The Spot: Day by Day (by day by day...)

We always hear about the shiny, new restaurants. This is one in a series about the Philadelphia area's more established dining establishments.

How does a 33-year-old restaurant manage to serve a brunch so popular it inspires half-hour waits and lines out the door? Day by Day owner Robin Barg doesn't know, but she's not complaining.

Not much has changed inside the 21st and Sansom corner storefront since Barg first opened there in 1981 — and that's mostly because she was ahead of her time.

A daytime-only eatery serving creative sandwiches on local bread, fresh, hearty salads and house-baked pastries off a menu that changes daily? Reads like a template for cafes of today, but Day by Day was an out-of-place concept in the saccharine, neon-lit opulence of the 1980s (especially since its surrounding area was as-yet untouched by the swank of nearby Rittenhouse Square). But Barg made it work, eventually expanding into catering and launching weekend brunch while maintaining a perpetual five-day-a-week lunch schedule.

I visited on a weekday afternoon a bit after lunch was over, just as the daytime staff was leaving and the night crew arrived — thanks to all the catering, the kitchen hums from 7 a.m. in the morning through 10 p.m. at night — and sat down with the Mount Airy native to find out the secret to her restaurant's longevity.

What led you to open a restaurant?

I graduated with a political science degree from Temple and went to grad school for counselling before I decided I really wanted to do this, and switched to the Restaurant School. Even at school, I never wanted to run a dinner restaurant, never wanted a liquor license. I'm not a late person. So I came up with the idea to do a place that served lunch, with take-home food for dinner. "Lunch at my place, dinner at yours," was the concept.

In those days, no one would rent to women — there were very few women in the restaurant business in general — so I had a hard time finding a spot. The storefront at 21st and Sansom was this deli that changed hands every six months, and the current owner wanted to get rid of it. I was convinced him to sell it to me, and after that I was able to convince the landlord to give me a lease. $700 or $800 a month, it was. Took over the space in November 1980, closed it, renovated it and reopened as Day by Day the next February.

Were you successful right away?

Lunch was very busy from the start. There were no restaurants like us around here, no Village Whiskey, nothing like that. It was empty buildings and not much else. There was a greasy spoon down the block and one of the waiters actually left to start working for me. Neighborhood people started coming in regularly, and business people too.

We changed our menu all the time. My thought was, if you cook seasonally, you’re getting better quality ingredients, so everything you make is going to be better. Now that’s trendy — everyone does it! — but it was kind of radical back then. So customers were excited to find out what we were serving on any given day, and would return often.

That's true to this day. I really try to keep my price point affordable, so people can eat here all the time if they want. We have several customers who come in every day — we even name seats after them.

Have you notice a shift in customers' tastes over three decades?

A bit. People nowadays like spicier things, more exotic flavors. We use honey-chipotle dressing on our chicken toss, for example, and have a really popular Thai wrap with sesame peanut sauce. We added our first burger around three years ago, and it's really fantastic, on a Le Bus brioche roll. (I get my bread from something like six different vendors: baguettes and black bread from Metropolitan, seeded Italian rolls from Abruzzi, challah from Kaplan's.)

We also switched around our coffee, from Ellis to La Colombe. That was mostly because of a server who worked here. His father was a real coffee snob, and he was horrified at the thought that his dad would come in and drink what we had been serving. Now I absolutely love La Colombe, although I still use Ellis for tea. People have always adored our iced tea.

A lot of things have stayed the same. Whenever we put egg salad sandwiches on, they sell out. People have been eating our tuna melt for 30 years. And our quiches. And our omelets. And our turkey-havarti croissant sandwiches — that was something my mother came up with in our first year. It was  just about the only thing I ate when I was pregnant with my first child.

How did you balance having kids with running your own business?

When I started Day by Day, my thought was, I would just be here at the restaurant for lunch, and be a mom the rest of the time, since I lived just down the block. That's a great idea, but you can't live on it — catering has been a huge part of the business since the beginning, and it takes up a lot of time.

I was able to have children and also keep the business going (and growing) because of my fantastic staff. My chef, Danny Tursi, has been with me for 30 years. Jackie, who runs the front register, is a 28-year employee — she's the heart and soul of the restaurant. Bernard West, who does the quiches and soups, is at 26 years. And Stephen Dyke, the catering manager, joined me 13 years ago and has grown our wedding business from around three a year to 25-30 per year.

My oldest son and daughter grew up in the restaurant, and they both love the industry. My daughter Molly is one of our bakers — she is extremely talented. She makes these pastries called "jawns" that are like nothing else I've ever seen, like a cross between a doughnut and a danish.

Then I have another child, who came along the way. When Molly was 16, her teacher in high school asked if she would teach this other kid in her class how to bake, and if I would hire him. He was in the foster program. We did hire him, Sean, and he became part of our family. The way Sean puts it is: "I started as a baker, then I was promoted to prep cook, then I was promoted to son." He's my kid now. He got a scholarship to Columbia and just finished an MFA, but he's a fantastic baker and cook. We depend on his pie crust recipe.

How did your brunch become so popular?

Yelp! They loved us on Yelp. We started it around eight years ago, and it just took off. We're very lucky. It's crazy. We'll do 320 covers on a busy Sunday, while during lunch it's more like 50 or 100. And our kitchen is small — it's just one guy at the six-burner stove. We never do advertising, it's all word of mouth.

Social media is amazing that way. It's a whole different world. I remember 10 years ago when my daughter did this after-dark dessert thing here one summer. She took over the restaurant at night and served incredible desserts...but no one knew. We handed out fliers and things, but it didn't reach enough people, and the area was really slow at night. Today it would have been much easier to get the word out.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Retired? [Laughs.] I don't know how to segue out of this, though, I don't know how to leave. We're working on a few changes, actually. We may grow a bit. Keep an eye out.

Day by Day

2101 Sansom St.; 215-564-5540

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m, Tuesday to Friday; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.