Toast Is Still Trendy—But It’s Getting More Creative
In the half-decade since the phrase “four-dollar toast” sent shockwaves through the culinary world, the dining public has become accustomed to paying for their bread and spread, while chefs have seized on the opportunity to take toast from ordinary to outrageous. From studding French toast with breakfast cereal to creating an eye-catching update to a Southeast Asian classic, a few restaurants have helped the fancy-toast fad transition from trend to menu stalwart.
When The Mill opened in San Francisco in 2012, the price tag on its toast took on a life of its own, with $4 toast becoming an emblem of the rising (and affluent) hipster tech class of San Francisco. But behind those simple pieces of bread topped with cinnamon and sugar was a quality that deserved it. Josey Baker’s bread—made with his great-great-grandmother’s sourdough starter and local, organic whole grains milled daily in-house—isn’t and shouldn’t be cheap, but seeing it in toast form and costing $4 raised eyebrows around the country. And yet that price hasn’t changed in the intervening years.
Around the same time, Jessica Koslow served similarly pricey toast at her jam shop turned breakfast spot, Sqirl, in Los Angeles. For people who think to themselves that they could save $5 and spread jam on toast at home, the recipe for the dish in her 2016 book, Everything I Want to Eat, suggests that you start by purchasing a $20 toast-buttering tool, explaining that it’s the only way to get the best toast. For those who haven’t dug into the knife-and-fork-required dish, the price seems steep.
But as more people experienced the ethereal toast, the public began to accept that this wasn’t their parents’ Wonder Bread with margarine. And that realization would cost money. Baker and Koslow paved the way for the current generation of toasts, which chefs have the freedom to make without the pressure to keep them at bargain-basement prices.
Any list of the best and brightest in toast today begins at San Francisco’s Breadbelly, where durian-themed wallpaper decorates the restrooms. The Asian-American café bakes its own milk bread and then griddles it for the various toasts, including one thickly spread with nearly neon-green coconut-pandan jam. The take on kaya toast, a staple of Malaysia and Singapore, comes from a trio of fine-dining veterans. Their artistry shows in both the flavors and the way the rich, creamy topping squiggles on just-so—also putting the $7 toast dish on the fast-track to Instagram stardom.
The Fruity Pebbles French toast at Seattle’s Watson’s Counter has similarly found fame through photos, despite deserving it for so much more. While most of the menu items reflect owner James Lim’s Korean-American heritage (the café is named for his dog), in with the doenjang-marinated pork-belly eggs benny and gojuchang chicken and waffles is this colorful and creative toast. Though billed as “cereal French Toast,” the dense, barely battered slices resemble typical toast far more than the flaccid diner version of the dish you might imagine.
But, more important, they come studded with the diner’s choice of “Fruity Pebs” or “Frosty Flecks,” each resulting in a sweet and savory combination in which the egg takes on the dairy role of the milk in contrast with the cereal. And the toast, as it so often does, plays a barely perceptible but incredibly important role as conveyance.
You could say the same for the thin slice of toasted rustic bread under what Tijuana, Mexico’s Georgina calls “ceviche de filete de res,” or what could be translated as steak tartar toast. The restaurant serves mostly modern European cuisine, but it’s the Mexican mentality—and occasional ingredients—from chef Adria Marina that set the menu and the steak toast apart.
Somewhere between avocado toast and an open-faced sandwich, it comes thickly spread with pureed avocado, a light layer of crema, and then silky hand-chopped steak. On top, strings of fried onions twist about tiny potato chips, and fried herbs blast flavor into the riot of textures. It’s a toast as elegant and refined as the restaurant itself, where lush fabrics cover stuffed seating, and cool colors and marble dominate among brass fixtures. It’s a dish that proves, from its place among the appetizers with brûléed foie gras, that toast is no longer questioned for its worth.
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