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Vegan char siu summer rolls at Lee’s Sandwiches in San Jose.

A chef prepares vegan char siu pork at Lee’s Sandwiches in San Jose.

Vegan char siu bánh mi at Lee’s Sandwiches in San Jose.

A year ago, I tried Impossible Foods’ plant-based chicken nuggets with some skepticism. In my experience, tech-driven meat substitutes often droop into the uncanny valley, making for unsettling dining experiences. But what I realized when I ate the nuggets was that Americans’ expectations of chicken nuggets are rarely about the chicken — so the plant-based version could be unburdened of the expectation of perfect poultry emulation.

Recently, a new product has issued a stronger challenge: OmniFoods’ plant-based pork strips, which became available in char siu form at two San Jose locations of Lee’s Sandwiches late last year. Made primarily of soy protein concentrate, the strips are part of the Hong Kong company’s OmniPork line of meat substitutes, including a vegan take on Spam made to slot seamlessly into Asian- and Pacific Island-style cooking.

At the two Lee’s Sandwiches that carry OmniPork, the strips are cooked with a ruby-red char siu marinade and used in sandwiches, steamed bao, rice paper rolls and rice bowls. The marinade is the same one the shop uses for its barbecued pork, so the flavor was bang-on. Flecks of crisp char on the ends of the strips emphasized the sweet-and-savory flavors of the marinade as well as the mouthwatering suggestion of a flame. The strips had the fibrousness and springiness of cooked pork loin. The regular mayonnaise was also replaced with a vegan variation.

Vegan char siu bánh mi (left) alongside the regular char siu báhn mi at Lee’s Sandwiches in San Jose.

If placed head-to-head against the meat-based meat, the vegan sandwich would absolutely hold its own — with the only real tell being the relative uniformity of the vegan strips’ matchstick thickness. Though food tech companies talk a lot about “disrupting,” I’ve never truly felt like their projects ever got so dramatic. But here, with this sandwich, I was beginning to feel like this could really shake loose stereotypes about veganism, Asian food and who gets to claim either.

What distinguishes the two shops that carry OmniPork is their owner, Thang Le. The youngest child of the family who founded the company in San Jose in 1983, Le has been using his share of shops as testing grounds for a new take on the classic bánh mì restaurant. Le’s shops are definitely sleeker (and some might say “more hipster”) than the usual, with recessed lighting, splashy wall art and craft beers. Bringing on more vegan options is another part of his plan.

When I walked into Le’s shop in downtown San Jose, I immediately noticed that I had to actually browse the menu to find exactly which vegan sandwich I wanted. Unlike at most other locations of Lee’s Sandwiches, here was a whole section of almost a dozen meat-free bánh mì options, from the old-school bi chay ($6.69) to plant-based fried chicken ($11.49) to vegan lemongrass-marinated tofu ($9.99).

A customer leaves with his lunch order at Lee’s Sandwiches in San Jose.

Usually, the main meat-free option at a bánh mì shop is some kind of marinated and/or fried tofu, served plain or tossed in a quick marinade. Other Lee’s locations often stick to bi chay, a vegan approximation of shredded pork skin made of bean thread noodles, fried and fresh tofu and julienned yam. Favored by Vietnamese Buddhists and others who avoid meat, the multitude of bouncy and crisp textures imitates the satisfyingly chewy and noodley vibe of pork skin. You’d never mistake this for meat, but that’s generally not the point.

“Bi chay is so traditional and old,” Le said. “To me, it’s a little boring and outdated.” He’s happy to use his platform as a scion of the Le family to use vegan ingredients to appeal to both old-school Vietnamese customers and non-Vietnamese who are new to the cuisine. A Buddhist himself, Le says that advertising plant-based meat as explicitly Buddhist-friendly does a lot to bridge the generation gap. And though the newer vegan options are more expensive, averaging $5 more than more basic bánh mì, Le says they’ve been in high demand.

As far as reach goes, launching OmniPork at Lee’s Sandwiches is a direct pitch at Vietnamese American stomachs. While smaller in scale, the move runs in parallel with the strategy of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, which struck major deals with fast-food giants Burger King and Carl’s Jr. to carry their vegan burgers.

