Bread Winner: Starland Café’s grilled ciabatta still makes for the best sandwich

Just as the clothes make the man and the shoes make the outfit and many hands make light work, the bread makes the sandwich, and in Savannah, few places offer up a better bookend bread than Starland Café.

These unique ciabatta loaves are used throughout the menu of this cozy neighborhood eatery, the über-versatile backbone of its dozen delicious sandwiches as well as the star accompaniment to the hummus plate, the red grape chicken salad plate, and Pa’s pimento plate. In the cooler months soon to come, my wife will turn to the goat bomb, the café’s tomato Thai soup served with a mountain of grilled ciabatta triangles for dipping.

My go-to remains what may still be Starland Café’s best-selling sammie, the CBG ($15). No shade on the pounded-and-grilled chicken breast, crispy slices of thick bacon, white cheddar, house-made guacamole and pico de gallo, and caramelized onions. All of these components make for toothsome bites in a variety of mouthfeels, but it is the bread that makes me crave the next mouthful.

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Head chef Drew Wrenn, who has been in the kitchen at Starland Café for more than a decade, said that the CBG has “historically” been the most popular sandwich.

Wrenn demurely divulged that the bread’s provenance is “a large bakery up north” and estimates that, on average, more than thirty ciabattas are grilled up for service each day, a number that itself is testament to how much this town loves these loaves.

In a perfect culinary world, I would hope and even expect Starland Café ― or any sandwicherie of this quality ― to be making its own bread, but one look at the size of its kitchen added to the sheer volume of ciabatta needed each day earns a purveyance pass. After all, precious few places in the area are scratch-baking whatever they slice-and-serve.

“We tried a couple things and listened to our customers, and they ultimately made the decision for us,” Wrenn said about a one-time attempt to change out the ciabatta. “I don’t think that people are afraid of change. In this case, I just feel like people just love that bread.”

What makes the bought bread special is that loaves are panini-pressed to order, and the portions served alongside plates are drizzled with olive oil and dusted with garlic-rosemary seasoning.

Of the sandwich selections, especially, diners are spoiled for choice with four plant-based preparations and with pretty much every item ‘veganize-able’. There truly is at least one to tempt every palate; moreover, most eager eaters will have difficulty deciding between two or three or four.

“We’ve seen a major surge in the Green Goat,” Wrenn said of the other usuals ordered by the café’s faithful. “In the last couple of years, people have really gotten into the hang of adding bacon or chicken to it, turning it into a heartier sandwich.”

If I ever stray from the CBG, next up are the Pa’s Pimento ($13) or the Greek asparagus ($15). On the former, farm-style hand-ground pimento cheese is spread generously between slices of that brilliant bread, while the latter features grilled asparagus, house-made hummus, marinated artichokes, feta, tomatoes, basil pesto, and house aioli.

“I think that the asparagus sandwich is a staple, kind of the Holy Grail of vegetarian sandwiches,” Wrenn added.

Due to the rising price of a night out, my wife and I do not go out to dinner much anymore. Instead, most every weekend, we do ‘flunch’, our own cutesy Portmanteau of ‘fun’ and ‘lunch’. These day dates run us between $20 and $40, as opposed to dropping more than $80 for two evening entrées and maybe a split appetizer or dessert.

Last week, we flunched at Starland Café. As it had been a while, I ordered the CBG, and my wife ordered the Pa’s pimento plate, which meant that we shared bites. Both because it is a big sandwich and because it is an expensive sandwich, I saved half for lunch the next day, though the two of us found it hard to stop inhaling the softball-sized scoop of pimento cheese mostly because the grill marks on those ciabatta triangles were too good to resist.

Starland Café (11 East 41st Street) is open for lunch Monday through Friday (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.) as well as for market sales and catering services.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah's Starland Café’s grilled ciabatta ideal in sandwich or as dipper