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- [00:01]
A
This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Square Square, the easy way for business owners to take payments, book appointments, manage staff, and keep everything running in one place. Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, detailing cars, or running a design studio, Square helps you run your business without running yourself into the ground. I like seeing Square in action. At my local coffee shop. They use Square for payments, and it just makes everything feel effortless. Quick checkout, digital receipts, sometimes even loyalty points. It really enhances the experience and lets the team focus on serving great coffee, not fumbling with the register. Square works wherever your customers are. You can manage inventory, track sales, and access reports in real time. With Square, you get all the tools to run your business with none of the contracts or complexity. And why wait? Right now, you can get up to $200 off Square hardware at square.com go engineering. That's sq U-A-R-E.com go engine run your business smarter with Square get started today. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Gusto. Okay, quick question. Have you ever sat down to just check one payroll thing and suddenly it's like two hours later you're buried in forums, googling tax stuff and questioning your life choices? Gusto is here to relieve that problem. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire onboard, and support your team from anywhere. It handles automatic payroll tax filing, does direct deposits, and even helps with benefits like health insurance and 401ks. Basically, all the stuff that you're used to stressing you out just gets handled. It's one simple monthly price with unlimited payroll runs, no weird fees popping up. Plus, if you ever get stuck, you can actually talk to certified HR experts, which is a lifesaver. Try Gusto today at Gusto.com search and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at Gusto.com search one more time Gusto.com search hello. Quick note before we start the show. Search Engine exists because a small but mighty portion of our listeners actually pay pay to keep us running. They subscribe to our premium tier, which is called incognito mode. It's $7 a month or $50 for the full year. Those listeners get ad free episodes, bonus episodes, and discounts on our merch. But really the thing that they do is they make this show work. Right now we are in production, planning for our next season, trying to Figure out the size of the big swings we can take, the amount of episodes we can do. If our show has kept you company on some long commutes or given you something to talk about at the dinner table, and if you're in a position to do it, we'd really appreciate your support. It is a total pleasure to make this show for you. If you're interested, you can sign up at Search Engine Show, Incognito Mode. Search engine show. 50 bucks a year. I feel like I'm doing an ad for us. Okay, this week's episode starting now. Who are you? Can you identify yourself?
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B
I'm Katie Weaver, a staff writer at the Atlantic.
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A
And what kinds of stories do you normally report? How do you characterize your work for people that are not familiar with it?
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B
Oh, my God. I still don't have a great answer to this question. Sometimes when you tell people you're, you know, a writer or I don't even say journalist, although maybe technically, and they. They like, thank you for the good work that you do, and I always have to say, oh, I don't do that kind of stuff. So I don't do anything important. I get to do fun stories about whatever.
- [04:02]
A
This is a ruse. Katie doesn't actually do fun stories about whatever she pretends to. A normal Katie Weaver story starts with something that feels defiantly superficial. A profile of Kim Kardashian or an investigation into the question what is glitter made out of? And then unspools and becomes something else while insisting the whole time that it's not. The glitter question, for instance, led her to an industrial glitter manufacturer in New Jersey who adamantly refuses to say who their biggest buyer is, leading katie into a 3,000 word, paranoid industrial mystery that reads like a thriller. I won't ruin the ending, but that's a Katie Weaver story. Recently, Katie started wondering about something that feels typically Katie Weaver esque. A question that was, weirdly, both large and small.
- [04:50]
B
This is a question that I have been obsessed with for years. What is the best free restaurant bread in America?
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A
The best free restaurant bread in America? Why did you want for years the answer to this question?
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B
Because I have a very simple mind. And so I would eat free restaurant bread, and if it was particularly good, I would think, is this the fresh free restaurant bread in America? It was kind of inspired by. Well, actually, it was directly inspired by a restaurant in Atlanta called Bones that I went to a few times with my husband, who's from Atlanta, and this restaurant had particularly good free bread. I really, really, really loved the Beautiful, like gold. It was just a perfect bread. It was like, when you think of bread, this is what you think of. To me, it didn't really have anything in it. It wasn't trying to do anything crazy. It was just happy to be perfect bread. And when I would eat it, I would think, is this the best free bread? This really might be the best free bread. And I was kind of starting to convince myself that it was. But then in the back of my mind, I was like, what if it's not the best free bread? As good as this is? What if there's another bre, also free, that is even better?
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A
But why is it important? Like, I, I, I'm. I do you.
