Loading summary
Transcript110 lines
- [00:00]
Katie Weaver
Honestly, I put off building a website way longer than I should have. Then I tried wix Harmony and it was way easier than I expected. I just described what I wanted and I had an incredible looking website. The best part, I could change anything myself or ask my AI agent for help. I had everything my business needed right there. So if you've been procrastinating, this is your sign. Start building a website for free@wix.com Harmony.
- [00:39]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My next guest set out on a very specific quest to find the best free restaurant bread in America. And she believes she's found it. Katie Weaver is an Atlantic. Sorry. Katie Weaver is an Atlantic staff writer who covered 13,000 miles and surveyed more than 500 people in her search for the best free bread in the country. Her research brought her to chain restaurants, small franchises where the bread is thrown at you across the room, and a $700 meal in Las Vegas. Her journeys and findings are now recorded in the very funny article for the Atlantic, which came out today. And she joins me now to discuss. Hey, Katie. Hi, listeners. Where's the best free bread you've ever had? We're talking about the baskets you get before the meal arrives. Bread can be defined in many ways. Rolls, biscuits, slices. Number is 212433. WNYC 212-433-9692. But it has to be bread that you did not pay for. What was the impetus for this article?
- [01:46]
Katie Weaver
Mental illness, I would say. I have been obsessed with this question for literally years because I, I think it first came to me because I was eating a free bread in a restaurant that I really liked. And I just thought, oh, this might be the best free bread in America. Wow. Am I eating the best free bread right now? And then I thought, what if I'm not? What if there's a bread out there that is even better that I don't know about? And it was one of those questions that it's like, how could anyone ever know the answer to this? And so I just kind of, it would just bother me. I would sit with it and think, what is it? What is it? Am I ever going to have it? And when I started my job at the Atlantic, actually my very first meeting with the eic, he asked what I wanted to write about and I blurted out this question. He was like, okay, go do it.
- [02:29]
Alison Stewart
Wow. Well, you spoke to bread experts along the way, I believe one was William Rubell.
- [02:34]
Katie Weaver
Yes.
- [02:36]
Alison Stewart
How were experts you consulted in this article helpful or Maybe unhelpful to the mission.
- [02:41]
Katie Weaver
Ooh. Well, you know what? I realized as I was trying to track down people to talk to, that it's very hard to find people who are. You can find, of course, bakers and people who know a lot about bread and people who make a lot of bread. But in terms of thinking of bread as kind of a historic cultural thing spanning all of human history, and also specifically people who know about free restaurant bread, there are not many of those. Even the bread experts I talked to were like, that's not like a subfield of bread that we care about, know about. So I felt like, I, God love these people. They were very helpful in the sense that they, you know, they could tell me a lot about the history, and they could tell me what to, you know, what is a technically good bread? Like, what if you're making this kind of bread, it should have holes that are this big? Or if it has no holes, it means it's this kind of bread. Now, I absolutely have forgotten most of the things they told me. They're in the article. But in terms of, you know, they were also actually were, I found, quite reluctant to name a best free restaurant bread. I think maybe they were too close to it. It's like, you know, asking them to pick a favorite child. Yeah, it was interesting.
- [03:50]
Alison Stewart
One expert said, I think you need to think about your favorite. Vers is the best.
- [03:56]
Katie Weaver
Yes. Yes. What did you think of that advice? Well, he was absolutely right that I was using them interchangeably. But I do think that if you ask enough people their favorite of something, you could kind of reasonably assume that has to be at least one of the best. Probably everyone's favorite. Can't be the worst, at least.
- [04:15]
Alison Stewart
I'm speaking to Atlantic staff writer Katie Weaver about her article. I found it the best free restaurant bread in America. We're taking your calls. What is the best free restaurant bread you've ever had? We're talking about what you get before the meal arrives. Bread can be defined in many ways. Rolls, biscuits, slices, whatever you would call bread. But it has to be free.
- [04:37]
Katie Weaver
Yes.
- [04:37]
Alison Stewart
You can't pay for it. Our phone number is 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. You surveyed 555 people. What contact? How did you find 555 people to talk to about bread?
