A sardine bánh mì, on a flaky-crusted baguette, from K Sandwiches in Linda Vista

We hadn’t planned on stopping at K Sandwiches. But as our car crested the hill at Linda Vista Road, and its sign came into view, our reactions were spontaneous and simultaneous: let’s get lunch.

Minus a couple years the counter shop was closed following a kitchen fire, K Sandwiches has been a staple destination for bánh mì since it opened in 2006. And not just for denizens of the high school, college, and hospital campuses that surround it, but for all of San Diego. Even in a city that boasts several quality Vietnamese sandwich shops, K stands out, thanks in no small part to the supremely flaky crusts on baguettes it bakes in house.

This was going to be a relatively routine sandwich order, each of us eyeing the usual bánh mì, featured at the top of the menu, made with the likes of sliced pork belly, pork loaf, and pâté. These, along with the standard toppings of pickled carrots, daikon, jalapeños. cilantro, and mayo, have always been more than enough to keep us coming back over the years.

K Sandwiches has been a San Diego bánh mì staple since 2006.

If I were going to be playful with my order, it would more likely involve something from the cooler of southeast Asian dessert drinks. Americans may have grown to appreciate boba tea in the past couple decades, but most remain unfamiliar with the myriad drinks populating these shelves. They’re similar in the sense that, swimming within the sugar-sweetened drinks are gelatinous seeds and candies, to suck through straws to add a bit of tapioca-like chew.

I can’t pretend to grasp fully the breadth of dessert drinks available at K Sandwiches. The easiest to translate include a green tinted sugar water loaded with basil seeds and strips of agar jelly, and a brown-tinted beverage populated by rambutan, a small fruit similar to lychees. One of the more colorful offerings includes che banh Lot, green strips of pandan jelly sharing what appears to be coconut milk with hot luu, which it turns out are mock pomegranate seeds, complete with a nuggety jicama center.

An assortment of Vietnamese dessert drinks found in the K Sandwiches cooler

This visit, I picked up something called sam bo luong, which looks less like a sweet beverage than it does a savory soup. This clear, yellowish brown liquid is made chunky by the presence of pearl barley, seaweed, lotus seeds, and dates. Somehow, this all works together, with sweeteners, to taste light and refreshing on a warm day, as most of these drinks are designed to do.

It’s safe to say I did not expect to try such a thing when I woke up that morning, but I had made a clear choice by the time I made it to the counter to order. However, even then, I did not expect to order a sardine sandwich. I’d never even noticed it there, a little further down the bánh mì menu.

A pair of traditional, pork-based bánh mì, featuring the likes of pork belly, pork loaf, ham, and pâté

But one of the most glorious things about K Sandwiches is that virtually everything costs less than six bucks, so at the last minute I added the sardine bánh mì to my lunch. This would turn out to be the finest decision I made all day. With all the aforementioned sandwich accoutrements, mayonnaise included, the small sardine filets came off tasting like a more nuanced canned tuna. Though an afterthought to my order, it will change the way I think of sardines forever. This was the sandwich I wound up washing down with sam bo luong on the K Sandwiches patio. The tried and true pork and pâté bánh mì would become a snack to enjoy later, at home. I may never decide which I like better, but it won’t stop me from trying.