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B
Why is it hard for you to understand why someone would want the best free restaurant bread in America? Does that sound like something you would not want?
- [06:12]
A
I. I understand. I just want to make sure that some listener who doesn't immediately understand would understand. I mean, I know the feeling of, I've had a couple experiences not a free bread, but where I'm at a place, and I'm like, this might be the best version of this thing that exists on Earth right now.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And that's exciting.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And I've also had the feeling of, I would like to know if that was true. And then immediately I thought, but I can't know if it's true. And then I thought, and that's okay.
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B
You're a quitter. You gave up. What if. What if you could find out if it was true?
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A
So Katie, not a quitter, fell deep into finding the answer to her maybe impossible question. She began to research, in fact, the entire history of free bread at restaurants as a human tradition, which then led her to the entire prehistory of bread itself as a meal that people eat. Here's what she learned. She learned that for much of the time human beings have been on Earth, some form of bread has been our most commonly eaten meal. Unleavened bread for most of that time, but bread for most of human history, people did not pay money for that bread, but only because for most of human history, money did not yet exist, not because the bread itself was free. Taverns first appear around 2000 BC in Mesopotamia and continue as late as the 19th century in America. A tavern is a place where you can eat a meal someone else has made for you for money, but you don't get to choose the meal. You just pay for the one fixed meal they offer, which often was something like beer and bread. Bread you were paying for. Free bread cannot exist until restaurants do. And Katie says that restaurants are actually a pretty modern phenomenon.
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B
So restaurants where you can pick your own food and then they bring it and you pay just per item are really fairly new concepts. The one that is generally regarded as being like, the first restaurant in the United States is Delmonico's here in New York City. And that began operating in the 1830s.
- [08:14]
A
That's how recent.
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B
Yeah. Isn't that crazy?
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A
That is crazy.
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B
Seems like a good idea. But people. We just weren't doing it this way before.
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A
And so they're the first people, we think who are like, what if people could choose and then you could charge them different amounts of money?
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B
Well, they, I think, described this as, like a French experience. So they were maybe the people who popularized it in the U.S. we should say.
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A
And when they start it, do they offer free bread?
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B
So it's a little bit hard to tell. It seems like, yes. But starting, you know, from back then through now, people just don't put free bread on their menu. It doesn't say, don't worry, you're gonna get bread. So even though you can sometimes find menus from very, very old restaurants, it won't say that there's free bread. Cause they just don't advertise it.
- [08:57]
A
You know that feeling you sometimes get where you're, like, trying to understand something that happened in long ago history, and you can see that there was like. You can see there's something the text isn't mentioning, and there's almost like a profound sadness of, like, trying to squint at the past and not quite seeing it. It's funny to me that restaurant bread
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B
is, like, one of those things. You're right. That's heartbreaking to think about. You're right. Yeah.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Well, found what I think is probably the first restaurant review in the United States. It was published in the New York Times, which is. I mean, it's really funny to read because it's very kind of meta. It opens with the writer explaining that his boss gave him this crazy assignment, like, go out and eat and report what people are eating. And he has to sort of explain to the reader that he's doing this because, like, it's a totally novel premise. He's just like, okay, now what you're gonna read is me going to restaurants and talking about what I find there. And he mentions bread at different places, and he doesn't say that you're charged for the bread or da, da. So it's. It's. You can kind of infer from how he phrases it that it's just being handed out.
- [10:01]
A
Okay, so. Okay, so we think that this. I'm just trying to trace where we're coming from. So we. We think that free bread restaurants exist because before there were restaurants, there were taverns. Bread would have been a big part of the meal because bread was relatively cheap. Once restaurants become a thing, bread stays on, probably because people are used to it, because it's a cheap way for the restaurant to kind of like signal hospitality.
- [10:25]
B
Yes, totally.
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A
Because people are gonna complain in some cases if they don't get it.
- [10:28]
B
Yes. As a marker of hospitality. I think that's a good way to put it. And also, people were always used to eating bread. I asked a historian who I interviewed for the article, you know, where did free restaurant bread come from? And he said that it's the opposite of what you asked. It's always been here, and it's only recently that it's kind of disappearing. And a lot of restaurants now charge you.
- [10:47]
A
I find that disgusting.
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B
I hate it. No, it could be the absolute best bread in the world. It will not taste as good to me if I have to pay $1 for it. I'll say, okay, I would rather have a less good bread for free. That would make me happier.
