I asked this to Mathworks and their answer was helpful:
opts = detectImportOptions('file1.csv','NumHeaderLines',0,'Delimiter',',') %will almost work for this case, but it detects the first line as a "meta-data" line because it is all string/blank
opts.DataLines = [2,inf] %will work around that issue
T2 = readtable('file1.csv',opts);
With this code, I can read both rows and remove double quotation marks nicely.
According to Mathworks:
> The solution shared, is very specific to your workflow and is an undocumented method which might change without notice.