All About The Bread

*Post by Mark.

All About The Bread. Those are words that I live by. Words that might even wind up on my tombstone when I die (surely from eating too many Italian subs or overloading on creamy burrata). In fact, All About the Bread - whether intentional or not has a bit of a double meaning. In the first instance, we're declaring the importance of having good bread - as in, 'When making the perfect sandwich, it's all about the bread'. In the second instance we're exclaiming the degree to which bread excites us - as in, 'sure, the mortadella is nice, but I'm all about the bread.' 

At All about the Bread on Melrose, both instances apply. One might say I'm a connoisseur of good bread - one who has berated many a deli for failing to serve their sandwiches on fresh, quality bread. I was nervous that the deli's name was establishing expectations that wouldn't be met. But once I stepped inside the spacious deli and got a whiff of their fresh bread baking, (even at 3 in the afternoon, they were still baking fresh bread every half hour) I started getting a warm, fluffy feeling rising in my belly.

Offering Boar's Head meets and cheeses (below, left) in their sandwiches, as well as for purchase, All About the Bread also pairs their hearty sandwiches with a case-full of side dishes. I supplemented my meal with a side of the apple-raisin salad (below, right) and a Rat Bastard root beer.

Angela went for the Hot Pastrami (below), brimming with pepperoncini, pickles and mustard and boasting pastrami 'flown in from the east coast'. She's been on a pastrami kick of late, and the salty, juicy meat at All About the Bread, well-paired with the crunch and heat from the pickles and pepperocini, edged ahead of other recent contenders. 

I went for The Godfather (below), which stacks Italian meats like spicy capocollo, mortadella, prosciutto di Parma, ham, Genoa salami with provolone and shredded romaine. Like the name of the place suggests, the real show-stealer is in fact the bread. Crisp and chewy on the outside and moist and fluffy inside - this bread makes the sandwich.

So the bread here is not only integral to the sandwich as a whole, but it is so good that I'm daydreaming about sinking my teeth into it as I write this. Their sandwiches are all about the bread and I am all about them. Before we left, we asked when the next batch of fresh bread would be ready and took another loaf (below) home with us. We were all about that, too.