People who like egg salad really like egg salad. Landing squarely in that category, I was intrigued by the egg salad sandwich ($13) on the menu at 56 Social. It’s not something I would typically order at a restaurant, but this one came on house-baked milk bread, a detail that sealed the deal. When the sandwich landed, I noticed that the bread wasn’t toasted and there were zero crunchy add-ins such as celery, relish or capers. To bind the ingredients, the kitchen reaches for Kewpie, an egg yolk-enriched Japanese mayonnaise. The end result is like eating a fluffy egg-flavored cloud, where not even the slight resistance of toasted bread stands in the way.
If this much thought and attention go into a plain-old egg salad sando, what else must be at play.
When it comes to shoes that need filling, few were larger than the former J. Pistone Market, a Shaker Heights staple that fed the neighborhood for 25 years. But partners Jay Leitson and Izzy Schachner not only were up to the task, they are uniquely suited for it. They’ve been feeding the Eastside since 1998, when they opened their first Cafe 56 in Mayfield. That shop was ground-breaking for its ability to make salad appealing thanks to a roster of 56 different iterations…