B-L-Twee

Rybread

by Adam Erace

It could be the cheerful orange pillows strung along the three-seat banquette. Patterned with stripes and swirls, they practically coo, Settle in, we got your back. Or maybe it's the back pocket of a backyard, casually appointed with terra-cotta pottery and teak folding tables, an arbor-shaded surprise that would thrill were you house-hunting in Fairmount. Perhaps it's the staff, framed by castles of cake plates stacked with muffins and scones — they're abnormally upbeat, considering no less than four of them share 20 square feet behind the contiguous counter and sandwich station.

What makes Rybread the city's cutest little sandwich shop? After breakfast, lunch and lunch again, I still can't put a finger on it.

I do suspect it's got more than a little to do with the owners, Ryan Pollock, a former D.C. architect, and his dad, Dennis, who commutes to Rybread every day from the family home in Hatfield. Mom Roseanne works weekends; when I ordered the chicken salad from her one recent Sunday, maybe she smiled a little wider because it's her grape-and-walnut-studded recipe between the slices of nutty Le Bus multigrain. Pollock's girlfriend, Stephanie Mertz, chips in, and those are her photos lining the milk-white walls. The snapshots are from the two-month cross-country road trip she and Pollock, both recently laid off, took in 2008 — "an unemployment opportunity," according to Pollock, that inspired the 17 traditional and panini-pressed sandwiches Rybread currently serves.

That excellent chicken salad is called Denver, furnished with just enough mayo to bind the white-meat cubes, nuts and fruit. Santa Monica, on sourdough, brought an avocado-enhanced BLT with crisp bacon from Leidy's, the Souderton smoker whose pork Pollock grew up on. Eat in or take away, the sandwiches get gift-wrapped in waxy, white cake paper, or insulating foil for panini like Omaha, layered with whispers of Boar's Head roast beef (more deli than delicious) with uncharacteristically shy Gorgonzola and caramelized onions.

Remember, Rybread isn't necessarily going for next-level sandwich craft on par with Paesano's. Still, certain improvements, like salt-and-peppering the insides of the sandwiches, aren't beyond the compact cafe's limits. Like my fantasy team, the greens also need an upgrade. I'd ditch the Denver's damp heap of spring mix for snappy arugula, and while iceberg added crunch to the Santa Monica, butter or bibb would do the same job, plus add flavor. Down the line, I would love to see what Roseanne could do with the soups of the day. The cups, currently outsourced, include a turkey chili with a bewitching, molelike spiciness, but also an oddly grainy texture.

Rybread is best at breakfast, when the Chestnut Hill coffee is iced and the Le Bus bagels are warm. In my OBX sandwich, fluffy, cooked-to-order eggs joined cheese and sausage on a dense, chewy multigrain bagel, a fine start to the day with a semi-soft cinnamon-scented scone and airy banana-chocolate chip muffin, both baked in-house by Papa Pollock.

(adam.erace@citypaper.net)