Scenes From Opening Day at Bar Tartine’s New Sandwich Shop and Bread Annex

The Cubano-style pressed pork sandwich with house-cured prosciutto, garlic mayo, house-made mustard and pickles.

The day has finally come: Bar Tartine’s long-awaited bread annex and daytime counter operation opened today, and will now be open Wednesday to Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The menu is similar, in part, to the restaurant’s previous brunch menu, and that should be a relief to some since the existing brunch service won’t be happening anymore — you’ve got a selection of the lovely open-faced smorrebrods that chef Nick Balla has been doing at brunch; the savory fried bread known as langos, topped with garlic and dill; as well as some of the items from dinner too, like the delicious fried smoked potatoes with ramp aioli, and the chopped salad. New to the menu are a selection of sandwiches, beginning with a trio today that you can see photos and descriptions of in our slideshow.

It’s a counter-service operation — you take a number, fetch yourself some water, seat yourself anywhere in the dining room, and servers will deliver beverages and your food. See the opening daytime menu here, scheduled to change. Note that the restaurant will turn back into its normal self starting at 6 p.m.

The space is also home to Tartine Bakery’s new bread oven, and baker and co-owner Chad Robertson has already begun baking breads to supplement the existing selection available at Tartine.

As for the promised retail pantry component, Balla says that they’ll likely begin selling house-made spice mixtures, like paprika and chili powder, starting in the fall, and there may be some pickles and other stuff in the works as well.

The daytime place doesn’t exactly have an official name yet though. “We were tossing around the word ‘annex’ this morning,” says Balla. “I’m not sure what the final word was on that.”

Bar Tartine - 561 Valencia Street between 16th and 17th Street - Lunch/brunch now served Wednesday to Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Dinner, with a separate menu, begins at 6 p.m., with alternative “pop-up” menus served on Monday evenings.

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The new counter occupies the right-hand portion of the existing dining room.

A new service window opens into the main dining room.

For now, the pantry items are just for show, like these spices and canned apricots. Eventually, the plan is to sell stuff in the mode of St. John Bread & Wine in London.

Baker and co-owner Chad Robertson (left).

Today’s selection of open-faced, Scandinavian-style sandwiches included one Cobb salad twist with a seven-minute egg, bacon, avocado, and house-made blue-cheese; one with smoked eggplant and olive tapenade and a roasted tomato; and one with apricot, parsley and a scoop of chicken-liver mousse.

This flavorful, sizable sandwich features housemade corned tongue, munster cheese, Balla’s Hungarian take on Thousand Island which they’re calling Paprika Island, and housemade sauerkraut.

It’s a Cuban-style BBQ pork sandwich with house-cured prosciutto, cheese, garlic mayonnaise, housemade mustard, and pickles. The sandwich is dressed also with some rich, spicy pork broth, and Balla says the idea is to make the sandwiches almost like French Dips with well-soaked bread.

It’s basically like a falafel sandwich, except it’s croquettes made with lentils and rye crumbs. The sandwich is oozing with house-made yogurt, and features tomatoes, sprouts, cucumber, and padron peppers.

Balla says they bought about 1600 pounds of John Driver’s “Candycot” apricots, which got their own feature article written about them in Lucky Peach this past spring. He and sous chef Cortney Burns are canning a lot, but also turning them into this sweet chilled soup, which is served with housemade sour cream and smoked almonds.

If you haven’t had these things yet, which they have on the dinner menu as well, then run, don’t walk.