Papa Lima Sandwich

Aw no love for Papa Lima? But they make a good sandwich. I have only been here a handful of times, but I have enjoyed it. It is slow, I’ll have to say that, and in a kinda funny location, outside the hip part of the neighborhood. Go to the deli across the street if you want a fast sandwich. Go to Papa Lima if you want a fancier more upscale, albeit slow sandwich.
Buffalo chicken one is my fav. Is right amount spicy and not smothered to death in bleu cheese.

This was my experience about a year and a half ago. Maybe it’s better now, but I’m not about to find out.
I NEVER write reviews but this place was so bad, I got inspired. Then I discovered that not only did everybody have the same bad experience, but covered most of my points. But I’ll add my two cents.
First the good: free, fast wifi! I work from home sometimes, and need to use the internet. I love going to Cafes and drinking tea all day. Please other better cafes offer effing wifi! I will come and spend lots of money!
Now the rest. I experienced a lot, since I was here for five or six hours.
It never occurred to me to come in here, since there are so many cooler cafes in the hood, but I needed the wifi. I come in and asked if they have tea and wifi. They say yes to wifi and that they have ice tea. I’m like that doesn’t help since it’s the shittiest coldest rainiest day of the year. I always assumed this place was a coffee shop when I came by, but from the confusing menus on the wall I saw that it was all sandwiches. I was so overwhelmed by all the random menus, on three walls of the place, I just asked to see a printed menu. Also, everything is ridiculously overpriced.
As far as I can tell, throughout the day there were three employees. At the height of business, when I arrived, there were three customers.
Nevertheless, the aforementioned twenty minute sandwich problem.

We order sandwiches from Papa Lima at my business several times a week. The sandwiches are really great. Lucky for me somebody else places the order and goes to get the sandwiches. They are always out of stuff.
As an owner of a small business I wonder if the owner (or owners) are aware of the lack of service and the fact that they are continually out of stuff. We order off of an old printed menu that has a lot of things deleted from it at this point.
I’m a fan. I’d hate to see the employees run this business into the ground. We’d miss Papa Lima for sure.

Why, oh why is it so difficult to run a good sandwich shop? Love the S2nd/​S4th delis but sometimes you just need something that’s a little more unique.
Are the sandwiches good at Papa Lima? Sometimes.
Are they worth the abysmal customer service experience you’re forced to go through? Definitely not. To avoid beating a dead horse, let me just say that most of the negative reviews are spot-​on with regards to the attention (or lack thereof) that the employees take in serving customers.
It’s a total mystery to me why they can’t get their act together. It’s a simple concept that could be incredible but they make it so difficult for you to give them your money and not be furious by the time you walk out of there.

After the two people working behind the counter decided they were at a good stopping point in their conversation and shot me a blank stare, I realized I had to initiate my order. I got The Garden sandwich and simply requested no cheese. 15 minutes into the sandwich making process (she had to put down my sandwich a few times in order to use her hands to continuing talking to her coworker) I saw her take the cheese out.
I really don’t care if my order gets messed up at a busy/​moderately busy restaurant. However, If I am literally the only customer, and there are two people working behind the counter, get my order right.
Then I politely reminded her I didn’t want cheese and got a look of pure hatred and disgust… good times…
From now on I think I’ll smear some hummus, cucumbers and what-​not on bread and save myself the trouble of feeling like an asshole for coming into a sandwich store and ordering a sandwich.

Meh. Sunday afternoon and was searching for lunch. Came across this place and at first glance felt the prices were a little high and the menu a tad uninspired, but went in anyway.
I got the spanjo, a 6 dollar smush of apples, cream cheese, sprouts and Havarti. It was meh. It was 6 bucks.
Might go back to check out the breakfasts, but this place is like an average sandwich shop with some hipster tacked on the front for effect. Ie, it looks creative and interesting but lacks any real substance.

They
Serve some
Of the best
Sandwiches in
The Burg but they also charge like they do.

