Downtown Dallas is about to get some crusty banh mi: Banh Shop, a Dallas-based concept that does Asian street food, is opening a location in the AT&T Discovery District, where it will serve protein bowls and Asian-inspired sandwiches.

According to founder Mark Brezinski, the restaurant will take over the space previously occupied by Monkey King Noodle and will open in late November.

Banh Shop is named for the banh mi, the Asian sandwich that comes on a French baguette and is filled with meats and pickled vegetables.

The menu also includes:

• Fried Rice Bowl featuring wok-seared white rice, egg, broccoli, scallions, bean sprouts, and cherry tomatoes tossed in garlic soy sauce with choice of protein
• pad Thai, the classic noodle dish
• Vietnamese-style chicken soup
• five sandwiches including a tofu version of banh mi, and a pork meatball sandwich that Restaurant Hospitality Magazine called "the best meatball sandwich in America"

The opening marks a return to Dallas for Banh Shop which first debuted near SMU in September 2014 (and closed in 2017). Now owned by a company called YEBII, the concept is on a comeback with five (and growing) locations including a street-side location that opened in Fort Worth in October 2023, with two more to come in Las Colinas and the Shops at Park Lane in Dallas.

The menu for downtown Dallas will be an abbreviated version of the larger menu they're serving at the Fort Worth location.

"It's a skinnier version, with 10 items total: 5 bowls and 5 banh mi, plus a chicken noodle soup and a coconut curry lettuce wrap," Brezinski says.

Brezinski made a connection with the AT&T Discovery District after consulting on the menu for Cowboy Chow, the restaurant that recently opened in the former Jaxon Texas Kitchen & Beer Garden space.

"I was working with Jack Gibbons and Legends Hospitality, who are currently overseeing the district," he says. "I saw that they had spaces to fill and offered some suggestions. I had a small food hall in Dallas years ago, so I’m no stranger to trying to do a couple different concepts in the same space."

The food hall he references is the Uptown Urban Market, which he conceived for the Gables Villa Rosa residential building at 2650 Cedar Springs Rd. in 2016, just as food halls were starting to trend. He also co-founded Blist'r Fresh Naan Wraps, an Indian food stand at Plano's Legacy Hall.

Brezinski is perhaps most famous for having helped create Pei Wei, the game-changing Asian restaurant chain, and Velvet Taco, the now-global taco chain, and has been involved in a number of Asian concepts since such as Margame Udon.

"One thing that I thought Pei Wei always needed was hand held food, and Banh Shop has both: you can have a banh mi for lunch or a wok bowl at dinner," he says.