TL;DR/The Short Version:
Vietnamese food at the Atwater Market. Tasty banh mi.
The Long Version:
This location is in the Atwater Market so it's only open May through October, when the outdoor food court part of the market is open. However, Le Petit Sao has several other locations in Montreal that are open year-round.
We went in July. They are one of the vendors in the outdoor food court (Pôle des Saveurs). Admittedly, our original plan was to go to Satay Brothers to get some Singaporean food, but Satay Brothers was way too busy, so we walked around and Le Petit Sao looked appealing. I love it when Plan B turns out to be awesome! I had not heard of them before but a quick Internet search showed they have several locations.
Anyway, we ordered the Picnic box to share. The regular Picnic Box is a banh mi (tofu or chicken), a small Saigonnese salad and shrimp chips for $20.95 but you can upgrade for an additional $2 and get a che Thai dessert instead of shrimp chips and that's what we did.
We got the grilled chicken banh mi. It was filled with flavourful grilled chicken, pickled carrots, daikon and cucumber. It was topped with a lot of cilantro and it had a lot of mayo, way too much for my liking. It made the sandwich too wet and very messy to eat. We also don't like cilantro, so we picked it off, lol.
Other than the excessive mayo situation, the banh mi was pretty tasty.
The Saigonnese salad was pickled cabbage, carrots, and daikon, cucumbers, crunchy fried onions and mint leaves. It was refreshing and I loved the crunch of the fried onions.
The che Thai dessert was like a sweet soup. The liquid was sweetened coconut milk. It also had lychees, Pandan jello and although the menu said jackfruit, it tasted to me like pieces of Pandan multi-layer cake (Bánh da lợn). I've had lots of jackfruit in che before and this did not taste like jackfruit to me. At any rate, I love Bánh da lợn, and while I've never had pieces of it in che, I thought it worked alright, lol. I really enjoyed the dessert actually and was really happy I did the upgrade.
Service was courteous and the wait for the food wasn't long. The outside seating was crowded and it's communal picnic tables, so we took our food to the indoors section of the market where they have several round tables for 2 for dining and ate there :)
We had a great lunch at Le Petit Sao!
Fun fact: Sao means "star" in Vietnamese. I learned on social media that the owner's parents owned a restaurant called Sao Sao in Brossard, so I guess it makes sense that when she opened her restaurant she called it The Little Sao, lol.
Review #150 (2025) read more