Tâm Deli & Cafe
Tâm Bui and her sister Tran Ngoc opened Tâm Deli in the Centre North strip center on North Lamar in July 1999 and baked the baguettes for their bánh mì in the kitchen, a crust Mick Vann described in the Chronicle's first review as thin and crunchy over a moist middle.1 Suite D33 belongs to Azure Cafe now, and the city's inspectors have not filed a score under Tâm's name in their three-year window.9
Why go
Matthew Odam said goodbye to the sisters in the Statesman on 3 September 2016, when Bui sold the cafe after seventeen years to David Nguyen, who kept the name and the menu while she retired and Tran and her husband Nick Ngoc moved to Dallas to be near their grandchildren.4 His line on the food was the one the chefs had already given: In addition to restorative bowls of pho and my favorite bánh mì in town, Tam Deli also served delicate and rich cream puff pastries that demanded your attention after every meal.
4 Tran had been a student at the University of Texas in the 1970s, her family came to Texas after Saigon fell in 1975, and the recipes were her mother's and her relatives' in Vietnam; a photograph of Lady Bird Johnson eating here hung by the bakery case, and the sisters rang a bell each time an order was ready.3 The kitchen kept trading under the new owner long enough for Raphael Brion to score it 7.1 in May 2022 for The Infatuation, still on a homemade baguette.5 Since then the only record I have found of the suite is the health register, which inspected Azure Cafe at Suite D33 in February 2026.9
Order this / avoid
- Order: the kitchen is gone, so nothing. What it made, for the record, starts with the bánh mì: roasted chicken and shrimp were Vann's picks in 2000, at US$2 and US$3, and the #10 combination of pâté, roast pork and roasted chicken with mayonnaise and pickled vegetables was Brion's go-to in 2022,
a very delicious ersatz-Vietnamese chicken salad sandwich.
15 - The fritters: shrimp and shredded yam, fried with the shells left on the shrimp for crunch, US$3.75 in 2004, dipped in nước chấm. Larry McGuire put a version on the menu at Elizabeth Street Cafe as an homage.23
- Bánh xèo, the rice-flour, egg and coconut milk crepe folded over pork, shrimp and sprouts, US$5.99 in 2004, eaten rolled in lettuce with herbs. Tran named it her own favorite:
It's shrimp and pork in a crepe, and we serve it with leaf lettuce and herbs, and you wrap it up and dip it in nuac cham. We eat that sauce with everything.
23 - Bánh cuốn, the steamed rice-paper wraps around ground pork and black mushroom, which Vann called the best around, topped with slices of the house pork loaf and fried garlic.12
- The cream puffs, fifty cents each in 2000, and at the holidays a bûche de Noël.13
- Avoid: the salt and pepper squid, which Texas Highways found
too fried and too plain
in 2012 after Vann had called it a culinary treat in 2004. Two critics, two plates, eight years apart.32
What locals & experts say
- Four chefs and a restaurateur named it, on three pages. In the Austin Chronicle in 2011, Paul Qui listed it among his Asian rooms, Alan Lazarus of Vespaio said
Tâm Deli is another fave for their bánh mì sandwiches,
and Emmett Fox of Asti and Fino went toeither Pho Van or Tâm Deli for the bánh mì.
8 Tyson Cole told the James Beard Foundation in 2016:Tam's for #32 and tons of real Vietnamese goodies.
7 Larry McGuire of Elizabeth Street Cafe, to Texas Highways in 2012:I think the banh mi at Tam Deli is really good. In fact, some of the things on our menu are homages to the menu at Tam, like our shrimp-and-yam fritters. I've been eating at Tam Deli since I was in middle school.
3 - The Austin Chronicle, Mick Vann, 5 May 2000, on a room ten months old:
Put tâm at the top of your must-try Vietnamese list.
His 2004 return found itauthentic food, good service, nice portions, great prices.
12 - The Infatuation Austin, Raphael Brion, 16 May 2022, 7.1:
They're probably most well known for their bánh mì served on crisp yet doughy homemade baguette.
Nicolai McCrary carried it on the outlet's thirteen best bánh mì the same year.56 - Tran Ngoc, on what to tell a newcomer:
Vietnamese food, in general, is very light, fresh, and satisfying. To newcomers, I would say, just give the food a try. I think you will like it.
3
Good to know
- Closed. Austin Public Health has Azure Cafe at 8222 North Lamar, Suite D33, scored 93 on 4 February 2026, and no inspection on file under Tâm Deli's name in the three years the register keeps. Nothing I have read from a newsroom prints the day the cafe shut.9
- Where it was: Centre North, the strip center on the left just after North Lamar passes under Research, in the stretch Texas Highways called the most ethnically diverse run of restaurants in the city.23
- Hygiene: the score on file for the suite is Azure's, 93, a pass on a scale where 70 fails, and it belongs to that business. Tâm Deli's own record has aged out of the register.9
- Prices, for the record: US$2 and US$3 bánh mì and fifty-cent cream puffs in 2000; US$3.75 fritters, US$5.99 bánh xèo and US$8.99 squid in 2004.12
Verdict
listed — The baguette was baked in this kitchen and the kitchen is gone; Suite D33 is Azure Cafe now. For a bánh mì today, read the North Lamar rooms that are still trading.