If DCist hears one more person talk about how great Breadline is, we’ll scream. We’ll scream a “here’s where Cameron goes berserk” scream. Sure, the lunch spot on the 1700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW turns out what it should turn out: decent and sometimes exceptional bread. But the quality of what’s inside those breads and what’s served alongside them (and, some say, the bread itself) has diminished significantly — especially since the French chain La Brioche Dorée bought out founder and James Beard Award nominee Mark Furstenburg.

And even in Furstenburgian times, getting out of Breadline without spending at least $10 on lunch — which could have been a charred piadine with rubber-tough prosciutto and an iced tea just as easily as it could have been a wondrous sausage sandwich with a cup of killer gazpacho — was damn near impossible. As DCist’s former cooking instructor Chef Stephane might say, the place has always had a poor cost-to-quality ratio. That is, Breadline never had much bang for your buck.

And wandering the urban jungle for alternatives is how DCist came to find the Just Fresh Bakery Café and Market. Just around the corner from Breadline and up 18th Street, the South Carolina-based chain is a relatively recent entrant into the downtown lunch sweepstakes. Like places such as Chipotle, Panera, and Cosi, Just Fresh bills itself as “fast-casual” — which basically means, as Forbes magazine put it, high-end fast food. Its D.C. restaurant is the mini-chain’s very first foray out of the Carolinas, where it sports 10 establishments. And with tasty, creative sandwiches, salads, pizzas, and sides at prices way below Breadline’s, Chef Stephane would agree that Just Fresh simply has an excellent cost-to-quality ratio.