Jessica H.
Yelp
This place looks like nothing more than a gelato shop from the front, so you'd be forgiven for not realising there's a whole specialty grocery inside -- and they also do delicious made-to-order artisan sandwiches to take away.
To get a sandwich, bypass the gelato out front and go inside, then bypass the groceries and head straight to the back. There's a cashier here who will take your order and bring your sandwich out to you after about a 10-15 minute wait.
I love this place because of their four vegan sandwich options: a tofu salad open sandwich with sesame and lime dressing; a bagel sandwich with a tofu and corn fritter and curried cashews, cucumber, and coriander; a tempeh burger on focaccia with kimchi and ABC sauce; and an eggplant, pumpkin, spinach, white bean, and basil pesto on focaccia. If these descriptions don't have you drooling right now, I don't know what's wrong with you.
All vegan sandwiches are $11.50 and come with potato chips. This is a fair price for a delicious and rather filling lunch. Their non-vegan sandwiches aren't much more expensive either.
My favorite is the tempeh burger with ABC sauce -- it's like an Indonesian sweet soy sauce -- oh man. Just the right mix of unusual but awesome flavours.
There's no seating here -- it's take-away only, unless you're out front having a gelato.
While you wait for your sandwich, you can peruse the specialty grocery items. They have a small but impressive collection of hard-to-find and locally-made items, such as La Tortilleria tortillas, local hand-made chocolates, jars of refrigerated kimchi, and chips made from all manner of non-potato things -- kale chips, bean chips, turnip chips....
Just be prepared for some sticker shock. These specialty groceries don't come cheap. (One of the chocolate bars was $14!!! It better be chocolate CRACK, at that price.)
All in all, a great place to come for an awesome take-away sandwich with fresh and often unusual ingredients at lunchtime, and a fun place to peruse if you like your exotic, organic, hand-made/hand-dipped/hand-chopped/hand-crafted/hand-tooled/hand-whatever fancy-pants specialty grocery items. You know who you are.
(Note the sandwiches are a Monday-Friday lunchtime thing only. I came once on the weekend and they weren't making sandwiches. The gelato is available all the time, but I admit I haven't sampled it yet.)