It’s always great to walk into a place and be left standing for a few minutes before someone greets you. I took that time to study the menu. Since it was a Sunday afternoon, they were running low on ingredients. However, I found this out after I ordered a sandwich.
I’m efficient, so my next request was «please tell me what you don’t have so I won’t keep ordering and being disappointed.» They were out of a lot of stuff. Bummer.
However, they did go out of their way to help me decide on something. They also had the ingredients for their Garden sandwich. As a favor since they were out of many things, they added avocado for free.
That made up a little bit for the attitude. However, not completely. I guess either because of my initial order or something else, they just assumed that vegetarian sandwiches weren’t an option for me. That’s funny because I used to be a vegetarian. I think it might be some time to rock India Arie’s «I Am Not My Hair» because I was feeling some assumptions being foisted on me. That always sucks, especially when it’s from the general direction of «enlightened» hipsters.
The sandwich was okay. I have to say with the other choices of food in my neighborhood that this place won’t be my first choice. Attitude does a lot to damage a new customer’s impression.

I enjoy a great deal of the sandwiches at Papa Lima — the chipotle flavor of the El Tiante is my favorite — completely delicious with a Dr. Brown’s Soda to wash it down. The Artie Bucco is also pretty good lunch fare.
I won’t give it 5 stars because there’s never any soup. They advertise soup, there’s a place on the chalkboard for Soup of The Day, but they never have it! I always go in, hopeful that there may be a little chicken soup or chilli to accompany my sandwich, alas, there is Never soup. Ever.

I totally agree with Jake M. This place is great. It may seem costly for a sandwich, but one would get a 4 dollar premade, soggy sandwich, or a fresh made one for a couple dollars more. Every time I went there, the guys working were always very nice, took their time and made a beautiful sandwich.
My fav sandwich is The Charlie Brown– They ran out of wheat bread, I got a 12 inch baguette, no extra charge (I would have rather had a baguette anyway) they made the bacon to order, sliced a fresh tomato, and as I watched the guy prepare my sandwich, I noticed he took the time to evenly distribute each ingredient perfectly.
Solid food, solid service, and conveniently located ½ a block from my apartment! :D

Ok. Bottom line the sandwiches are pretty good. Cannot deny that. I wouldn’t go back if it was sub par. But some words of advice to the owners/​sandwich makers.
1. SMILE. Please! It’s contagious.
2. Perhaps some friendly conversation. I understand it’ll take like 10 minutes for you to make my sandwich, but a simple hey, how are ya, how’s the day going (and smile) won’t make it seem so bad.
3. If I’m gonna wait and no one is going to smile or say hello or pretend they are happy to have me in there ordering a sandwich and supporting their business, then maybe have something there to do besides sit around, stare at the ceiling and wait. Magazine rack? New York times? I know we all have Iphones these days to entertain us but I already feel lifelined to the thing already, so a break from it would be welcome.
4. Why? When the place has capacity for about 20 or so people, why do you look overwhelmed and over the day when there are 5 customers and 2 of them are already eating. Relax! Remember note #1. Well looking stressed out is also contagious. So quit it!
5. Efficiency. Yes there is some TLC that goes into these sandwiches but is it good business for EACH one to take at least 5 minutes to make? It’s a sandwich, not the Pythagorean Thereom, which actually prob takes less time to solve in this case.
6. Maybe u should make it more of a sit down place if prep time is going to continue this way so at least the customer can EXPECT to wait a bit. But if you’re going to continue w the sandwich shop model, I suggest u pick up a jar of picante sauce and ‘Pick Up the PACE’. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself)
All in all Papa Lima, I really do like you and want to Love you. Please take my notes as constructive criticism, not mindless whining and bitching. I’ve been to your establishment two times now and I’m just hoping (HOPING) the third time is a charm.

