Okay, so I have a few pet peeves – don’t we all? When a restaurant can’t get toast right it makes me wonder…

In my mind, serving hot buttered toast should be easy like a Sunday morning. Before we get into this deep subject, I have a couple of questions. When you order toast do you expect it to be served buttered or not buttered? I’m no Wolfgang Puck but it makes sense, to me, to butter the toast the moment it comes out of the toaster instead of serving it dry and letting the guest butter it. Isn’t that just common sense? I mean isn’t that the way you do it at home? Don’t you want to get the butter on the toast as quickly as possible so it can melt and become one with the hot toast?

Case in point – this morning. We are out at a local breakfast joint and I order my usual, eggs over easy, hash browns, sausage and toast. It can’t get any more basic than that. The toast was served unbuttered with butter and jelly on a side dish. This procedure violates the rules of toast. How hard is it to figure out, by the time the toast gets to the guest, it is going to be cold and the butter (served cold) will not melt on said toast which causes it to be a sh—- piece of toast?

This restaurant is not run by a bunch of novices. As a matter of fact I noticed a sign on display stating Dallas Magazine had voted them best neighborhood restaurant for 2017. How can the best neighborhood restaurant screw up toast?

In my years in the restaurant biz we viewed toast and or bread as a trigger item. It’s considered a trigger item because when it’s excellent it makes the other items taste better. It’s kind of like french fries. No matter how good the burger, if the fries are cold it spoils the overall experience. The moral to this story: Toast can make or break a breakfast plate. DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPACT OF TOAST!