If this isn’t the best Vietnamese restaurant in Manhattan, then it is at least up there in the top five. A bit randomly, it’s tucked away on a relatively quiet block of Broadway high up on the Upper West, but that is a part of the selling point. Because we all know if Banh was downtown, it’d be overridden by a different scene.

The restaurant is warm and welcoming, in that homey family-run kind of way. Nothing fancy, but tidy and efficient. Tables lining one wall, a semi-open kitchen on the other. The menu isn’t long (at least, not compared to the multipage lettered and numbered menus of mom and pop Vietnamese restaurants across the country), but it covers remarkable breadth. They have excellent pho, bun and banh mi, but where they really stand out is in their “goodies”: sharable starters, sides, small plates, whatever you want to call it. They serve up some regional favorites that are rare to come by, like xoi xeo, a sticky rice, mung bean and pork floss combination, or banh tieu which has sticky rice, quail egg, patê, pork floss and sausage stuffed into a savory doughnut. Banh is a gem loved by many, and waiting to be discovered by many more.