I live very close to Papa Lima so I’ve been here several times. I’ve always found the service to be really friendly and generally pretty quick. I like to call my order in and by the time I’ve made the 10 minute trip there my sandwich is ready to go.
My favorite sandwich there is the «Spot’s Revenge», which has pulled chicken, pickled celery, & bleu cheese. It’s like a chicken wing flavored sandwich and hot damn, is it delicious.
I like the Bingo as well, which is Papa Lima’s interpretation of a Vietnamese Banh Mi — it has pulled pork, shredded carrots, and a spicy Asian style mayo.
I’ve tried the macaroni salad, which is very good, but I advise avoiding the wet slaw — it’s terrible. The slaw is overly pungent and the cabbage is roughly cut and slightly wilted. It does not look appealing at all and the taste is not much better.
Last time I called for delivery, I was told that they stopped delivering at 5pm. I’m not sure if it was that particular day or something they do in general, but I thought that was pretty peculiar — I mean who doesn’t deliver after 5?
I love that they are BYOB — I’ve stopped in here before with some beers from the bodega across the street, which go perfectly with Spot’s Revenge.
I realize that all the food is locally sourced & high-​quality & retail rent in Williamsburg is high, but $ 9 for a sandwich is a bit pricey.
Overall, I find that this café has a few significant flaws but the sandwiches are really good and it’s BYOB so I’ll definitely be a (somewhat) regular here.

After walking by Papa Lima approximately a zillion times, I finally went in today. I had a «Spot’s Revenge:» pulled buffalo chicken, pickled celery slaw, blue cheese crumbles, and shredded iceburg on a baguette.
It was really, really good. Served warm, it was sloppy and spicy and very tasty. I do really hate paying $ 9.00 for a sandwich, but I guess that’s something I’ll have to accept.
I’m eager to go back and try the sandwich that has both cheese AND cream cheese on it. Mmm. I like my heart attacks on a roll.

I went to Papa Lima right after it opened, and I was really impressed with it. The ingredients seemed to be impeccably chosen, and it had a nice simple vibe to it. I chatted up the owner, who was manning the counter at the time, and he seemed nervous and earnest in a way that was refreshing for the neighborhood.
I’ve only gone back one other time, this past week, and I still found that I liked the place a lot. The service was not douchey, like everyone claims, and I got my sandwich in about 5 minutes.
I also had their 3 bean salad, and loved it.
For all of you who reviewed the place based on the ‘cold-​stares’ and bearded employees, I ask: projecting much?
They make awesome clever sandwiches that aren’t overpriced for what they are and I hope they get franchised so you all have to see them everywhere.

Admittedly, I just moved to Brooklyn recently, but I’ve only had good experiences at Papa Lima since I started going in July. The employees are nice, and I get a sandwich that is both good and consistent. I have never been ignored by the staff, and after they take my order they make it in a reasonable amount of time, usually right away.
I really like this place. And the Pablo Honey is glorious.

The south end of Bedford Avenue is strewn with corner stores, bodegas and delis which sell the ubiquitous Boar’s Heads meats and cheeses, but finer charcuterie, pickles and condiments do not really appear on menus until that well-​trafficked street runs into Broadway.
Papa Lima breaks with tradition and offers a lone outpost of curiously named sandwiches whose ingredients run the gamut from delicacy to comfort food: truffle butter and Russian dressing compete for space in «The Pablo Honey» and «The Tony Almeda.» The success is varied, but the attempt is earnest. Boys with collegiate idleness and Brooklyn visages slice mortadella and turkey behind a slick wooden bar where finds like jambon de bayonne and sweet & hot sopressatta are stacked carefully in a modest refrigerator. Platt has gone out of his way to find produce in green markets and he buys his bread from the Tom Cat Bakery, but he has failed to train his workforce with the same assiduousness.
It is a joy, after all, to peak over the counter and watch the kaleidoscope of meats and cheeses be sliced, handled and folded into meals – it reminds me of lazy Saturday afternoons with my father after a baseball game; however, as an adult, that vantage point reveals your sandwich-maker’s indifference to timeliness, craft and, even, hygiene (I am not a prude, but I want more than a nod to cosmetic cleanliness). At first, I chalked up these shortcomings to newness, but the last two visits have revealed no real change in the pace of life at Papa Lima. I have noticed the beards grow as winter lumbers behind the brisk stride of autumn, but my sandwich invariable requires more time than any sandwich should.
But they are congenial. On my second visit, I was given a free «The Jones Road» sandwich (mortadella, sopressatta, ham by Schaller & Webber, pimento, provolone and a tomato/​olive oil vinaigrette). At twelve inches it provided me with two meals, and the meats were excellent, though the sweet sopressatta tyrannized all other ingredients. The potato and beet salad featured almost none of my favorite root vegetables and was bland except a few poorly sliced wedges of apple. Likewise, «Pete’s Secret Egg Salad» seemed easily stripped of its secrecy and was unremarkable though lox salvaged it as a brunch item.
«The Hunter & The Hunted» remains my favorite sandwich at Papa Lima and speaks to this establishment’s strengths. Jambon de bayonne, black truffle butter and Swiss cheese are heated on a baguette and delivery the regal richness of truffle, some savory saltiness from a finer ham and the peculiar pungency of Swiss. With a Cel-​Ray (celery flavored soda) and a «salted oat» cookie shipped from Cape Cod (and as tasty as any cookie I have nibbled on) the afternoon seems cozier. I take my sandwiches home, around the corner, and usually finish them with a nap or an Oslo coffee.
This sandwich shop has the undeniable potential to be a good, but pricey, find in an increasingly improving food scene.

