To subvert grumpy monarchs, angry medieval youths scrawled condiment graffiti like "Fran Tanner has plague" or "the king is a jerk" inside their sandwiches. Dig beneath lettuce with today's Groupon: for $5 you get $10 worth of fresh bagels, sandwiches, salads, pastries, and more at Breadbox Café in Long Island City.

The Breadbox Café welcomes the community into a modern space with exposed brick, fresh-baked bagels, healthy salads, and friendly people. The menu emphasizes freshness, using locally grown and organic produce when possible, grinding their own meat, and baking bagels fresh from scratch each morning. Smother a dough ring in your choice of cream cheese ($1.95+), or pile on the lox, cream cheese, tomato, and onion ($7.95). Sandwiches, including the vegan veggie with avocado, shitake mushrooms, sprouts, and pepper relish on ciabata ($8.95), and the steak house with chopped short rib on a brioche roll ($11.95), fill the empty hollows in hands and bellies. For a refreshing mouthful, forkdive into a salad, such as the tuna nicoise ($11.95) and farmer's country, a plate piled high with lettuce and organic veggies, spiced walnuts, blue cheese, and apples ($9.50). Breakfast is served all day.

A green-umbrella'd outdoor patio lets diners relax as they sit outside the structure that was originally an Esso mechanic's garage in the 1950s. If you snag a patio seat, shift your peepers to the building's remodeled facade, which displays rolling pins that represent donations made to the New York Foundling.

Reviews

46 Yelpers give Breadbox Café three stars:

• The bagels are by far the best bagels I've ever had and I've had a lot of bagels in my lifetime. – Vicki N.
• Breadbox is one of those perfect places where you can have either breakfast or lunch. Bagels are perfectly golden and toasted, and om nom nom chewy! – Corina L.
• The Breadbox Brownie- one word, two syllables, multiple orgasms. – Senor D.