Adorable YA Romance in “A Bánh Mì for Two”

A Bánh Mì for Two, by Trinity Nguyen, is an adorable sapphic YA, set in Vietnam. Two foodies, Vietnamese-American Vivi and Saigon native Lan,  spend Vivi’s study-abroad semester eating delicious street food together and falling in love.

This entire book is vibes and setting, not plot, and the vibes are great. Young love, an exciting city, and loads of delicious street food, all good. There are off-camera family secrets from the start, but that’s not the main feeling of this YA novel. It’s about hopping on a motorbike with your crush and going off to eat something new and great.

Lan works at her family’s food stall and writes a food blog, also called A Banh Mi For Two.  Although it’s a wildly popular food blog — so popular that Vivi reads it in the US — Lan has been preoccupied and not updating it. She has a shot at a prestigious writing contest, but feels like ditching the food stall is also ditching her family, and she doesn’t feel like want to  even enter the contest. (Yes, just roll with that, at no point does it feel like Lan will really drop the blog and contest.)

Meanwhile, Vivi applied for a study abroad program in Vietnam, convinced her bestie to do it too, got both sets of their parents to sign on, while convincing them all that the program is in Indonesia, and any Vietnamese background sound is just a Vietnamese-language soap opera on TV. Look, the book’s all about the vibes, ok?

There are serious elements of family struggles for both girls. Lan and her mother are coping with the recent death of her dad, and Vivi’s main reason to come to Vietnam is uncovering her mother’s secret story of why and how she left Vietnam. These added some depth to the romantic lead characters, but somehow the more serious storylines didn’t really have tension for me. I knew in a warm YA romance like this, Vivi would learn more and come to understand her mother better. (Another recent read, Mai Nguyen’s Sunshine Nails, had similar references in the narrative to the parents’ experiences fleeing atrocities in Vietnam, before returning to the main family-comedy storyline.) Same for Lan’s struggles with her family responsibilities, it’s always clear to readers, if not to Lan herself, that there’s a way to balance both.

Some of the resolutions are slightly facile and slightly obvious (it never crossed my mind that Lan would really quit food blogging) but remember, this book is all about study-abroad romance vibes and amazing international foods! It’s a fun young-love adventure! Enjoy the sweet romance all around the food stalls in A Banh Mi For Two.