single serving breakfast sandwich: soma eats in like soma

The stretch of 2nd Street between Market and Howard is usually a quiet, deserted area at night, outside of a couple of restaurants open for dinner. During the day however, the place is teeming with folks and food places office workers and everyone can take advantage of. Into the fray, about a year or so ago, is when SomaEats made its debut with breakfast and lunch options along with an entire wall of beer, wine and other drinks for either your happy hour enjoyment or your b***h about your terrible job lunch time. It does stay open till 10pm during the week, so I guess they are trying to fill the night time black void in the area too. (An area also made more foreboding with the addition of the LinkedIn building which looks like the fat cousin of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey)

My mission was to just try one of their breakfast offerings. I'll save the booze for later, it was a little too early in the morning for day drinking. For the morn, they have 3 sandwich choices along with a breakfast burrito, because it's San Francisco and this item is as prevalent as brunch is in this town. Looking over the choices, what caught my eye was the croque madame sandwich, a carry out version of the French classic. Sounded interesting and I ordered one up. 

croque madame breakfast sandwich

It was gruyere cheese, sliced ham and a fried egg. Their menu said on white bread, but it came on a ciabatta bun. I was kind of bummed when I saw it. I was sort of hoping for the white bread slices and wanting them to be covered with grilled cheese on the outside like you'd get with a regular croque. I was told upfront it did not come with any cheesy type sauce you might normally get, but just the gruyere. Too bad they couldn't figure out a way to do that as it came off pretty dry tasting. The egg was only a little runny, thus it couldn't add much wetness.

While the bun was toasted, it had no butter. We all know I call that a kitchen sin.  Maybe the butter could have added some flavor, as even with the gruyere, the sandwich was just blah tasting. It's also on the small side and will set you back $6.95 (+tax). If I wanted a boring breakfast sandwich I could go to Starbucks AND save a couple bucks too. 

This isn't a croque madame. What we are looking at here is egg, meat and cheese on a bun. A combo you can get anywhere.  I mean they didn't even use Emmental cheese--the standard one you'd find on the sandwich. Maybe if they had, I could give a smidgen of a break since they would have gotten most of the components correct. As is, it isn't anything special you need to seek out and try. Hmmmm, maybe I need to rethink the whole breakfast burrito thing now.