- [04:54]
Katie Weaver
Completely psychotically, I would say there was, you know, this was scientifically rigorous structuring of this survey. I started by just asking every single person I knew and badgering them to Tell me. And then I would just ask people I encountered. If I was in an elevator with you. I was gonna ask you. If I was waiting for a table at a restaurant and you were also there. I was gonna ask you. And I should say, I got 555 usable answers. I got a lot of junk answers from people that I couldn't use because they would tell me a bread that they loved, that they had paid for. That's not what I asked. They would tell me bread that they love from a bakery. That's not what I'm talking about. So I got about 550. I got exactly 555 that I could use.
- [05:37]
Alison Stewart
Oh, yeah, no, go ahead.
- [05:38]
Katie Weaver
And I was gonna say the other thing we did that was very helpful was the Atlantic. I put links in a couple newsletters and tweeted it out so I could reach people who I was not just happening to encounter in Santa Fe, where I live, or who I had already met. That was helpful to hear from some other people.
- [05:53]
Alison Stewart
One of the funniest pieces of the article is when you reached out to celebrities to ask what their favorite bread was.
- [06:00]
Katie Weaver
My enemies.
- [06:02]
Alison Stewart
They're your enemies. Tell us why they're your enemies.
- [06:05]
Katie Weaver
These people do not want to tell you what their favorite bread is. I don't know why they are guarding this information so closely. And here's the thing. They could have straight up lied to me. They could have said anything. I wouldn't know if it's the truth as written in their hearts. Their publicists just did not want to pass this question along. I got exactly one celebrity to reply to me. He's the only good celebrity in the United States of America. And his name is Mr. Stephen King. And his name is. Correct. He is a king for telling me his favorite free restaurant, bread, which is in Florida.
- [06:35]
Alison Stewart
Well, it was also just funny because they're like, it's not really the right time. Like, when is the good time to talk about bread?
- [06:41]
Katie Weaver
They're too busy. How busy are you that you can't answer this question? It doesn't take that long. Say anything. Say anything.
- [06:48]
Alison Stewart
Let's talk to Dan in Astoria. Hey, Dan, thanks for calling, all of it. You're on the air.
- [06:53]
Caller
Hey there. So I had two places that I wanted to remind us of, one of which might still be doing it. The other one seems to no longer be around. New York for the best free bread. First, kosi. In the old days, the kosi chains in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. other cities had some of the breath, the best savory bread up front that I'd ever had. Really good stuff, very special. But the other place that. The other place that I think we don't get a lot in New York, but that has had the best bread consistently whenever we've gone there. Texas Roadhouse dinner rolls in a honey cinnamon butter flavor. It was incredible. It used to. When I used to there, they used to have sawdust on the floor all the time. And that was always a thing you could always rely on with Texas Roadhouse was sawdust on the floor and the honey cinnamon butter rolls. But I haven't been to a Texas roadhouse since moving back to New York, so I'm not sure about that. But those are always my two favorite free breads.
- [07:53]
Alison Stewart
I appreciate your enthusiasm for this topic, Dan. Thank you for calling in.
- [07:58]
Katie Weaver
I will say Texas Roadhouse. People are very enthusiastic. That is a very common response.
- [08:04]
Alison Stewart
This says, best free bread ever is at the American Bounty restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America. Let's talk to Jennifer in Montclair. Hey, Jennifer, thanks for calling, all of it.
- [08:16]
Caller
Hi, how are you doing?
- [08:18]
Alison Stewart
Great.
- [08:20]
Caller
So, yeah, just about three nights ago, I was having dinner and the free bread came to the table and we ate it. And I thought to myself, this is the best free bread I've ever had. And this was at Giotto in Montclair. It's a little trattoria on Church street in Montclair. The bread was amazing.
- [08:40]
Alison Stewart
Thank you so much. Let's talk to Frank in East Islip. Hi, East Islip. Sorry. Hi, Frank. How you doing?
- [08:47]
Caller
Hi, it's East Islip.
- [08:48]
Alison Stewart
Thank you. I was trying to get it out. I'm sorry. I was having the brain thing happening there.