- [11:07]
A
But of course, what would make Katie happiest is knowing that she was eating the best free bread in America, a country of between 750,000 and 1 million restaurants. After a short break, the experiment, the methodology, the investigation, the results. It's after these ads.
- [11:41]
C
No one goes to Hanks for spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks co pilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs. Help him see if he can afford it. Co pilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now Hank says a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza copilot, handles the spreadsheets. Learn more@m365copilot.com work this episode is brought
- [12:13]
D
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- [12:39]
E
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A
Welcome back to the show. So I want to get into your methodology and your results. Okay. How do you even set out to understand a question like this? Because it's not like you're not a magazine writer in the 1990s. You're not gonna go to every single restaurant in America. So what do you do today? Like, what's step one?
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B
Okay, step one was I just decided to ask every single person I could think of. Everyone I ran into, like, everyone I know, what's the best free restaurant bread in America. And I started tracking all their responses, tracking how I made a little spreadsheet for myself. And I would just put, you know, the restaurant location. Who told me this? And sometimes it was, you know, someone I knew, and sometimes it was like cousin's friend. And then I would tally the number of votes. And also if they gave notes, if they described the bread in any way, I would put that down. So, you know, if they said it was really pillowy or if they some. I remember one woman remembered the color napkin that the basket is served with. It was with a black napkin. And that was like, it, you know, really stood out in her mind. So I ended up amassing several hundred responses this way. I also should say the Atlantic, I think, tweeted it out and put the link a couple times in one of our email newsletters. So I got some responses that way. But a lot of it was really just me directly asking strangers. Like, if I was in an elevator with someone, I was going to ask them, what's the best free restaurant bread in America?
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A
Here's what Katie learned from her initial research. Chain restaurants were statistically overrepresented not because they necessarily had the best free bread, but because they're everywhere. Katie made a mental note to find a way to adjust for that distortion in the data. Later she learned that people listed both fancy restaurants, which they'd apologize for, and unfancy restaurants, which they would not apologize for, and that many people's memories of great free bread clustered in their childhoods at restaurants their parents had taken them to. Katie's dad was still alive during her survey. And when she asked him about his favorite free bread, his answer surprised her.
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B
So his answer was bread that he was served in the 1960s at the four Seasons in Manhattan. And I didn't even know my dad had ever been there.
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A
Very fancy place.
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B
Super fancy place. My dad was not a fancy guy. So, yeah, that was how I found out that he had even gone to this restaurant, was that he remembered the bread.
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A
And why was he at the Four Seasons?
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B
He was at the Four Seasons because he was visiting his dad, who he did not. His dad was pretty much out of his life. He some. A few times over the course of his life, I want to say. And he and my uncle had gone to New York to visit him. And my dad said that my grandfather, who died before I was born, you know, liked to show off. And so he took his sons, and I think my dad was a teenager, to the Four Seasons for lunch. And my dad remembered that the bread was warm.
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A
So it was like an emotionally complicated experience. But he remembers the bread being very good.
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B
When I said, what's the best way restaurant bread? He said, the only one that I can really remember, which also surprised me because I thought that any member of my immediate family would be. Would be like me. It would be like, oh, you know, it's this restaurant. Yeah, that was the one that just for some reason, like, really stuck in his mind as being the best.
- [16:32]
A
And were you seeing generally across your data? Like, I understand that it's. It's not like census level perfect data almost. I mean, you're trying to lasso a cloud. Like, I think it's okay. But one population you attempted to survey were celebrities?
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B
Yes.
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A
First of all, why.
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B
Okay, I had a. I had a real reason for this because I thought, who has access to all the best restaurants in the world? Celebrities.
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A
That's true.
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B
They can go anywhere. And, you know, they can. They don't mind paying a lot for a meal. But, you know, many celebrities did not grow up wealthy. So I'm thinking if I became a celebrity, I would still be well aware of where I had eaten bread for free and where it was like, something I had to pay for. So I thought, oh, I'll just ask a bunch of America's beloved celebrities, where's the best free restaurant bread in America? And they let me down.
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A
Well, I wanna walk through them. So LeBron James. You reached out to LeBron James?
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B
Too busy. Focused on the upcoming season. How's it going for you, LeBron? I actually don't Know, Hope it paid off. What made me crazy was, you know, this is a question even if you don't have an answer the second you hear it, as I do. With a few seconds of thought, I think you can come up with something.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It doesn't take a long. I'm not asking you to go through your taxes and give me some. Like, you know, just think of your life, the something that happened in your life. Can you tell me about it in a couple words? They can't.
