Columbia City Bakery has plenty of bread winners

City diners already fittingly bow down to the bread gods at Columbia City Bakery, which stocks many restaurants with its glorious bread, especially the popular crusty white loaf.

Happily, the bakery has its own cafe, which serves not just those starchy rounds and loaves but also plenty of pastries, sweets and a few fine sandwiches. It's a small space, with just seven tabletops of varying size.

So far, it seems that Columbia City is a great bread maker and less of a pastry maker, since the sweets, although excellent in variety, sometimes disappoint.

The sandwiches are a worthy meal. One with salami, provolone, olive tapenade and pickled onions on a mini-baguette ($6) was a great taste combination. Another good choice is pastrami with aioli, mustard and sauerkraut, which is nicely balanced and not as sour as it sounds.

Usually there are two meat-based choices and one vegetarian option each day. Look for them in the refrigerator (yes, they're cold), wrapped in plastic. Recent choices included turkey and havarti, tuna salad or goat cheese with tomato jam.

I was less enamored of some of the sweets: a too crispy chocolate chip cookie; a pear tart that lacked much crumble in its crust or enough oomph in its filling, or a pretty profiterole that tasted too strongly of arrowroot in its creamy maple center. Columbia City does make a fetching (and interestingly square) vanilla cupcake topped with a huge, thick, creamy buttercream frosting.

Pastry here is flaky, though not buttery nirvana, and the prices for such artisanal goods are reasonable. Sometimes they hit it out of the park, such as with a recent Danish special with Meyer lemon curd and candied Meyer lemon.

And they're always baking something new.

"Rarely do we have the same things two days in a row," said owner and head baker Evan Andres.

Others swear by the pretzel dog. Really. With the double dose of salt from the pretzel and the hot dog, it was too much for me, but I like the fact that it uses use nitrate-free dogs from Butcher Bob's next door.

And, when you're there, how can you resist taking the best bread in the city home with you?