Sometimes all you need for lunch is a really good sandwich. If you find yourself in Addison and have some time to spare, La Spiga Bakery and Café has exactly that—plus way, way more.
Between two slices of housemade marbled rye, La Spiga’s Reuben sandwich has layers of sliced corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Thousand Island dressing. The Reuben comes with potato chips and a side salad, which taste exactly as they should, but the sandwich steals the show. (As it should.)
Nothing about the sandwich is revolutionary. It’s filling and delicious and I definitely said “I’m coming back here!” after scarfing down my meal. La Spiga has been quietly serving baked goods and lunch out of its Addison hub for the last 29 years, so they’re clearly doing something right.
The café is attached to the bakery, which is located in the warehouse district of Addison on Lindbergh Drive. (If you’re lucky, you might catch a plane leaving the runway of the nearby Addison Airport on your way there.) The café takes up about 20 percent of the building, and the rest of it is dedicated to baking bread and other goods for wholesale partners. You’ll recognize a few of these: Bread Winners Café & Bakery, Rise, East Hampton Sandwich Co., TJ’s Seafood Market and Grill, Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, Embassy Hotel Frisco, and more.
Carolyn Milano and her husband Donato initially opened La Spiga as a wholesale bakery to provide bread and other baked goods to local cafes and hotels. Carolyn manages while Donato bakes and runs the kitchen. The café was added on to help with cash flow, and it served them well as the wholesale aspect of the business grew. But it really took off during the pandemic when wholesale partnerships struggled and when folks began looking for local places to eat lunch, Carolyn says.
Walking up the steps of the unassuming café one Friday afternoon, I caught a whiff of freshly baked bread coming from the building. Inside, I clearly caught the lunch rush: tables were bustling with customers young and old eating any and everything off the menu. Many seemed to be stopping by during work hours. Others looked like they were meeting old friends for their regularly scheduled lunch. Regulars are the norm here, Carolyn says.
“I love it when I remember their names and they come in,” she says. “There are people that have come in probably the last three or four months, and they literally had not been here since before COVID.”
Being in La Spiga reminded me of the former Metropolitan Café in downtown Dallas, which closed in 2021 after serving commuters and downtown workers for 20 years. The charming, retro vibe of a local deli was what I was looking for, and I didn’t even realize it.
The menu is expansive and includes breakfast (they open at 8 a.m., so it’s not really a place for early breakfast people), salads, soups, sandwiches, pastas, pizzas, coffee, and some desserts. If you’re dining in, each table has a plastic-wrapped plate with a cookie and a selection of sliced bread from the bakery. With a few pats of butter, it makes for an excellent appetizer while you wait for your food.
The Reuben was a weekly special when I stopped by. The sandwiches each come with a choice of bread—whole wheat, sourdough, 9-grain, hoagie, rye, egg, or baguette—and a side of chips. I also took a few bites of the chicken tarragon, made with herb-roasted chicken breast, tomato, lettuce, and Swiss cheese. It, too, was a solid sandwich that left me feeling pleasantly surprised.
La Spiga is most certainly the lunch-iest spot I’ve visited in Addison. Like me, you may leave the café, lightly patting your belly, wondering what you’ll try next before waddling down the steps.
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