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A
Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt was another person reached out to.
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B
Okay. Chris Pratt felt was his response when it came in. They. I do think they were trying to be polite. It was phrased so rudely. Here, wait, let me get the exact quote. And the publicist responded, we need to politely hold off as there is an interest. You don't have to tell me that there is an interest. You say, we need to politely hold off.
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A
Why do you think you're getting stonewalled on this stuff?
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B
I don't know.
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A
I don't think they felt like maybe this is a practical joke, like that there was some opportunity to belittle them, or do you think that they thought that maybe when people talk about even though food is something everyone eats, that there's something revealing or, like, it's hard to answer that question without it feeling like they're trying to signal in one direction or another.
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B
I don't know. I don't know if it's that their reps didn't want to bother them with this. I think some people maybe thought that they could be being made to look foolish. Like, you know, they didn't. They wanted to know who else was participating. And it's like, what does it matter? Is your answer so crazy that you're gonna make a fool of yourself by giving it. I was so surpr by how few celebrities were willing to even entertain this question. I only got one. In the end. I only got one. Who is that Mr. Stephen King?
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A
And what did Stephen King have to say about free bread in America?
- [19:18]
B
Okay. Stephen King's favorite free bread in America is, quote, crusty and warm, end quote, and is served at Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse, another steakhouse in Sarasota, Florida. That's all. And you know what? That was all I needed. I didn't even need him to say it's crusty and warm. But I'm glad he did. That's. That's the sign of a wordsmith. He's bringing the bread to life for you. All he had to say was, hyde Park Steakhouse Great. Done.
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A
So he went into your spreadsheet.
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B
He went in the spreadsheet.
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A
You also reached out to.
- [19:46]
B
You'd only vote for them, but better put him there. So he's wrong.
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A
This is why celebrities don't want to play your sick games. They don't want to be humiliated, and they lose either door that they.
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B
Vic, what could be more relatable than a celebrity revealing their favorite free restaurant? Bread. They're gonna look like a man of the people, a man who knows what bread is free and what isn't. They're gonna look like someone who eats bread. That's the other thing that made me crazy.
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A
I also think they smelled a trap and didn't smell it well enough. I think they should have told their publicist not to write. You even know because it's gonna end
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F
up in your piece.
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B
But many of the publicists did not. But the crazy thing to me was, say anything. I'm not gonna know if you're telling the truth. You can pick whatever restaurant you like. Just say anything. It doesn't matter. And it'll calm me down. But no, they wouldn't. They refused.
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A
You also reached out to the CEO of Red Lobster. Why? And what did you learn?
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B
Okay. I love cheddar bay biscuits. I'm an American. We all love cheddar bay biscuits.
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A
Why are they so good?
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B
Oh, my God. I don't know what the hell they're putting in them, but they are just. They're soft and warm and really salty. They're shiny with butter.
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A
They're like, oh, I've had these biscuits. See, These biscuits are tremendously good. There we go. They have, like, some Domino's Pizza pizza DNA in them somehow. Like, they give me, like, the feeling I like from Domino's. Like, the breadsticks there. Like, there's something really greasy about that.
- [21:13]
B
Yes. Oh, God, yes. Yeah, yeah. You're positive hands shiny? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, wait.
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A
Can you continue to describe these biscuits, though?
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B
Yeah. Okay, so they are. What's this size hockey puck? I don't really know how big anything is. Apple. No, smaller than an apple. I'm looking at my fist and thinking of things that are smaller than it. Eggs. My fist, years ago, as a child, is probably the size of these biscuits. Maybe a kiwi and a half.
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A
Okay. Flaky, buttery, greasy.
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B
I don't know if they're even flaky. Like, I couldn't. The texture of them. You're never gonna eat anything else that has this texture or this taste. They are warm, salty, buttery. Oh, I think they have garlic in them. And they will keep em coming. They'll keep them coming.
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A
That's important.
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B
And they're free. They're absolutely free.
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A
Free biscuits feels like a luxury.
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B
Yes.
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A
And so. Okay, so why. But then why like they were just on your list?
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B
Probably they were on my. They. You know, a lot of people named them. They are my personal favorite of the chainbreads. And they are also something even people who kind of were struggling to come up with a favorite free bread would often think of Red Lobster. It was a bread that is distinct in many people's minds. And maybe they would, oh, you know Red Lobster. But they were trying to come up with something maybe that wasn't a chain or that they like more.
