When I worked in the city, I had lunch at Specialty's (the Montgomery Station location) several times a month.
The sandwiches are creative (I had my first turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce here, and I still love their Vegan sandwich), the salads fresh, and really, is it necessary to say anything about a cookie hot from their oven?
Well, I'd been doing without for nearly a year when C, who works a mile from me, called me from lunch one day.
"Where are you?"
"At Specialty's."
"You drove all the way to the city for a sandwich?"
"No, there's one in South San Francisco. In the Actuate building in that weird business park... um, didn't you know?"
You can imagine the tantrum that ensued, dear reader. Here I'd been eating sub-par sandwiches (well, the Happy Hoagie makes a fine sandwich, they're just pretty basic), mediocre, wilting salads and nary a delicious fresh-baked cooking in sight! All while there was a Specialty's a mere 3 miles away!!
Fortunately, I've since discovered Specialty's Direct, whence one can place an order (complete with full customization functionality -- eg, "no anchovy on my small caesar salad, please but extra chicken and pack it in the large container"), add on a cookie, pay with a credit card and specify a pick up window.
As I sit here finishing off the last of my dense, chewy, nearly brownie-like black and white cookie (now, don't you purists go getting excited. It's not a real b&w -- it's more a dark chocolate cookie with white chocolate chunks), I can't help but be thankful that the fine folks at Specialty's decided that enough corporate drones had moved south to warrant a secret little outpost of our own in lovely South San Francisco.