Give it another shot, folks. Service has gotten way better here.
And the food is delicious.
I was in & out in a flash with a beauty of an Evil Reuben and a Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry tucked under my arm.
Bravo Zulu, Papa Lima!

Papa Lima, Home of the 35-​minute egg sandwich!
Holy crap, I thought I was on a hidden camera TV show where they try to get you to blow your top by pretending to be maddeningly incompetent!
While I waited for my sandwich, I got to overhear one employee joke to another about how un-​fresh some of the ingredients were! Classy! Then the owner came in to find out why no one had called him about a broken boiler.
«Sorry dood, not my responsibility».
«Yes it IS your responsibilty! You work here!»
«No way dood, get a boiler that works, that’s not my job»
And then face-​making and mocking the owner’s accent when he left. Verrry classy.
When the kid went to place my egg sandwich-​for which I’d already waited 30 minutes-​into the grill, I think I actually literally screeched. Please! No! Just give it to me like that! I can’t take it anymore.
So maybe it would have been a good sandwich, and maybe I would have won a cash prize when the hidden cameras jumped out, but it wasn’t worth it to me. Also it was $ 5. For an egg sandwich.
***Dear servers who work in restaurants in Williamsburg: I KNOW you are really an artist and/​or poet and/​or your band is AMAZING and you are about to get signed to Matador and/​or your fashion line is going to be featured in VICE and you are not *REALLY* a waiter/​sandwich-​maker/​barrista, I can tell you are deeply talented, probably a genius, and I’m so sorry about your hangover, but can you please please try a LITTLE bit harder? It *IS* your responsibility, actually.
Up yours Papa Lima.

Hmmm. Apparently no love for Papa Lima.
Now see, for me to give a place one star, it really has to be an ass end of the Earth establishment. Do they run out of ingredients here? The first time I went, they were out of something, yes. Is service slow? Yeah. They take some time to make the goods.
Do I like the sammies? Yeah, I dig them. I think they use quality stuff and it’s tasty, tasty. Sure it’s slow. Is it the end of the world?
Why not just grab one of those crosswords pinned to the wall by the door and enjoy yourself.

Boo, hiss. How hard is it to have a great sandwich shop? Apparently very hard according to the people that run papa lima. I have been waiting and waiting for williamsburg to finally open up a sandwich shop that has promise, and when Papa Lima opened, I though — hooray, but my hopes and dreams were crushed promptly.
After reading a great review of it in NY Mag, I thought I would be in for a great lunch but instead here are my general feelings about it after going twice:
1. The people that work there are nice, but really really inefficient and dumb. The can’t remember what’s on each sandwich and are not good at explaining them.
2. They are out of a lot of items
3. The don’t grill the sandwiches long enough. A grilled sandwich should be toasty warm perfection, all you get here is grilled bread with cold innards.
4. The sandwiches are not that big and totally unsatisfying for what you get.
5. The people who work there are REALLY DUMB AND SLOW. I know I already said that, but I had to say it again.
I’m still waiting, holding my breath for the simple concept of a good sandwich spot to show up in my hood, cause this ain’t it.