- [08:53]
Caller
No, one of the. This is a great topic, by the way. There's a place in Great river, one town over from East Islip, and they give you these poppers. They're giant poppers about five or six inches in diameter. They look almost like muffins, but they're very hollow on the inside. And they're baked on the outside with some type of a glazing. And they give you honey mustard. Not honey mustard, honey. Just honey butter. And it's absolutely delicious. Before, during, after dinner. I mean, they give them to you for nothing. It's a very expensive steakhouse. But nonetheless, this is a great. Now one of their competitors down the street, tellers, they don't even give you free bread anymore. They give you a table charge. And I refuse to go there.
- [09:36]
Katie Weaver
Good.
- [09:38]
Alison Stewart
Katie, what did you learn about restaurants while researching bread?
- [09:41]
Katie Weaver
Well, I have to say first from Long Island. I have family on Long Island. They are some of the best people to ask this question to. They know their free bread. I bet that that bread that was just mentioned is fantastic. What did I learn about restaurants? Well, one thing I learned was that they really, ideally, from the restaurant's perspective, the bread should be carefully timed. I had never really thought about this. You know, I go, they bring the bread. When they bring it, I want them to bring it as fast as possible, but it kind of arise when it does. I spoke to a chef for the story, and he was explaining to me that really, from the restaurant's perspective, they want you to get the bread after you have ordered, not before, because they want you ordering from a place of maximum hungriness. So if you sit down and get that bread right away, all of a sudden, maybe you don't need a starter. Maybe you can just skip to the main. So ideally, you're absolutely famished, order the whole menu, and then they say, oh, do you want some bread? But they're tricking you because they've made you wait until you've already decided what food you want.
- [10:37]
Alison Stewart
Back in the day, though, people wanted you to eat bread in taverns. What was the story behind that?
- [10:42]
Katie Weaver
Okay, so it's, you know, trying to find the history of where did free bread come from was very, very hard to do. It's not something that it appears there's much scholarship on. But restaurants have only been around in the United States. I think I have this date.
- [10:56]
Caller
Right.
- [10:56]
Katie Weaver
It's definitely right in the story, if you read it, because that's been fact checked. This is just off the top of my head. I believe the first restaurant opened in the US here in New York in the 1830s. So pretty new. And by restaurant, I mean, you know, a place where you order a la carte off a menu, pay for specific items. Before that, it was a little bit more of, you know, you could always make food at home if you can cook, which I can't. So that would have never been an option for me at any point in history. But besides cooking at home, you could also go to a tavern or an inn, and when you were there, you were just gonna get whatever they were serving. It was a, you know, a flat charge. Everyone's getting it. If you want the food, you're getting what we've made, and here's how much it costs. And those meals would include bread, and it would behoove them to have you eat a lot of bread, because then if you're filling up on bread, which is fairly cheap. You're not going to want a huge portion of meat. You've eaten a lot of bread.
- [11:49]
Alison Stewart
Let's talk to Megan in Murray Hill. Hey, Megan, thanks for calling all of it. What's the breast free restaurant bread you've ever had?
- [11:59]
Caller
Scarpetta on 29th and Madison. Their bread comes warm directly from the kitchen. And it's three different types. One's like a regular bread, one's a focaccia, and then the best one is this salami and mozzarella stuffed bread. Yeah. And it comes with butter and tomato sauce and I think olive oil, if memory serves. But it's free, it's hot. It's the meal in and of itself.
- [12:23]
Alison Stewart
Ooh. Thanks for calling in.
- [12:24]
Katie Weaver
I'm gonna go there right now.
- [12:25]
Alison Stewart
Are you okay with the mixed bread basket?
- [12:27]
Katie Weaver
Absolutely.
- [12:29]
Alison Stewart
How do you feel about the people who come by to give you one at a time? The waiter?
- [12:32]
Katie Weaver
As long as they don't mind coming back to give you one at a time a lot, I'm totally fine. If that's how they wanna spend their time, go right ahead. But they'll be making repeat trips.
- [12:42]
Alison Stewart
This says RMP Ratner's on Delancey Street. We would go as a family when I was little, and the first thing my mother did was empty the basket of rolls into her purse and then have the chutzpah to ask for another.
- [12:56]
Katie Weaver
I love that. You know what? You should be testing the generosity.
- [12:59]
Alison Stewart
This says the free bread at Blue Hill at Stone Barns was the best I've tasted. But given their prices, was it really free?
- [13:07]
Katie Weaver
The answer is no. That cost is kind of invisibly distributed across all the other menu items, but it feels free.
