(American) Ode to Toast
According to Food and Restaurant consultants Baum + Whiteman, who have just prepared their report on gastronomic trends for 2015 (advance what we will eat next year), the “kale with avocado” toast It is presented as the great star of the year.
It was in the Trouble Coffee & Coconut Club located in Outer Sunset on the coast of San Francisco, where this phenomenon originated from the hand of Giulietta Carrelli. The owner of the cafe, the daughter of Italian émigrés living in Cleveland, assured John Gravois, the researcher for Pacific Standard magazine that she discovered the source of this madness , that your passion for cinnamon toast generated his search for the artisan toast until he got it. Gravois explained in his report that although he was skeptical at the beginning of his investigation, towards the end he was truly convinced of the cause. “I rolled my eyes at the silliness, the ease, the perfection of San Francisco toast”.
Actually, the Trouble coffee toast is the spearhead of the hipster movement or so the experts say. A simple piece of bread to which they apply culinary techniques (with a torch, in the fireplace over the fire, dehydrated, fried) until they are light, dark or extra dark and thus transform the experience in one bite of authentic golden perfection , like the state of California.
At cafes like Red Door (1608 Bush Street, SF), Acre Coffee (525 Golden Gate Avenue), and The Mill (736 Divisadero Street) toast is the star of the menu . A culinary trend that counts among its defenders with Gwyneth Paltrow . The actress compared in her recipe book It's all Good a toast well made with a good pair of jeans. “It's healthy, indulgent and incredibly easy to make” she explains her.
For David Sax, gastronomic expert at the New York Times , “restoration trends reflect the social moment of each era. Americans became obsessed with cupcakes at the turn of the millennium, discovered fondue in the 1960s because they aspired to be more cosmopolitan, and now the artisan toast represents the fetish obsession we feel for food ”.
From here the obsession is born
Each food is special and important, each dish must be elevated, praised and announced, even if it is something as pedestrian as toast. A fad with many critics as the food writer Bethany Jean Clement that he considers perverse to pay four dollars for a piece of bread and she writes convinced that in San Francisco, the city with the most millionaires per square meter, this fashion has emerged because the new rich who populate it with their bicycles they are unable to cook their own toast.
Follow @mariateam
*** You may also be interested in...**
- Become a hipster in San Francisco in ten steps
- Outer Sunset: the backwater of San Francisco
- 45 hipster destinations: the barbapasta world map
- Global gastronomic trends
- Breakfasts in the world
- San Francisco Guide
Four dollars. And so comfortable.