After 16 years behind the deli counter at Falletti Foods, Ornella Bouchard throws together a sandwich without a wasted motion. A ciabatta roll splits open with a few easy strokes of a bread knife, and her gloved hands get to work piling on meats: turkey, ham, pastrami and prosciutto, each layer disappearing beneath the next. After just two minutes, she puts the halves together, wraps the whole thing in plastic wrap and affixes a price sticker.
“Poor boy sandwich,” the sticker reads. It’s $5.50. When unwrapped and sliced in half, the cross section reveals a layered stack of beiges, pinks and reds, like the striped walls of the Grand Canyon.
This grab-and-go sandwich, hefty enough to feed a large man or a small horse, is one of the most popular items at Falletti Foods, a family-owned grocer in the Panhandle on the corner of Broderick and Oak streets. The poor boy is a simple stack of meat and swiss cheese on a roll smeared with mayo and mustard. In price, it’s one of San Francisco’s most economical full meals, going toe to toe with a banh mi from the Tenderloin. Bouchard said she sees one woman buy four poor boy sandwiches a day, seven days a week…