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A
But this was their real answer.
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B
But it was maybe not even their real answer, but it was just what they could think of. It was like their brain is kind of frantically scanning for files labeled bread and Red Lobster is one of the only ones they can pull.
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A
So what did you want to know from their CEO?
- [22:54]
B
Anything at all? I wanted to know what are you putting in these cracked out biscuits that is making them so good? I would be very curious to know. They seem like they must be of tremendous importance to Red Lobster because definitely for myself and for many people who I spoke to, the biscuits are truly why you go to Red Lobster. The food at Red Lobster is whatever, but you know that you can have as many of those biscuits as you want while you're there. So it's almost like Red Lobster is a cheddar bay biscuits restaurant. And then also include like they have seafood options.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And the best thing at the restaurant is this thing that it's giving away for free. That's very interesting to me. It's like a restaurant that is very, very strongly associated with bread in the American consciousness. In 2026, another one that came up, but not because people were voting for it a lot was Olive Garden. People would say, oh, is everyone saying Olive Garden? Olive Garden actually performed kind of horrifically in my poll.
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A
I think that's fair.
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B
People sort of associate it with bread, but they. And maybe they even like the breadsticks. But even among chains, Olive Garden was, was not one of the top ones.
- [24:04]
A
Wait, but so what happened when you reached out to the Red Lobster CEO?
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B
So I was going through a kind of third party PR firm that Red Lobster works with and I, I had visions of myself like going down to Red Lobster hq, going in the test kitchen. Maybe he and I are learning to bake the cheddar Bay biscuits. I don't know, and I'll never find out because they would not let me get close to this man.
- [24:28]
A
They.
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B
They didn't refuse to participate. They offered me, you know, I could talk to, like a kind of random VP of whatever. They were not as excited about the bread story as I was.
- [24:38]
A
I feel like a surprising amount of people in your reporting treated you like a journalist out for blood.
- [24:45]
B
Yes.
- [24:45]
A
And I'm not totally sure why.
- [24:49]
B
The only person who saw me as a human was Stephen King.
- [24:52]
A
Or he just talks to monsters.
- [24:57]
B
Damn good. Fair.
- [25:00]
A
But did you strike them from your list or did they stay on?
- [25:02]
B
Oh, no, I couldn't strike them from my list. I'm tracking the data. So if they had had the most votes, I would have said, well, if they had had the most votes through my complicated equation that I eventually developed, then I would have said, okay, they're the best.
- [25:15]
A
Okay, so tell me your results.
- [25:17]
B
Okay.
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A
Who's number three?
- [25:19]
B
Number three might be Red Lobster, But it's sort of. It's a little bit hard to say because the equation that I eventually came up with took into account the number of locations and the number of votes.
- [25:34]
A
Because the idea is that some places are gonna be overrepresented in the survey because more people have been there.
- [25:38]
B
Yes.
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A
Whereas the best bread might be at a place that fewer people have been to.
- [25:42]
B
Yes.
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A
So you came up with some Katy math to try to.
- [25:45]
B
Exactly, yes. And I looped in a statistician, a professor emeritus of statistics at the University of Cambridge, to ask him, hey, I've collected all this haphazardly. Can you make it into a magazine article for me?
- [26:01]
A
So he helped you refine it?
- [26:03]
B
No, he did not. But he did kind of explain the conundrum very well. He said if a restaurant had 10 customers and eight thought that it had the best bread, this would seem more impressive than if another restaurant had 100 customers and 10 thought it had the best bread.
- [26:18]
A
So the thing you're trying to say, what percentage of the people walk out of this place thinking it's the best bread in the world, not how many customers they have.
- [26:24]
B
Exactly, yes. So that's why it's a little bit hard to get to number three, because I think Red Lobster maybe had the third most votes overall numerically.
- [26:32]
A
But that has as much to do with the denominator of people who have gone as the numerator of people who think it's awesome.
- [26:36]
B
Yes. So I really can only tell you kind of. I could tell you the chain restaurant that had the Most votes. So this overall on paper, is gonna look like the best free restaurant in America because it has the most votes. So this is just raw votes. Cheesecake Factory.
- [26:49]
A
Cheesecake Factory.
- [26:50]
B
Cheesecake Factory. People love that bread. They love that brown bread. Have you had it?
