All About the Bread
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The Details:
7111 Melrose Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90046
(323) 930-8989
11 a.m. – 7 p.m., 7 days a week
The Los Angeles Foodie Rating:
The Summary:
Los Angeles, for its size and robust foodie population, has a surprising lack of remarkable sandwich shops (Bay Cities and Langer’s being at the top of a short list). This is one reason why the opening of All About the Bread has received a lot of attention from local sandwich fiends. Unfortunately, All About the Bread, while competent, has a long way to go to achieve Los Angeles sandwich fame.
The Place:
Located on Melrose at mid-Wilshire, All About the Bread certainly has the potential to pull in some serious foot traffic. The restaurant itself is basic, but generally pleasing — white walls, a handful of tables, and a sprawling deli counter. When I went on a late Saturday morning, the place was virtually empty — but traffic is said to pick up considerably, particularly during the weekday lunch rush.
The Food:
If you call yourself “All About the Bread,” people aren’t coming to you because they assume you have excellent soups. So your bread better knock some socks off. In this respect, I was disappointed. For one, All About the Bread actually only offers one type of bread. Once I got over that disappointment, I decided I wouldn’t hold it against the place, so long as that one bread was something spectacular. And while it is good — soft on the inside, crisp and chewy on the out — it doesn’t quite live up to the inherent hype. Although the bread is reportedly baked fresh every 30 minutes, it’s little better than the sourdough rolls at a Panera.
The sandwiches receive a similar review — good, but not great. The Godfather, touted as the menu highlight, is stacked high with capicola, mortadello, prosciutto, and provolone. I topped it off with “The Works,” which includes your standard mix of veggies, mayo (only it’s veganaise here, which, again, I tried not to hold against them), mustard, Italian dressing, and hot peppers. A decent but unremarkable sandwich.
The tuna sandwich wasn’t to my personal liking, as the texture was one of cat-foodesque canned-tuna paste, and I prefer my albacore a little chunkier. The meatball was better, but again — nothing I’m going to wake up craving at 3 a.m. And nothing that would bring me back.
In terms of sides, I gave the potato salad and artichoke salad a whirl, and found them to be nothing more exciting than what you can pick up at the deli counter of your local Ralph’s.
The Service:
Everyone at All About the Bread was polite and friendly, happy to answer questions but not altogether knowledgeable about the finer points of the food. There was no one in front of us in line, so it didn’t much matter that we bobbled our way through the ordering process, asking too many questions and confusing the person taking our order once or twice. The wait time for our sandwiches was a reasonable one. But given we were the only people ordering at that time, I can imagine the backup during a lunch rush might be a considerable one.
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