Dine at Bread Head, and the first thing you notice is the bread — wonderfully crisp, moist, olive oily focaccia bread, glistening in the outdoor beach light on the patio, where you sit, remembering the primordial pleasures of the sandwich while the beach folk amble past, in flip-flops and not much more.
At this Manhattan Beach restaurant, the bread is freshly made in-house; the massive bags of “never bleached/never bromated” King Arthur Brand Sir Galahad artisan flour are mute testimony to that. Even though I have no idea what “bromated” means, I am grateful. The bread is great.
(According to Google, “Potassium bromate is a flour improver that strengthens dough, but its link to cancer in laboratory animals led the FDA to encourage voluntary cessation of its use in 1991, a standard King Arthur has consistently met.” So, now we know.)
We are thankful, of course, to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, for codifying this meal of meat (roast beef in his case) on bread (he preferred toasted) so that he could play cribbage at London’s 18th-century gambling houses without interruption.
But he didn’t actually invent the sandwich; hundreds of years earlier, the sage Hillel the Elder was fond of consuming slices of lamb on matzoh during Passover. Open-faced sandwiches had long been part of the diet in the Netherlands. And bread was used as an edible plate called a “trencher” throughout the Middle Ages.
Here in America, the sandwich fell on hard times thanks to food-adjacent products like Wonder Bread and American cheese. We all grew up with the stuff; it was filler, not food.
But in recent years, we’ve gone through a sandwich-shaking transformation from white bread to Dave’s Killer 21 Grain Bread. And to the barely controlled excess of the sandwiches at Bread Head. Which uses cult-worthy bread as a suitcase for ingredients that make my mother’s boiled chicken on white seem a crime against both nature and civility.
The process is simple at Bread Head (3 stars; 1129 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach; 310-209-8071; www.breadheadla.com). You go to the counter. You peruse the Zen minimalist menu of nine sandwiches (with another three for kids), opt for either a half (which is far more than a half) or a whole, perhaps some chips, a quirky beverage and some dark chocolate coffee flavored cookies … because why not?
Then, you wait till the sandwich arrives with cheer and a smile — which you may miss, since your eye will be riveted by the pile of food in front of you.
Though some of the ingredients are unexpected, the sandwiches are, for the most part, modern takes on old favorites — in some cases, beloved combinations that we wish we had grown up with. I’d be so much better adjusted if instead of boiled chicken on white, my mother had made the obsessively good, cult-worthy chicken salad served at Bread Head.
That first bite was a revelation — a vision of how good a chicken salad could be. Big tender chunks of house-roasted chicken, so essentially chickenish, mixed with chopped vegetables and essential mayonnaise, thickly laid upon with thinly sliced green apples and apple butter.
Apple butter! Who’d imagine such a thing? A chicken salad with a rough and tumble edge of sweetness. I didn’t so much eat it, as I inhaled. A better sandwich than this, I cannot imagine in this lifetime.
There’s more. The Calabrian Turkey is made with roasted turkey breast, mildly sharp Hooks One Year Cheddar, dear old iceberg lettuce and Calabrian mayo — flavored with snazzy Calabrian chiles.
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John Montagu would admire the roast beef with soft Stracchino Crescenza cheese, garlic mayo and freshly shaved horseradish. The BLT is all about the thick Nueske’s bacon (the bacon, I suspect, that’s served in Heaven). And like the chicken salad, the tuna salad puts the flavorless messes we all grew up with to shame. It’s made with garlic mayo and Everything Spice … spice mix.
And, as much of a pleasure as it is to slowly consume your sandwich seated near Manhattan Avenue, watching the never-ending parade of acolytes of the sun, I’ve found the sandwiches hold up very well traveling home. The focaccia has substance. It has grit. It has spirit. And it doesn’t have bromates. All is good with the world.
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.
Bread Head
Rating: 3 stars
Address: 1129 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach
Information: 310-209-8071; www.breadheadla.com
Cuisine: Arguably the best sandwiches in Southern California, served on arguably the best bread, with arguably the most amazing fillings.
When: Lunch and early dinner, every day
Details: Quirky soft drinks; no reservations
Prices: About $20 per person
Suggested dishes: 9 very large half Sandwiches ($14-$16), and even larger whole ($25-$29); 3 Kids Sandwiches ($9 for a half); 4 Bagged Chips ($3.50-$13; with pimento cheese dip); Dark Chocolate Coffee Cookies ($4)
Credit cards: MC, V
What the stars mean: 4 (World class! Worth a trip from anywhere!), 3 (Most excellent, even exceptional. Worth a trip from anywhere in Southern California.), 2 (A good place to go for a meal. Worth a trip from anywhere in the neighborhood.) 1 (If you’re hungry, and it’s nearby, but don’t get stuck in traffic going.) 0 (Honestly, not worth writing about.)
Originally Published: October 22, 2025 at 3:18 PM PDT