- [26:54]
A
I have, but my memories of the Cheesecake Factory are the cheesecakes, not the bread.
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B
Okay.
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A
The bread's really good.
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B
That's what people tell me. It was not my favorite free restaurant bread.
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A
And it's brown bread.
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B
It's brown bread.
- [27:07]
A
Like what they eat in, like, Middle Earth or whatever.
- [27:09]
B
Absolutely, yes. We want breads that look like they involve more labor. They're different in some way. So this is like a dark brown bread. It looks healthy. Turns out it's not that healthy. Sticks out in people's mind because it's like, oh, this is a shade of bread I'm not seeing all the time.
- [27:25]
A
Did you try it?
- [27:26]
B
Of course. Yes, I tried it and I thought it was perfectly fine. Some people think that it has chocolate in it, partly because of the color and also because they find that it tastes a little bit sweet. I really love sweets. I love sweet things. This bread to me was not sweet. It was sweet in the way that, you know, you get like a basil like sorbet for dessert at a restaurant that does not have real desserts. Yeah, for some people, that's gonna be sweet enough for me. No. So I didn't consider this bread sweet, but they, you know, a lot of people named it and specifically the brown bread. So actually, Cheesecake Factory brings out a brown bread and a white kind of sourdough loaf. But most people named the brown bread specifically, they would say Cheesecake Factory brown bread.
- [28:23]
A
Cheesecake Factory's brown bread. The highest ranking chain restaurant in Katie Weaver's survey. But what was the very best free bread in a non chain restaurant? Where was that bread to be found? Katie Weaver has the answer. She's going to share it with us after these ads.
- [29:10]
B
K Pop Demon Hunters, Saja Boy's breakfast Meal and Hunt Trick's meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
- [29:24]
A
It is an honor to share.
- [29:26]
B
No, it's our honor.
- [29:27]
A
It is our larger honor.
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B
No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side
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A
and participate in McDonald's while supplies last.
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F
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- [30:49]
A
Welcome back to the show. So the answer to the question we'd been hunting for this week, the winner of Katie Weaver's intensely reported American survey of free bread.
- [30:59]
B
I think there were ultimately two restaurants in the top 10 that were not chains. And they were the only two in the top 10, I believe, that were not chains. And it turns out that they serve the exact same bread because they're owned by the same person even though they're different restaurants.
- [31:13]
A
So they're different restaurants, but same bread,
- [31:15]
B
two different locations, same brand, one in
- [31:17]
A
Philly, one in D.C. and what are the restaurants?
- [31:19]
B
The restaurants are Le Diplomat in D.C. and park in Philly.
- [31:23]
A
And tell me about the restaurants and tell me about the brand.
- [31:25]
B
So the restaurants are owned by Stephen
- [31:27]
A
Starr, oh, very famous Philadelphia restaurateur.
- [31:30]
B
And I lived in Philadelphia for years and I walked by park many times and I never went inside because I assumed it was too expensive. But actually, it's funny, a college friend of mine who still lives in Philly was the first vote for park and I was like, oh, I'm glad there's a Philly restaurant nominated. And then like people kept voting for Park. Park ended up with of the two restaurants, even though they served same bread, park had slightly more votes.
- [31:49]
A
It also feels like it's meaningful that people were identifying this as the best bread appearing in two different places. Like that feels like a pretty strong signal.
- [31:56]
B
Yes, totally. And they were. This was a bread that people tended to give a little bit more information about. They would describe the bread to me in detail they would not always accurately.
- [32:08]
A
What types of things would they say about the street bread?
- [32:10]
B
So the bread has cranberries in it, and some people would name that. Some people would say it had cherries in it. You know, they're just picking up that it has, like, some kind of reddish fruit. They. Some people were. Seemed kind of ashamed to be naming this bread. They were like, it's an omni is one. But I have to say it. They, you know, noted the temperature, it arrives warm, that they serve it with the, you know, nice, soft butter. Da, da, da. It was just a bread that kind of. Similarly to the Red Lobster cheddar bay biscuits. This is a bread that sticks in people's mind.
- [32:43]
A
And so did you try the bread?
- [32:44]
B
Absolutely. And I loved it. It was great. It was great.
- [32:48]
A
The best.
- [32:49]
B
I think it might be. You know, I feel like this many people can't be wrong.
- [32:55]
A
Many people are wrong about many things.
- [32:56]
B
I know, but I feel like they can't be. I'm not a scientist, but what was
- [33:01]
A
your experience of it? You ate it. Your subjective experience.
