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.
Katie Weaver (4:53)
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.
Caller (6:53)
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.
Caller (8:52)
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.
Katie Weaver (9:41)
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.
Katie Weaver (10:56)
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.
Katie Weaver (13:29)
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.
Katie Weaver (13:57)
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.
Caller (15:31)
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.
Katie Weaver (16:44)
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.
Caller (17:23)
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,
Katie Weaver (17:57)
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,
Caller (18:46)
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.
