Housemade bread sets Nadler’s apart

Delectable sweets are an added bonus

Nadler’s Bakery and Delicatessen is a San Antonio institution that has been around since 1963 — among the oldest continuously run bakeries in the city.

Founder Hans Nadler died in January at age 91, but the store at the intersection of Babcock and Callaghan continues to do brisk business under the direction of his daughter Alexia Nadler-Mendez.

Inside the store you will find every type of cookie, pastry, cake and dessert a sweet tooth could ask for. But it also offers a deep selection of sandwiches — 17 specialty sandwiches, in fact, all on housemade bread and buns. They all come with a side, and options include pasta salad, garden salad, two types of potato salad, fruit salad or chips as well as complimentary thickly sliced dill pickles.

So yeah, grab some cannoli, but don’t leave without lunch first.

Best sandwich: In a providential oops, the Ari’s Special ($9.75) came with turkey instead of the Black Forest ham listed on the menu. It was a good accident in the way Robert Frost expressed taking “The Road Not Taken.”

The crispy iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, Muenster cheese and a tomato slice as thick as a Frisbee blended wonderfully with a layer of ranch dressing on a freshly baked and shiny challah roll with that turkey.

So order one, request the turkey substitute and thank me later.

Other sandwiches: Ham was indeed delivered in the Super Club ($11.50), along with that great turkey, Swiss and American cheeses, crispy bacon, lettuce and tomato. It was classic in flavor, but not size. This sandwich is big enough to easily feed two or three patrons.

The Intense Roast Beef ($10.15) gets a little swagger in its sandwich step from a horseradish sauce and comes topped with a generous amount of mozzarella cheese and a hot bowl of beef jus. Dip, bite and relish the explosion of flavor.

After that, Nadler’s has me asking “Where’s the beef ?” like a 1980s Wendy’s commercial.

My grilled Panini Pizza Sandwich ($8.25) certainly tasted like a slice of pizza, but it was fairly unambitious. A single layer of pepperoni and salami anchored to some melted mozzarella, a few black olives and a splatter of Italian dressing with a few shavings of bell pepper and onion. It was the type of sandwich I used to make back in college.

If there is an Italian sub

($9.35) on the menu, I will order it. The version at Nadler’s came on a wonderful housemade hoagie roll, but there was too much of it and too little of the salami, ham and pepperoni inside. It tasted more like a loaf of bread accompanied by a light antipasto appetizer than lunch.

Overall, Nadler’s offers a solid lunch value with the bonus of all those sweet dessert options. We aren’t reviewing cookies here, but I highly recommend getting one.

Photos by Chuck Blount / Staff The Ari’s Special came with turkey instead of Black Forest ham — a welcome surprise.

The Super Club Supreme packs in flavor and can easily be shared.