Pressed Sandwiches

Pressed, Cen­tral Square
736 Mass­a­chu­setts Ave, Cam­bridge, MA 02139 [map]

Rarely am I moti­vated enough to post about food… after all, it’s some­thing I do every day (that is, eat). But, there is a newish eatery in Cen­tral Square called Pressed, which I’ve lunched at a couple of times now, and I felt com­pelled to offer some observations.

Pressed is the kind of sand­wich shop that puts all the empha­sis on detail… the inte­rior is dec­o­rated very modern, with an earthy green glow, black chalk­boards with the offer­ings, and nice light treat­ments. One odd thing that I noticed is that every­thing is branded with their leafy logo – from little bags of candy, to bot­tled water. Think high-​end McDonald’s, with­out the playground.

Set­ting aside the ambiance, (which I will return to later), how is the food? Quite good, it turns out. I’m a fan of panini-​style sand­wiches, and toasted bread in gen­eral, but often times when you order a panini at other places, you get reg­u­lar old sub-​shop ingre­di­ents pressed between way too much bread. Pressed hits the mark both in the qual­ity of ingre­di­ents, and bread. Their break­fast sand­wiches are espe­cially deli­cious, made with real eggs and cheeses. They serve coffee with the haughty brand name of Ter­rior, and it’s pretty tasty in hot and cold form.

So, for Pressed to spend all this energy get­ting all these details cor­rect, it’s a shame they don’t put the same effort into ser­vice. I stood ungreeted for about 5 min­utes today, ready to order, while two employ­ees were mum­bling about the cash reg­is­ter. Then, after order­ing, and hold­ing out my $20-bill, the young man (who looked like an art-​school post-​grad), started shuf­fling menus and look­ing up prices in silence… after what seemed like all morn­ing, he announced that my $3.75 break­fast sand­wich and large iced coffee would cost – $5, even. After a second of pro­cess­ing, I fig­ured out that the reg­is­ter was broken. Not a big deal, it would make sense to com­mu­ni­cate this to the customer.

So, I sad­dled up at a table to flip through last week’s Weekly Dig, and waited for my break­fast. After 10 min­utes or so, I finally stood up, and the other employee, (who looked and sounded like he’d be more at home in a family diner, behind the grille), turned and grabbed a bag from the counter, and handed it to me. How long had it been sit­ting there? If I had sat there another 10 min­utes, would he have called me then?

Ser­vice is a big deal to me – even in a fast-​food sand­wich shop. My pre­vi­ous two visits might have gone smoother, how­ever it’s a shame that this one has cemented my impression.