- [33:04]
B
So it reminded me of the scene in Willy Wonka where they try Everlasting Gobstoppers. And Willy Wonka explains that it's a great candy for children with very little pocket money because it kind of gives you, like, a full. Wait, is that the Everlasting Gobstopper?
- [33:21]
A
I think so. He eats that candy where it's like a full meal.
- [33:23]
B
A full meal.
- [33:24]
A
And it, like, evolves as you're eating it. Like, you feel like, yes, and you
- [33:27]
B
get, like, soup, and you're moved through the mains, and then you end on dessert. And it sort of felt like that because it has this kind of nice, warm, rich, buttery, savory, nutty component with the walnuts. But then you also get the cranberry. So it's like you have the savory, you have the sweet. It is a thick, hearty bread. It really felt like a meal by itself. Like, I could just have this and a glass of water and be good to go.
- [33:55]
A
Like, this is what people would have happily eaten 20,000 years ago, except for,
- [33:59]
B
oh, my God, they would have been over the moon to eat something this good. I'm sure they weren't even bred this good. But, yes, it's like bread. You know, it just felt like this could sustain my life. I could live off this bread.
- [34:10]
A
Did you feel. Obviously, this is a hard question to answer, but, like, eating it, did you feel either, like, certainty or at least satisfied that you had found the thing you were looking for.
- [34:22]
B
I did. I was like, okay, this bread is really pretty freaking good. Everyone was right. Yeah. God, if I hadn't liked it, I don't. I guess we would have scrapped the story months in. It was a relief to find the bread really delicious. But if I hadn't liked it, you know, like the Cheesecake Factory bread, I would say I was ultimately slightly disappointed by. Because so many people loved that, but they disproportionately loved this other bread. And I think that the people who loved this bread were right. I think it's really good. I mean, anyone else is welcome to do a more thorough study than I have done. I think you're gonna have trouble getting funding for such a study. I have probably pushed to, like, the extreme outer limits of what anyone will tolerate in terms of time and money spent investigating this.
- [35:12]
A
But you want people who have theories to continue to email you forever for the rest of your career?
- [35:15]
B
Honestly? Yes.
- [35:16]
A
Really?
- [35:17]
B
Why not? I mean, if you really think you know the best one, I'll put it on my list. Like, my personal list of, oh, if I'm ever In, you know, St. Louis, I have to try this bread and see if it's better than the bread that I name the best.
- [35:29]
A
So you both found it, and you feel like you're still looking?
- [35:32]
B
I guess so. I'm pretty confident I found it.
- [35:35]
A
And what did you learn from eating the best free restaurant bread in America?
- [35:37]
D
That I love?
- [35:38]
B
The best free restaurant bread in America? That I love free bread.
- [35:44]
A
Okay. The names of the restaurants In Philly and D.C. are.
- [35:46]
B
Are PARC P A R C. It's French in Philly, actually. They're both French, I guess. And le diplomat in D.C. there's this
- [35:55]
A
thing you mentioned in the story, which I didn't totally, like, know what it meant to you. You mentioned this, like, almost offhandedly, where you say you talk about your dad getting sick, you talk about visiting him in Santa Fe, and you describe how he'd ordered the Red Lobster Ultimate Feast, which includes the biscuits, but that he didn't finish his bread, that he said it tasted like sawdust. What did that story mean to you? Why did you mention it in the course of this reporting?
- [36:21]
B
So, you know, it's funny. When my dad named the Four Seasons, I had actually been expecting him to say Red Lobster, because I knew he loved that bread. And so I was surprised that he hadn't named it. And I guess I included it because maybe it was to show that I do also have a real life where things happen to me and it's not just like a crazy adventure and try and free bread, like, endlessly on someone else's dime. I was also living a real life while I was reporting this story.
- [36:54]
A
Here's what confused me about the piece that I really loved and what confused me about your reporting, which I really love. I mean, the thing that, like, a listener's not gonna get from this interview is, like, the piece is, like, it's written in such an over the top, beautiful way. Like, there's these highly evocative sentences about the bread in different restaurants, and it's hyper focusing on this small pleasure that can totally go unnoticed in your life. And then there's several times you mention your dad. You mention what bread meant to him in the context of this, like, complicated relationship with his dad. You mention briefly on this, like, otherwise very, like, silly quest, this experience of being with him near the time when he was dying. And then park, which is like the restaurant that ends up being the best one. He shows up there too, where you say, like, he was from Philadelphia. It was the first time going to city where he didn't know about it because he had died. And it's just weird because it's like you have this person who's trying to answer the smallest question in the world. You're trying to marshal everyone's focus and attention on this tiny pleasure in the world that could go easily unnoticed. And then there's these just, like, background references to the fact that the person who's taking you on this adventure is also grieving. And I have the intuition that these things are connected, but I don't totally understand. What do you think? Am I crazy or are these things connected to you?
