The Roll Shop

Bahn Mi Rolls. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Since returning to the Big Smoke for work, there haven’t been too many lunches coming along in the Tiffin Box. Instead, I’ve been having a grand old time checking out new places (well new to me) and enjoying lunch sized adventures each day. A favourite is The Roll Shop. Directly across the road from my building in the ‘fake laneway’ behind the NAB, The Roll Shop is one of a breed of new generation snack bars, selling street food to the hungry office worker masses. The Roll Shop specialises in Bahn Mi, those tasty snacks filled with pork, salad and Asian herbs, crammed into a crusty Vietnamese bread roll. They have half a dozen options including traditional BBQ Pork, Lemongrass Chicken & Pork Belly. The rolls are made fresh to order and take no time at all, no matter how busy the shop is.

I love this place for lunch.
Their rice vermicelli bowl with the bbq pork is always delicious, and really affordable.
For those who are health conscious, the approximate kJs of each dish is also conveniently provided.
Service is friendly and fast. I can’t think of a time I have come and not seen the staff smiling.
All round great place for a quick fresh lunch in Brisbane CBD.

Ideal place to mingle with «the suits» and grab a quick lunch. The buns contain fresh veggies and are not expensive ($ 6); they are also nothing special.

This place used to be amazing but I visited the other day and was bitterly disappointed. The two vermicelli salads I ordered contained limp iceberg lettuce, vermicelli with some tasteless chicken on top. It used to be a flavoursome salad with carrot and mint at the very least. Not sure if the bread rolls have gone down hill but I guess with popularity they have sacrificed quality over quantity with the salad bowls. I’m on the search for a new Vietnamese salad hot spot in the city now.

Four out of five Vietnamese rolls!
Don’t be alarmed if you see a big line here — these guys can make that line move fast! The Roll Shop offers fantastic and pretty cheap Vietnamese rolls (I’m a fan of the chicken). I can also recommend the cold rolls available, which are equally delish. There are a few seats available outside but it is a pretty small space and there are not a lot of seats.
Overall I thoroughly recommend this place if you’re looking for a great lunch, reasonably priced in the city (Located in the laneway between the HSBC and NAB buildings).

The Roll Shop is an office favourite for my team. Usually one person is voted to go down and grab enough for everybody. At around $ 6 a roll it’s a reasonably price CBD lunch option. I quite enjoy the BBQ pork banh mi whereas everyone else in my team usually goes for the pork crackling banh mi (Vietnamese crusty roll). Sometimes I’ll mix it up and get the broken rice bowl. Whichever I go for, I’m never disappointed. The broken rice bowl usually comes with rice and some vegies and your choice of meat and then they give you a delicious rice wine sauce you can pour over the top. Simply delicious!

Anyone who’s been to Saigon will be well across Banh Mi — crusty french baguettes stuffed with tasty ingredients — heavily influenced by the French colonisation of Vietnam — pâté, mayonaisse — and vietnamese ingredients like grilled pork and pickled carrot, and loads of chilli.
I’ve noticed an increase in popularity (or a mainstream discovery, perhaps) of banh mi in Brisbane in the past couple of years. Previously banh mi cravings were sated by trips to Kim Thanh bakery at west end, or numerous spots in Inala and Sunnybank. But now Brisbane CBD has at least 2 spots to get a tasty (albeit CBD priced) banh mi for lunch. The Roll Shop (Vietnam On The Roll) is the latest banh mi venue, and slightly less pricey than the orginal provider of banh mi to the inner city population, Little Saigon.
You’ve got a few options for banh mi fillings at The Roll Shop, and the menu board tells you the kilojoules of each of your options… this is both good, and bad… it helped me make a slightly healthier decision with my lunch choice, however it permanently scared me off the pork crackling banh mi that I probably would have chosen if I wasn’t aware of how kilojoule heavy it was… So I chose the sweet glazed bbq pork option. The roll was light and crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside but didn’t seem super fresh. The filling had all my favourites — course textural pâté, creamy mayo, pickled carrots, coriander, and firey birds eye chillies (optional) but the pork was a bit of a dissapointment. It was cold, rubbery, and all around bland and meh. Maybe it was my deep burning desire for pork crackling that made my choice so underwelming, but I really didn’t enjoy the pork at all. I removed it from my roll and happily munched the rest but overall was disappointed by my lunch.
If I visit again, I’ll definitely consider the pork crackling version more seriously… but will it be worth a 30 minute spin class at the gym? I’d probably cry if it wasn’t!
Other options at The Roll Shop, if you’re not a banh mi fan, include rice noodle salads, and rice paper rolls. I’ve not yet tried either of these, but they seemed to be popular amongst the lunch crowd.