- [13:13]
Alison Stewart
And this one says seashore restaurant on City Island. They give you beautiful bread and breadsticks. Love it. Do breadsticks count?
- [13:21]
Katie Weaver
Absolutely. I'm letting people define bread however they want.
- [13:24]
Alison Stewart
How much is the right amount of free bread at a meal, though, in 2026?
- [13:29]
Katie Weaver
I mean, there are places, you know, like Red Lobster. The free bread they give there, I think is the best thing on the menu. I go to Red Lobster. Red Lobster, to me, is a cheddar bay biscuits restaurant. And then I have to pay for other items while I'm there to get the biscuits. But I'm going for the bread. So, you know, I think the bread, if the bread is what you want, no amount of it is too much.
- [13:49]
Alison Stewart
Yes. You write about the chain restaurant popularity paradox. What is this paradox? Since you mentioned Red Lobster.
- [13:57]
Katie Weaver
So as I was collecting Data for my. For my survey, I expected and this bore out that chain restaurants would probably get the most votes because a restaurant that has, you know, 900 locations, people are going to be more likely to have been there no matter where they're from in the country than a place that only has one location. So I had to figure out an equation to kind of account for that and not necessarily penalize a restaurant because it wasn't a chain. So the place that I ultimately name as having the best free bread only has. It's technically two restaurants owned by the same person in two different cities, and they serve the exact same bread. And they were disproportionately nominated. So they were kind of up there with the big dogs, with the chains, but they were not a chain. And enough people still name them to make it into the top 10.
- [14:43]
Alison Stewart
Well, let's see what it is.
- [14:45]
Katie Weaver
Should I say what it is or
- [14:46]
Alison Stewart
should people read the article?
- [14:47]
Katie Weaver
Oh, okay.
- [14:48]
Alison Stewart
You think about that while I take more calls. Let's talk to Erin on line five from Kearney, New Jersey. Hi, Erin, thanks for calling. All of it. You're on the air.
- [14:57]
Caller
Hello. Thank you so much for taking my call. And my suggestion is in Newark, New Jersey. It's called Solmar. It's a Portuguese restaurant in the ironbound neighborhood. And I think they serve the best dinner rolls. It's a little bit crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside. And I go to Sol Fantastic Seafood, but I go there specifically for their bread. So I suggest going to Sylmar.
- [15:25]
Alison Stewart
Thank you so much for calling. Let's talk to Michelle in South Orange. Hey, Michelle, thank you for making the time to call. All of it.
- [15:32]
Caller
Ah, thanks for answering my call. So this is something that doesn't exist anymore, which makes me very sad. But they have the best sourdough bread. Big giant hunkin slices served with salty butter was McCormick and Schmick's, the seafood restaurant that was in Manhattan and in New Jersey, where I used to live in another area. And I would just be so excited when my husband and my ex husband would say, let's go there, because I knew I was gonna get that sourdough bread. And it just was thick and crusty on the outsides of the holes and just, ah, I can taste it now.
- [16:07]
Katie Weaver
I could taste it too. And I never even had it. It sounds so good.
- [16:10]
Alison Stewart
We're talking to Katie Weaver about her article in the Atlantic. It's called I Found it the Best Free Restaurant bread in America. I'm not gonna tell people what it is. They'll have to read your article.
- [16:21]
Katie Weaver
I will say I deliver on that promise. I say I'm gonna tell you what it is. I tell you what it is.
- [16:26]
Alison Stewart
Let me ask you about a presentation, though.
- [16:27]
Katie Weaver
Okay.
- [16:28]
Alison Stewart
In Lambert's Cafe, they lob bread across the room to diners. First of all, where is that restaurant?
- [16:35]
Katie Weaver
There are three locations. There are two in Missouri, and I went to one in Foley, Alabama.
- [16:41]
Alison Stewart
And why did they lob bread products at me?
- [16:45]
Katie Weaver
I guess because it's fun. I will say these breads, when they come flying, you discover, are surprisingly hot, are shockingly hot. But luckily their aim is very good. They've been doing it this way for years. So they do. They have an eye for, you know, how good are you going to be at catching this? Should they throw it kind of gently underhand? What are they doing? That's just how they do it. So there's, you know, bread flying around the room, like, arcing through the air like beautiful shooting stars of bread. Did I love the rest of the food? It was okay. Would I go back? Yes.