- [38:15]
B
No, no, no. I think they are connected. Well, part of it is also that my dad was someone who. It's so funny. He would describe himself as a gourmand, but had no money. And in many ways, no one lived worse than this man. Like, he grew up really, really poor in South Philly and had a lot of, as you know, much later in life, had a lot of health problems and physical problems that he just, you know, he couldn't really get around very well. So his world became kind of very limited. But he still would not only think of himself, but tell people. Like, when they met him, he'd be like, well, I'm a gourmand. And it was like, are you? Cause you're just, like, sitting in this room eating, like, McDonald's. But he's definitely someone who, you know, like, he could say he enjoyed the little things in life, but he also enjoyed, like, very fancy things in life. And he. He and my mom were kind of opposites in the sense that when they would go to a restaurant and look at the menu, my mom would invariably order whatever's the cheapest thing, and he would very often order the most expensive thing. So I don't know. I guess I really associate both of my parents with just the experience of being at restaurants and trying to figure out, are you getting your money's worth? And one way to ensure that you are is if the thing you're getting for free is really, you know, good free bread. That's. You gotta build that into the, you know, mental price of the meal. So I don't know, maybe that's one of the reasons why I worked him in. It's also just the fact that it was happening at the same time. So truly, I was, you know, like, flying around to these different places. And he died before I went and tried the bread that I ultimately named the best. He knew I was working on the story. He was a big Atlantic fan, and I am bummed that he didn't get to see my cover story. He would have been really, really excited about that. And actually, one of the reasons I took this job is when I was interviewing, I mentioned that my dad really liked it. And the woman I was interviewing with was our executive editor said, oh, what's the status? We'll send him some tote bags. And actually, that is sort of like free bread to me. The fact that she just lightly was instantly, you know, she didn't know if I was gonna take the job or not. But she's throwing out free tote bag just for the heck of it. And I was like, that's a classy move. I love this place. So it really. It gave me early on, like, one of my first really good impressions of the Atlantic. I was like, they're gonna send my father tote bags, even though they don't know if I'm gonna take this job. And it's like, they're gonna give me incredible bread. Even though they don't really know. They don't know what I'm gonna order. They don't know if I'm gonna order. I might have this bread and leave. I guess I'm just easily won over by very small token acts of kindness.
- [41:13]
A
Small token acts of kindness. Maybe that's what this is. Things people give you even if they're comically small, without the expectation they'll get something back. Fortune cookies and bank lollipops things most of us barely notice. But which one American writer completely obsesses over our country's foremost free bred investigative journalist, Katie Weaver? Katie thank you, thank you. You can find Katie's article and all of her work these days over at the Atlantic. Also an important correction about fictional candy. While Willy Wonka's everlasting Gobstopper is good for kids without much pocket money because it never gets smaller and changes colors and flavors, the candy that provides the sensation of a full meal is the three course dinner chewing up. Our apologies to Mr. Wonka. That's our show this week. If you're looking for a way to help our show in a very minor way, something that we always appreciate if you have time, is to head over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. Our parents read these reviews. It makes them happy and it algorithmically helps people find the show. Please don't jump on to leave a mean review, which people sometimes do when I ask them to leave reviews. Nice reviews Only Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt and Shruti Pinamaneni. Garrett Graham is our Senior producer. Emily Malta Hare is our Associate producer. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Our production intern is Piper Dumont. This episode was fact checked by Madeline LaPlante Dubie. Our executive producer is Leah Rees Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kirk, Courtney and Hillary. Chef if you have a business and would like to advertise on our show, Please email us pjvote85mail.com Subject line Advertising if you'd like to support our show as a listener. If you'd like ad free episodes, zero reruns and bonus episodes, please consider subscribers signing up for incognito Mode Search Engine show thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.
- [44:01]
B
Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho. Look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you and hang some string lights to give your
- [44:09]
D
patio a glow up.
- [44:11]
B
Spring's calling. Ross. Work your magic.