My SF Crush

You know the guy you start finding yourself liking more and more, rather unexpectedly and against your better judgment? The guy who, at first, you liked casually, fraternally but the more you got to know began to feel a giddy affection for?

Well, I found that guy. Only it wasn’t a guy. It was a bakery.

I just spent two weeks apartment-sitting in SF, one block away from Tartine Bakery. I have many friends who have spoken highly of the place, some fanatically so. They showed me their Tartine cookbooks with reverence, touching each glossy photo as if their fingers could lift meringue or powdered sugar into the third dimension. I liked the treats they brought: the cocoa nib or toasted almond Rochers, the gougeres, the lemon bar. I even found the banana cream tartlette to be worthy of, well, hiding and having a sort of proprietary relationship with later. Mostly I enjoyed these pastries with appreciation for the art but I could never quite achieve the quasi-sexual reverie they had. I knew my food type fell mostly in the category of large, meaty and, preferably porcine.

Because of all the hype, I decided I had best make a trip to the bakery itself. After all, I needed coffee and it was a short walk. A half a block away it hit me. A wonderfully familiar yet also idealized smell. Not just the yeasty-sugary smell that wafts out of every bakery. This was different. It transported me back to a childhood place where baked goods smelled REAL. Too many bakeries these days smell overly redolent of sugar such that the air takes on a kind of sourness. I could smell yeast (but not like when I used to ride the RTD in LA past the Anheuser-Busch brewery—now that’s yeasty and a whole other story…) and sugar and almonds and vanilla and a hint of citrus—all in perfect proportion. I was excited but a little skeptical: could it really be as good as its smells foretold?

I stood in line. A very long line. Internally I harrumphed—what pastry can be worth such a line? A camembert, a vacherin mont d’or, or even exquisite gorgonzola—now those command devotion. I'll admit: everything did LOOK good. I ordered an almond frangipane croissant and, because I was on re-con, I also ordered a piece of quiche. To go back to the guy analogy, it’s like getting to know both his soft, sweet side and his more practical, logical self. If you just like one, it’s maybe good for a dalliance but you need compatibility with both for a relationship. I needed to know if this bakery was going to be worth my time (and serious amounts of cash: $3.75 for a croissant, $4.75 for a piece of quiche) or if we were destined for only an occasional fling. After all, bakeries really aren’t my thing (a.k.a he’s not my type). I actually think I’m a little allergic to yeast. And, besides, if I have to choose fat calories, wouldn’t I rather get them from something that also had a little more nutritional value, like salami?

Ready to dismiss all the hullabaloo and stick steadfastly to my not being one of “those” girls (i.e. those who stereotypically ooh and aah over things chocolate and bread-y), I was poised to be unimpressed. The quiche, however, was a revelation: soft yet sturdy custard that was an excellent foil to the salty ham, all enveloped in a buttery, decidedly unsoggy, brioche dough. The croissant was a big-hearted sandwich of a thing. It was split in half and spread with frangipane-- the frangipane sweet and aromatic but not cloying, the dough buttery yet just a bit brittle. I was more than pleasantly surprised. I was intrigued.

I returned to the bakery just about every day and I learned new things, each more enticing than the next. The dense suppleness of the almond teacake. The complex heartiness of the cake aux olives. The lusciousness of the tres leches cake. The I-have-never-had-a cake-so good-as-this lemon meringue, caramel layer cake. While the slice of that cake may have sealed the deal—-oh, yeah, I was now in serious “like”—-it was something more humble, more quotidian (as it usually is) that cemented this relationship. One Saturday, after 5pm, my son and I walked in. He was the third or fourth person I had brought to the bakery, extolling and enumerating the bakery’s virtues to each of them as if the bakery were a new beau (and face it, it was). We had just bought more than a few pastries when I noticed they had just taken the bread out of the oven. Add a loaf to our tab, please. Back at the apartment, my son set out plates for the pastries while I tore into the still hot loaf of perfectly crusty country bread. I set a small knob of salted butter on top and watched it melt into the airy interior. This was THE BEST bread I had ever had. I have never, ever been so smitten by a baked good. I was positively giddy. Dammit: if you can do a perfect loaf of bread AND a sublime lemon cake, you’re the man,I mean, bakery, for me.

I’m back at home now. No more Tartine just down the street. I think wistfully upon it, not wishing to replace it with another local bakery but just reliving the excitement of a spring fling. But I did learn something. Sometimes right in front of us, or down the street, there is something you can dismiss as not your type. But if you allow yourself to follow your senses, you may find he’s your type after all. Of course, whether you’re his is another matter entirely.