Five Stars with a Mayonnaise Mustache.

The Great Plotnik waited in the telephone queue until Timmy, the Middle School wireless router expert, could bring his computer back on line. Now, he is number eighteen in another long line, except this one is his choice. Mrs. Add Carrots-and-Cilantro is in the front of her Vietnamese banh-mi Shop, and her cousin Mrs. Slice Meats-Warm-Buns is in the back. The line of cops, gangsters, young and old women, doctors, lawyers and founders of minor religions snakes through the tiny shop and out the front door. Bums waving bottles pass by hurling incomprehensible insults. Buses cough methane. Everyone wears a smily face. No one is leaving the line.

As Plotnik inches closer to the front counter, Mrs. Slice Meats says "Next!" She holds a little white tablet. One by one the next ten people in line call out their orders. "Two roast pork!" "One roast chicken!" "(Something in Vietnamese!)." "Three roast pork, two meatball, extra cilantro!" Mrs. Carrots-and-Cilantro looks up and smiles. "Ho ho, extra cilantro."

The top of the counter is layered four-high with shrink wrapped packages of yellow rice and shrimp, red rice and scallions, gelatinous coconut rolls, banana leaves stuffed with sweet rice, cups of Vietnamese iced coffee. Strings of strange, black sausages live in a meat-market cooler that does not appear to be turned on. A sign above the cash register says “Smile!”

Mrs. Slice Meats-Warm-Buns puts down her pad, takes the warm sandwich rolls out of her microwave, splits them in half, adds mayonnaise and fills them with beef, pork, chicken or meatballs that she ladles from rows of slow cookers. She carries a heavy tray of half-finished sandwiches to her cousin. Mrs. Add Carrots-and-Cilantro opens each roll, fills it with shredded carrots, cilantro sprigs and jalapeno peppers (liverwurst optional), wraps it in cellophane, ties it with a rubber band, sets it aside. She does twenty sandwiches at a time, then faces the hungry line: "Two roast pork, $4 dolla." "Three chicken, one (something in Vietnamese), one (something else in Vietnamese) $10 dolla."

Mrs. Slice Meats-Warm-Buns and Mrs. Add Carrots-and-Cilantro are Saints. There is no church in Saint Plotniko that can dispense half as much happiness, and there is no sandwich in Saint Plotniko that can touch their banh mi, not at any price. The Great Plotnik's Restaurant Division awards each lady 5 Stars with a Mayonnaise Mustache.