The Columbia County Chamber of Commerce helped welcome Paris Banh Mi to the area with a ribbon-cutting, Thursday afternoon.
Mimi Hoang and her husband Man Phung opened their franchise of the Vietnamese café and sandwich shop opened in the 400 block shopping center on Columbia Road in Martinez in mid-February.
“Bánh mì,” is a kind of Vietnamese baguette. Its name derived from the Vietnamese terms for baked goods and wheat. The restaurant chain was launched in Orlando, Fla., where it’s headquartered, in 2019 by restauranteur couple Hien Tran, who was raised in Paris, and Doan Nguyen, who ran bakery shops in Saigon.
As such, the eatery’s menu is largely a fusion of Vietnamese, French and even American cuisine: shredded pork or chicken burgers with fluffy bao buns, jambon or grilled pork croissant sandwiches, Vietnamese noodle soups, baguettes with pâté, and a variety of milk and boba teas, coffee, slushies and even sugarcane juice.
“I love food,” said Hoang, noting her appreciation of the blend of traditional Vietnamese dishes with Parisian sensibilities are part of her inspiration to launch the restaurant’s first CSRA franchise. “The response has been really good. We’re not really busy because we’re pretty new over here… but we’re happy because we see regular customers.”
The Martinez shop is among 47 locations of the café chain nationwide, from its home state in Florida, through North Carolina in the Southeast, as far north as Pennsylvania, and as far west as California. Most of its seven Georgia locations are in the Atlanta area, though the closest to Augusta is in Athens.
Paris Banh Mi is located at 4015 Columbia Road, in Martinez. For more information, visit the restaurant’s Facebook page.
Skyler Andrews is a reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
