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Why settle for turkey roll or olive loaf when you can pile Kobe beef, cabrales cheese, or pomegranate-juniper glazed chicken between your Tuscan log or semolina-raisin-fennel? At this high-tech, modernist chain, food snobs choose from suggested signature sandwiches and salads or create their own. Then, after ticking off preferences of bread, greens, vegetables, meats, cheeses and other trimmings, they watch their masterpieces come together on the flat screen TV above the assembly line. Signature items span a citrus duck salad combining bitter frisee, sharp peppercress, curls of sweet carrot, pliant Israeli cous cous, and chunks of tender confit drizzled with orange-cherry vinaigrette, to a soft shell crab BLT, with smoky sweet applewood bacon, heirloom tomatoes, creamy pimento-rosemary aioli, and sourdough surrounding the crunchy, meaty crustacean. Straightforward self-creations like Serrano ham, manchego cheese, bell peppers, and baby greens on ciabatta are just as winning. Eggwiches and quiche round out a morning menu, but the spot draws more of an afternoon crowd who take advantage of the free wi-fi, complimentary cell phone chargers, and gratis newspapers. They spread out on large black leather couches, along the wooden communal table, or around more intimate two and four-tops for meetings or tete-à-tetes with friends—even their baloney sandwich-loving ones. For them, the menu even includes a face-saving food glossary. — Kathleen Squires

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Soft shell crab BLT, $13.95; citrus duck salad, $9.95