Vietnamese Banh Mi in Holborn: Banh Mi Bay's £12 Special

Banh Mi Bay's Holborn branch serves banh mi at 4-6 Theobald's Road, London WC1X 8PN, and its homepage lists two weekday sittings: 12 pm to 3:30 pm, then 5:30 pm to 9 pm, Monday to Friday. This is the group's only dine-in room, so you can sit down rather than eat on a kerb. The order to know is the £12 Bay Special, a baguette packed with pâté, spiced pork, pork roll, Maggi seasoning and mayo.

Banh Mi Bay calls itself an independent restaurant and says it was among the pioneers of the banh mi baguette sandwich in the UK, cooking from family recipes passed down through generations. It now trades from three addresses: this Holborn dining room, a takeaway counter on Rathbone Street in Fitzrovia, and a food court unit in Surrey Quays Shopping Centre. Holborn is the only one built for sitting down with a bowl of pho.

The other side of the business is office catering, which the company says it has run for more than ten years, delivering banh mi platters and rice boxes to firms around London. That explains the lunchtime rhythm on Theobald's Road: the kitchen is set up for volume, and sandwiches come out fast even when the room is full of people from the surrounding law firms and offices.

The Holborn dine-in menu splits its baguettes into cold and grilled fillings, all finished with pickled carrot and mooli, cucumber, coriander and fresh chilli. On the cold side, the spiced pork belly with Maggi and mayo and the vegan tofu are £10 each, while roast pork is £12. The Bay Special and the newer Ultimate Combo both cost £12; the combo adds a Vietnamese 'jambon' to the pâté, pork roll and spiced pork.

The grilled fillings are cooked to order. Satay chicken and garlic pork cost £10, and lemongrass beef and lime-leaf jumbo prawns are £12. The cari gà, a Vietnamese chicken curry, comes at £13 with a plain baguette on the side for dipping rather than stuffed into it. Extra meat adds £2 to any banh mi, and a smear of pâté on a filling that lacks it costs 50p, which is worth paying on the grilled pork.

The pho uses an eight-hour beef broth with flat rice noodles and herbs on the side; beef flank, rare beef or brisket costs £13, and mixed beef or mixed beef and chicken is £14. A vegan tofu pho in a vegan broth is also £13. If you are two people, splitting a banh mi and a pho is the best way to judge the kitchen, because the broth is the dish that most separates a dining room from a sandwich bar.

The banh xeo is a rice-flour and turmeric pancake filled with chow chow and beansprouts, with salad and nuoc mam dipping sauce: £10 with prawn, pork or tofu, £12 with prawn and pork. The newer beef betel leaf starter at £10 wraps grilled lemongrass beef with vermicelli, pickled carrot and crushed peanuts in a betel leaf. The prawn crackers at £3 are filler; spend the money on a second spring roll order instead.

Iced Vietnamese coffee costs £3.50 and hot drip filter coffee £3.75 on the Holborn drinks list, and both Saigon and Tiger beer are £5. The house cocktails lean on coffee too: the Saigon Bay mixes Baileys with Vietnamese coffee and condensed milk, and the Holborn Fizz uses gin, homemade lemon cordial, pressed apple juice and mint. Fresh pressed juices such as carrot and orange with ginger and mint suit a quick lunch better.

After 5:30 pm the room runs a Banh Mi Bar evening menu that adds snacks such as homemade cold cuts with a salt, pepper and lime dip at £7 and satay chicken skewers at £11. Bun bo hue, the spicy beef noodle soup from Hue, appears as a seasonal return on the homepage and on the evening card at £8.50 for a small bowl or £14 for a big one. It is the best reason to come back after dark.

Lunch is the busy service because the restaurant sits among offices between Holborn and Chancery Lane, so the first half hour after 12 pm is the easiest time to get a table without waiting. The 3:30 pm close is firm on the published hours, and the room reopens at 5:30 pm, so a mid-afternoon craving needs the takeaway or delivery apps instead. The website has a Book A Table link if you are coming as a group.

For allergies, the menu carries a full allergen notice and lists codes for gluten, fish, shellfish, soy, egg, peanut and sesame next to every dish. The kitchen says it cannot guarantee dishes are free of traces, so people with severe nut allergies should ask before ordering anything with satay or crushed peanuts. If every table is taken, Banh Mi Aha! on Lamb's Conduit Street is a short walk west and also serves banh mi and pho.

Theobald's Road runs through the old legal quarter, and Gray's Inn, one of London's four Inns of Court, is just south of the restaurant. Its gardens, known as the Walks, open to the public at set times, and a lap under the plane trees settles lunch before you head back to work. Red Lion Square, with its benches and small park, is a few minutes west along the same road.

North of the restaurant, Lamb's Conduit Street is a short pedestrian-friendly strip of independent clothes shops, bookshops and the old Lamb pub. Keep walking to Doughty Street to pass the Charles Dickens Museum, in the house where the novelist lived in the 1830s, or continue to Coram's Fields, a park where adults may only enter with a child. Russell Square and the British Museum are about fifteen minutes on foot.

Address: 4-6 Theobald's Road, Holborn, London WC1X 8PN. Email: hello@banhmibay.co.uk. Hours: Monday to Friday, 12 pm to 3:30 pm and 5:30 pm to 9 pm. Service: table service for dine-in plus takeaway, with a separate delivery menu. The nearest Tube stations are Chancery Lane on the Central line and Holborn on the Central and Piccadilly lines.

Office orders need at least 24 hours' notice, according to the catering pages, and the company asks for 24 to 48 hours where possible, by email to catering@banhmibay.co.uk. If you are in Fitzrovia at lunchtime, the Rathbone Street takeaway handles the same sandwiches on weekdays. The Surrey Quays food court counter covers south-east London, including weekends.