East Coast Counter Service Finds a Home in Figlia Americana

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT a counter service deli that feels very East Coast. Last time I tried to get a recommendation in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, it was like, “No, you don’t want to get a sandwich here. This is where you get coffee or soup. Go a block up and get a bagel. Or go two blocks over and get an egg salad. They’ll take care of you.”

Here, we don’t have the density for that kind of specialization. What we do have are fancy light bulb stores in old mixed-use buildings directly on commuter thoroughfares. We just have to hope the café inevitably replacing it hits a lot of marks.

Walking into Figlia Americana early in its second month of business, you’d guess it’d been hitting all those marks for years. That’s partly because of the lived-in, reclaimed-chic décor from Rejuvenation, and partly because it always seems to be comfortably full.

Some of these people are already regulars. Figlia—which means daughter and implies a familial vibe—is counter service only, with a couple of big community tables and bar seating along the wall offering views across SE Grand. Even with a packed house, it feels open, airy, and bright, and you can tell this isn’t the first time these obvious office cliques have met here.

The line (lines happen, get over it) moves at a comfortable clip, though I can’t say I don’t get a little antsy waiting on the kitchen now and then. That may be partly because an order is often spread out over grab-and-go salads and pastries (which are at the order counter) and made-to-order elements like sandwiches, bagels, smoothies, and—this throws me—espresso. I may be the weird one, ordering an iced Americano with my cold cut sandwich and beet salad, but it feels wrong to wait for the sandwich to be ready before I get the drink.

As for those breakfast sandwich rankings? Figlia’s ($7) is somewhere toward the top. The English muffin is flaky and buttery, but that’s necessary given the stretchy, thin-sliced country ham (which seems to be prosciutto in all but name) and the Portland-made Ancient Heritage cow/sheep cheese, called out on the menu by name (Willow Creek) without the word cheese. What saves the sandwich from self-serious foodie grandstanding is an amazingly yellow, improbably square patty of scrambled egg, corners akimbo—a reverent nod to slapdash fast-food incongruity. And it tastes good.

What else tastes good? More ham, especially in a “grab & go” ficelle, which for $7 is a deal. With that excellent prosciutto, more Ancient Heritage cheese, and Calabrian chili butter, it puts whatever plastic wrapped handful of spongey bread and dry meat your coworker grabbed at New Seasons to shame.

For my $9, though, you have to see this egg salad sandwich in action. The curious couple across from me asked excitedly, “Are those potato chips sticking out of it?” and I could barely get out “chicken skin!” before stuffing it into my face. Crispy chicken skin and dried Calabrian chili peppers offer some crunch, a sea breeze comes in off of the bagna cauda, and there’s even some provolone in there.

The salads, mostly scooped from bowls alongside the pastries, are served heaping and almost all of ’em are $6. The beet salad with fennel, citrus, and goat cheese is fresh and cool, and the chopped pasta salad, with olives, salumi, and provolone is like a fancier version of the picnic food my suburban mother used to make—even down to the cheese in cubes, the least edible-sounding of shapes.

The breakfast focaccia ($3)—maple, walnut, dried fruit, like a drier French toast—is a good base layer, though it’s huge and so one-note you probably won’t want to go solo on it. The sticky bun ($5) piled high with roasted hazelnuts, on the other hand, will have you fending off neighbors with the sharp end of a fork and a honey-slick snarl.

The smoothies feel a little tacked on (one is called Huckbizzle, which gives the lie to “first thought, best thought”), while the hazelnut milk is made in house, if that’s your bag. There’s also house-cultured butter and housemade jam, which you might as well get on toast, because the medium is not the message here.

Mama Lil’s Peppers feel like a secret weapon on the toast or in a chickpea salad with feta, but that’s the point of this kind of place. Despite all the things Figlia is doing in house that are delicious, they still know to outsource pickled peppers or bagels (Henry Higgins) or pastries (Bake Shop) or coffee (Umbria). They wear it on their sleeve, so that when someone asks, “Which cafe should I go to for…?” you can answer, “Figlia Americana. They’ll take care of you.”