Top Secret Porto's Tips

I saw in the News-Press today that Porto's is going to open another location in Downey. Today Downey, tomorrow THE WORLD!

Frequently when I mention that I live in Glendale to someone who lives far away, and the first thing out of their mouth is "wow, you must go to Porto's all the time, I love their potato balls!" or some such thing. I don't post about Porto's here very often because this is a site for people who live in Glendale, and posting about Porto's is just too obvious. Everyone loves Porto's, and I'm not going to tell you anything about Porto's that you don't already know. Or can I?

Here are my top secret Porto's tips:

• the plain cheese rolls are the best item in the pastry case (they don't look like much, but they are astonishing)
  
• if you ask nicely and know exactly what you want, in the afternoon you can order an item or two from the big pastry section on the north side via the shorter cafe line on the south side and an employee will run over and grab it for you
  
• when the cafe line is choked at lunch, the coffee line will take your sandwich order
• the side salad with balsamic vinegarette is excellent, and densely packed into a little bowl that expands to fill an entire plate
• if you ask really nicely when Betty or Raul aren't around, you can get a free refill on the already very reasonable and tasty coffee
• best sandwich, Glendale: Pastrami
• best sandwich, Burbank: Italian (better bread than Glendale location)
• best soup: corn chowder (Fridays)
• Burbank serves amazing mini round Italian rolls with their soup, while Glendale serves horrible flavorless cracker things with the soup. They bear a strong resemblance to communion wafers. At the Burbank location, if you ask very nicely and are good at negotiating (I used to sell cars, which helped), you can arrange to buy the special soup rolls by themselves, but they'll only let you buy around 7 of them, and that's if you're lucky
  
• potato balls are great for parties. they keep well and revive nicely after a few minutes in the oven
• when they tell you a cake is "the size of a sheet of typing paper", imagine that sheet of typing paper is 7 inches tall. and made of cake.
  

Anyways, when in doubt, just ask someone nicely. I have nothing but praise for the staff at both locations.

Any other Porto's tips? Leave them in the comments.