Mr Trinh’s is the handiwork of chef Ben Devlin, owner of hatted restaurant Pipit who, along with his wife Yen, was forced to completely restructure the model of their Pottsville restaurant amid the global pandemic. When Pipit’s dining room temporarily closed, Ben and Yen had to make some swift changes – so they took to Facebook of all places to ask locals what sort of takeaway cuisine they would want to see in Pottsville. After a landslide vote, Vietnamese came out on top, which coincidentally happens to be their family heritage. So, they dubbed the concept Mr Trinh’s, after Yen’s father, and started serving a delicious selection of banh mi sandwiches, as well as Vietnamese salads and sweets, to isolated locals.

While the takeaway banh-mi concept was there to get them though the peak of the pandemic, the good news (particularly for us Queensland folk who are yet to get acquainted) is that Mr Trinh’s is here to stay! The takeaway menu, which adopts Pipit’s ethos of high-quality cooking with all-local produce, will rotate on the regular (best to peep Instagram for the latest). Expect banh-mi fillings like roast duck or chicken with duck mortadella, duck pate, cucumber, pickles and herbs, as well as a Moreton Bay Bug banh mi with cucumber, pickles, herbs and mayo. For the vegetarians, there’s a king-brown-mushroom banh mi with a smoked-eggplant ‘pate’ and all of the trimmings. However you roll, pair yours with a cucumber and peanut salad, Vietnamese iced coffee (with condensed milk, of course) and finish off your experience with a daily doughnut, filled with South East Asian-inspired flavours and fruits – think pandan custard, kaffir lime and coconut, and even a Vietnamese-coffee variety.

Mr Trinh’s operates out of Pipit for lunch from Thursday to Saturday from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm.

Images courtesy of Mr Trinh’s and Pipit.