- [17:18]
Caller
Yes.
- [17:18]
Alison Stewart
Let's talk to Judy calling in from Brooklyn. Hey, Judy, what do you have to say?
- [17:24]
Caller
Thanks. Brooklyn now has a lot of Turkish restaurants, and the Turkish bread is wonderful. The best one, the restaurant closed though Coney Island Avenue, Sahara. But second best is opera on Emmons Avenue. And she said, bay. And they do fill up the bread basket. If you finish it while you're eating,
- [17:51]
Alison Stewart
that's important that they fill the bread basket.
- [17:54]
Katie Weaver
Absolutely agreed.
- [17:55]
Alison Stewart
What did you learn about Americans while you were doing this?
- [17:58]
Katie Weaver
Ooh, I learned that they love free restaurant bread. They absolutely want bread that they have not paid for, and they want that bread to be warm. That is very important. Honestly, if you have a restaurant and you're giving out bread, if you could just figure out a way to heat up that bread a little bit, people will be so happy. Because I noticed that as I was getting all these answers, there were a few words that people used over and over again to describe their favorites and temperature. Warmth was something that came up a lot. And I talked to a food scientist about why that is, and she had a scientific explanation for it. It actually literally does taste more flavorful and good to us if it is warm because it's releasing scent molecules. I think it's in the article again,
- [18:35]
Alison Stewart
that part's fact checked.
- [18:37]
Katie Weaver
But yeah, so I learned that people want free, warm things.
- [18:40]
Alison Stewart
Our final call is Patty calling from Wilson, Connecticut. Patty, what do you say? What's the best bread?
- [18:47]
Caller
Bertucci. Those roles are just so awesome. We miss them a lot because there was one that was pretty close to us. My kids, when they were younger, used to beg just to go there for the rolls, and they would be so filled up. So I understand the point. I can't rate the wait to read this article. It's just like. I mean, it's my favorite thing, the free bread.
- [19:14]
Katie Weaver
Oh, I love hearing that.
- [19:15]
Alison Stewart
Thank you so much for calling in. Finally, Katie, do you feel that your findings are final, or is there room for the best bread challenge to change in the future?
- [19:26]
Katie Weaver
You know what? I am pretty confident that I have nailed this. I think I got it. I'm pretty sure I found it. I could be wrong. You know what? If I find out that I'm wrong, I will campaign to issue a retraction. But I'm pretty sure I nailed it. I gotta say, I asked a lot of people.
- [19:42]
Alison Stewart
You're gonna have to read about it in the Atlantic. It's by Katie Weaver. She wrote the article. I found it. The best free restaurant bread in America. Congratulations on finding the best free bread.
- [19:55]
Katie Weaver
Thank you. My life's work.
- [19:57]
Alison Stewart
And that is all of it for today. Coming up tomorrow, we'll talk about New York City's best dive bars. Call in and shout out your favor. Plus, the creators of the East Village Cookbook will join us in studio. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening. And I appreciate you. I'll meet you back here next time. My new website's been getting a lot
- [20:19]
Katie Weaver
of attention lately, and here's my secret.
- [20:22]
Alison Stewart
I used WIX Harmony. It's one of my favorite tools because
- [20:25]
Katie Weaver
it feels like such a natural way to create.
- [20:28]
Alison Stewart
And I have so much control over my website. I can just tell Aria, my AI
- [20:33]
Katie Weaver
agent, to create whatever I'm imagining in my head. Or I can click anywhere on my
- [20:37]
Alison Stewart
site and change things myself.
- [20:39]
Katie Weaver
Try it for free@wix.com Harmony that's wix.com Harmony.
- [20:48]
Alison Stewart
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [20:58]
Caller
Hey, everyone.
- [20:58]
Katie Weaver
Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
- [21:01]
Alison Stewart
Oh, no.
- [21:02]
Caller
We help people customize and save on
- [21:04]
Alison Stewart
car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.
- [21:05]
Katie Weaver
We're married.
- [21:06]
Alison Stewart
Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [21:08]
Caller
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [21:10]
Katie Weaver
Anyways, only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty.
- [21:14]
Alison Stewart
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.