I’ll stop here for a $6-$7 Vietnamese-style sandwich any day.

The genius Vietnamese conflation of the raw and the cooked is at the heart of Bun Mee’s appeal.

The genius Vietnamese conflation of the raw and the cooked is at the heart of Bun Mee’s appeal.

Sometimes I go to a new restaurant and my blink instinct tells me that this one is going to do just fine, even in the dog-eat-dog restaurant world of San Francisco.

With a vibrant design, smart graphics and an inventive menu almost entirely under $10, the Vietnamese sandwich eatery Bun Mee is ready for its grand opening today at 2015 Fillmore Street.

When Homeroom opened two years ago, everything about the place captured that retro spirit, from the chalkboard wall to the reclaimed wood from old bleacher seats.

“It’s funny,” says Wade, remembering the linoleum floors and fluorescent lights of her public school days in 1990s Los Angeles. “None of the schools I went to looked half as cool as this restaurant.”

Library catalog cards and patrons’ school photos — passé glasses, awful hair — dot the walls. Paper airplanes are everywhere. Under the inscription “A IS FOR APPLE, B IS FOR BEER, C IS FOR CHEESE,” Homeroom’s wide-open kitchen — where a hundred pounds of ridged Ronzoni elbows are boiled every day — evokes an arts-and-crafts class.

“Childhood comfort food comes of age” at this “retro schoolroom” look-alike in Oakland’s Temescal.

The eye-catching design feature of the bright and airy corner space is a “chandelier” made of 20 antique bronze bells that Khanna’s mother salvaged from markets in India.