What was once a pop-up, proof-of-concept for a slightly different slant on the simple sandwich shop has finally made it to a permanent brick and mortar location, at 1518 Montana Ave. Bread Head Sandwiches offers a small, but mighty selection of fillings, however, the unique selling point is that they are all served in between slices of signature crispy focaccia-style bread.
“During the pandemic, everyone turned to their oven and started making bread and I’m not really a baker, but I started baking at home and trying to come up with a really good sandwich bread,” says co-owner Alex Williams.
He says his business partner, Jordan Snyder, had some experience with baking and he was able to offer some guidance while they experimented with different recipes.
“And so we landed on this style of bread, that is really its own style. It’s like a flat, bubbly, almost pizza base-like crust underneath. It’s brushed with a little brown butter and flaky sea salt. And we just make delicious sandwiches out of that,” Williams said, adding, “We don’t do anything super crazy, we just offer simple classic sandwiches, think BLT, roast beef, turkey, those kinds of things.”
Williams and Snyder both come from more traditional fine dining backgrounds, at one of LA’s finest kitchens, Trois Mec, but it was their struggle through the pandemic, together with the fact that they’re both are new parents, that made them consider a change in direction.
“We found in the fine dining world, you get someone coming into your restaurant maybe once a year, maybe just once in their lifetime, because they just check it off the list of the places to go … I wanted to be able to build something that I’m able to get people into every single week and make it a little more approachable,” Williams said.
Santa Monica, especially the downtown area, is seriously lacking in sandwich shops. Even Farmesa, Chipotle’s grand experiment, in the Kitchen United Mix food court on the Promenade that offered delicious salads, albeit once you’d spent half an hour navigating the awful ordering system, didn’t last six months.
“We love this neighborhood [but[ I didn’t know much about it before our broker found this space. Then I started coming here more and more and we found that it’s a great community,” said Williams. “We talked about downtown, but I like the more neighborhood-type sites over the high-traffic, tourist-centric spaces. We might end up in one of those spaces down the road, but out of the gate we want to start with somewhere like this.”
The 500-square-foot space will serve as the flagship for their new bread-based empire, but it was far from plain sailing. “We hit every roadblock possible during construction and they weren’t permitting, so it was this, or it was that … everything that could’ve gone wrong, went wrong,” he said. “We had our sign up as ‘opening in 2023’ and everyone was asking ‘when are you going to open?’ So, everyone was very patient.”
Permitting problems with the City seem to be a consistent theme with new businesses struggling to open in Santa Monica. Recently, the Daily Press learned that both Maru Sushi and JP’s were also delayed by similar kinds of issues.
“Every step of the way, there was an issue that pushed us back from opening, from dealing with architects to general contractors to being in plan check with the city, so we’ve learned quite a bit … But, you know, winning solves everything, winning cures everything and I’m quickly forgetting the horror stories. Now I’m just focusing on the positives,” Williams said.
Sandwiches on offer are made up of classic ingredients like ham and butter, roast beef, BLT and chicken salad and are served on the store’s trademark bread that’s baked fresh every day and is a Mediterranean-style mix between focaccia and ciabatta with an extra crunch. A Sicilian-inspired muffuletta is also available and everything can be bought as a whole or a half.
The menu is currently being tweaked as the team decides what the best options are and new items are slated to arrive soon. Judging from the fact there’s a queue outside the door just before 11am, when the shop opens, is testament to its rapidly growing popularity. Moreover, it’s not uncommon to see an improvised sign on the door after 4pm saying that they’ve run out of bread, even though the shop is open until 7pm.
Williams says that they’re already looking at additional locations and maybe even a dedicated baking facility that could service new locations, since they’re already running out of room at the Montana Ave site.
Bread Head Sandwiches can be found at 1518 Montana Avenue and is open 11am to 7pm from Wednesday through Sunday.