Texas Medical Center area.
French Sandwiches is a Vietnamese-French sandwich shop on Fredericksburg Road in the South Texas Medical Center area.
French Sandwiches is a Vietnamese-French sandwich shop on Fredericksburg Road in the South Texas Medical Center area.
The menu at French Sandwiches
The menu at French Sandwiches
Founded in 1990, French Sandwiches has been feeding professionals, patients and the general public for more than three decades in the Southwest Medical Center area.
In 2018, I was one of those customers for a series called “5 sandwiches to eat right now.” I was impressed by the house-baked baguette that anchored the shop’s signature Vietnamese banh mi called the Chef’s Continental.
Four years later, it feels like French Sandwiches has lost a step. The bread I once liked for its crackle-thin crust and fluffy insides came across with a uniform chewy stubbornness, guarding sandwiches less colorful, less stuffed and less flavorful than that first impression.
The restaurant itself, wedged between a vape shop and a nail salon, seems unchanged, with the drab fluorescent glow of a well-kept breakroom. It’s exactly the kind of hole-in-the-wall joint you’d want to brag about if the food backed it up.
But it doesn’t, and so French Sandwiches earns the dubious distinction as the first “once was enough” rating in this 52 Weeks of Sandwiches series, the lowest of the three ratings after “worth a drive” and “solid neighborhood option.”
On ExpressNews.com: Max & Louie’s makes great Reuben and deli sandwiches worth a drive
Best sandwich: Because the baguette sandwiches let me down, the shop’s breakfast croissant ($5.55 with a cream puff) came out on top. Any sandwich can be made with a baguette or croissant, but the omelet-style egg stuffed with deli ham made the most sense folded inside the buttery layers of a croissant.
Breakfast options include a croissant with omelet-style eggs and ham and a cup of Cafe Du Monde coffee at French Sandwiches on Fredericksburg Road in the South Texas Medical Center area.
Did I say buttery? That’s a generous descriptor for the oily sheen of this croissant. Nobody would confuse it with a croissant from a French boulangerie. A fast-food “crescent,” maybe. But it got the job done.
Other sandwiches: The Chef’s Continental sandwich ($8.60 with soup or salad and a cream puff) that I liked four years ago didn’t just suffer from the chewy bread, but also from bland, stiff deli slices of sausage, chicken and pâté with flavors barely distinguishable from one another. And the traditional banh mi bouquet of daikon, carrot and herbs was reduced to a few obligatory sprigs.
The Chef’s Continental sandwich is a Vietnamese banh mi with pâté, sliced sausage and chicken that comes with a choice of salad or soup at French Sandwiches on Fredericksburg Road in the South Texas Medical Center area.
On HoustonChronicle.com: Classic Vietnamese banh mi tops at SP Cafe
That same underprovisioning left three other baguette sandwiches in the same sorry spot, amplified by the shortcomings of the meat they came with. The sliced meatballs ($8.10 with soup or salad and a cream puff) looked, felt and tasted like Spam from the can. The roast beef ($8.55 with soup or salad and a cream puff) was as stiff and tired as yesterday’s dinner, and grilled pork ($8.70 with soup or salad and a cream puff) could have been any tan, salty stir-fry protein and tasted exactly the same.
I should mention that each of the previous four sandwiches came with a choice of light French onion soup or a colorful side salad, plus a tiny cream puff. They were fine, maybe even good if you’re talking about the salad, a chilled bowl of iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and carrots with the shop’s sweet vinaigrette dressing.
A meatball sandwich comes with French onion soup and a cream puff at French Sandwiches on Fredericksburg Road in the South Texas Medical Center area.
But there’s only so much a sidekick can do when the hero’s on break.
Location: 8448 Fredericksburg Road, Suite 8448, 210-692-7019, Facebook: French Sandwiches
Hours: 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday
msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking
Mike Sutter is the Express-News restaurant critic. Before joining the Taste Team in 2016, he served as restaurant critic for the Austin American-Statesman and editor of FedManWalking.com. He's appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered," ABC's "To Tell the Truth" and written for The Guardian, Bon Appetit and The Wall Street Journal.