What differentiates OmniFoods from those California companies is its explicitly Asian focus. David Yeung, the CEO of Green Monday, OmniFoods’ parent company, hopes OmniFoods can put a meaningful dent in pork and seafood consumption in Asian and Pacific Islander communities. Yeung’s company cites a myriad of reasons why it’s tackling livestock production, including the deforestation of land for industrial farms, water and land pollution, and, in Asia, the 1.29 billion metric tons of waste created by the Chinese pork industry every year. Reducing fish and seafood intake could also be an important counter to the overfishing, and potential depletion, of the world’s oceans.

“Traditionally, beef was never a main protein source in Asian cuisines,” he wrote in an email; so instead of hamburgers, OmniFoods’ products are stand-ins for Japanese pork katsu, Sichuan fish curry and Spam musubi. While OmniFoods begins from a different cultural standpoint, its approach of molding plant matter into meat-like shapes falls in line with what companies like Beyond and Impossible aim for.

Preparing vegan char siu pork summer rolls at Lee’s Sandwiches in San Jose.

Another point of difference is that OmniFoods’ products are made in Thailand. The pork strips are flying across an ocean to get into your sandwich, so, in the company’s viewpoint, you’re trading food miles for the environmental impacts associated with pork farming. (If the distance is too bitter a pill to swallow, it’s easy enough to go for the tofu at Lee’s, which is locally sourced.)

My interactions with Yeung and Le were a fascinating contrast to debates over culinary inauthenticity and vegan food. People like Joanne Molinaro, who wrote a bestselling cookbook, “The Korean Vegan Cookbook,” often deal with backlash from those who say that meat is integral to their cultural cuisines. When she first announced the book’s nomination for a James Beard award, a stranger on Twitter not-so-helpfully chimed in with “Korean food without fish isn’t Korean food.” In a recent Chronicle story on Filipino vegan food, chef Reina Montenegro recounted an incident in 2017 when an older man berated her at her former restaurant, saying, “We’re Filipino. We eat meat.”

Now, it turns out that Molinaro’s book ended up winning that Beard award. And the vegan food scene in the Bay Area has exploded, with a diverse array of new-wave businesses like the Singaporean-Italian Lion Dance Cafe, roving pop-up Gay4U and vegan doughnut pop-up Whack Donuts. In this context, it seems wholly natural for an old-school bánh mì shop to get in on plant-based food, too.

Soleil Ho is The San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic. Email: soleil@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hooleil

You can find OmniFoods products at all Sprouts Farmers Market locations, some Whole Foods Markets, Berkeley Bowl and these food businesses:

Al Pastor Papi. Locations vary. www.alpastorpapi.com

Casa Boriquena. Catering and takeout via preorder. 415-779-5901 or www.casaborinquena.com

Chef Reina. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday-Saturday; 4-8 p.m. Wednesday. Catering, delivery and takeout. 33 Visitacion Ave., Brisbane. 650-989-8606 or www.chefreina.com

Lee's Sandwiches. 8 a.m.-6 p.m. daily. Takeout, delivery and indoor seating. 260 E Santa Clara St., San Jose. 408-286-8808 or http://leesandwiches.com

Lee's Sandwiches. 7 a.m.-8 p.m. daily. Takeout, delivery and indoor seating. 2471 Berryessa Road, Suite 3, San Jose. 408-926-9888 or http://leesandwiches.com

Malibu's Burgers. 1-8:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Sunday. Takeout and delivery. 3905 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 510-879-7362 or www.malibusburgers.com

Shizen. 5-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 4-9 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 4:30-9 p.m. Sunday. Indoor and outdoor seating and takeout. Reservations required. 370 14th St., San Francisco. 415-678-5767 or www.shizensf.com

Tane Vegan Izakaya. 4:30-9:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Takeout and indoor seating. 1956 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. 510-898-1514 or www.taneveganberkeley.com

Since 2019, Soleil Ho has been The Chronicle's Restaurant Critic, spearheading Bay Area restaurant recommendations through the flagship Top Restaurants series. Ho also writes features and cultural commentary, specializing in the ways that our food reflects the way we live. Their essay on pandemic fine dining domes was featured in the 2021 Best American Food Writing anthology. Ho also hosts The Chronicle's food podcast, Extra Spicy, and has a weekly newsletter called Bite Curious. Previously, Ho worked as a freelance food and pop culture writer, as a podcast producer on the Racist Sandwich, and as a restaurant chef. Illustration courtesy of Wendy Xu.