A 13,000-Mile Mission for One Beautiful Loaf
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Somewhere between a Red Lobster and a three-Michelin-star dining room lies the best free restaurant bread in America. For The Atlantic’s May cover story, our staff writer Caity Weaver set out to find it, surveying more than 500 people and traveling 13,000 miles along the way. Restaurants have long been judged before the meal even begins by the bread they serve; Caity wanted to know which one actually delivers. For today’s Daily, I spoke with her about how she’d chased down an answer, and what it takes to crown a basket of bread the “best” in the country.
Rafaela Jinich: You traveled across the country and did months of reporting to find the best free restaurant bread in America. How did the idea first come to you?
Caity Weaver: I have a fantasy—somewhere between a hope and a private religion—that when you die, you meet God, and he answers every question you have. The first question I put on my mental list as a kid was, Did I pick up more spare change than I dropped? (I’d like God to provide both numerical totals.) What is the best free restaurant bread in America? is a query in the same vein.
It popped into my head many years ago, when I was eating especially good free bread at a restaurant. It was possible, I realized, that I was currently enjoying the best free restaurant bread in America. But it was also possible, and statistically more likely, that I wasn’t. And it was even more likely that I would never taste that best bread, because it could be served anywhere, and the number of restaurants I will visit in my lifetime is vanishingly small. The idea that the only thing keeping me from enjoying the best free restaurant bread was ignorance of its location spiraled into a small obsession. I realized that I might be able to figure out its location before my death if I just asked enough people (with plans to double-check my findings with God eventually). I blurted the pitch out to The Atlantic’s editor in chief the first time I had lunch with him.
Rafaela: In your essay, you categorize people into three types based on how they answer your question about what they consider the best bread. Did that framework emerge early, or did you discover it as you reported?
Caity: I assumed that everyone would be able to name their favorite free restaurant bread instantly, as I was. I was stunned to discover that the majority of people had never given this superlative any thought at all. It became clear very early on that respondents were falling into one of three buckets: (1) people who provided an answer instantly, (2) people who kept no mental ranking of free bread they encountered, and (3) people who were so stressed out by the question that they refused to answer it.
Rafaela: How do you investigate something as subjective as “the best” bread?
Caity: I think that if a lot of people love something, it’s worth investigating. I believe in the wisdom of popularity. The first step was to see which bread was the most popular based on the hundreds of responses to my poll—weighted to correct for the likely overrepresentation of chain restaurants. (If two free breads received the same number of nominations, but one was served at a chain with 500 locations and one was served at a stand-alone restaurant, it seemed fair to say that the non-chain bread was more popular.) The second step was to try that bread for myself, to see if I liked it. I’m an only child, so I have total faith in the correctness of all my actions and opinions. I figured a lot of people couldn’t be wrong about what appeals to a lot of people—especially if the lot included me.
Rafaela: Did you walk into each restaurant with set criteria or let your impressions of the bread form in the moment?
Caity: I asked for bread as soon as I sat down, even before ordering (to make sure it was really free); I asked for at least one bread refill (to confirm that it was effectively unlimited); and I asked for bread to go (to probe the limits of “unlimited” and to evaluate it in day-old form). I took pages of notes and hundreds of pictures. I did research beforehand to try to understand what bakers are aiming for in terms of color, texture, and flavor—but ultimately, to me, the most important quality was how it tasted the moment it was served.
Rafaela: Without spoiling it, what made your final pick feel definitive to you?
Caity: It was wildly, disproportionately popular among respondents. And when I tried it, I discovered that I would have been delighted to eat it as my entire meal. This didn’t affect its ranking, but the day-old form of this bread also held up far better than every other bread I tried the next day.
Rafaela: What’s the first thing you notice now when you sit down at a restaurant? Has your answer changed after your bread mission?
Caity: I compare the free bread with the one my research has determined is the best; so far, the latter hasn’t been beaten. But there’s good news: I learned while reporting this story that lots of breads can be almost as good as the best free restaurant bread. If it’s warm, you’re 89 percent of the way there. Don’t get me wrong—the best free restaurant bread is exceptionally wonderful—but pretty good free bread ain’t bad either.
Rafaela: Now that you have found the best free bread in America, what food expedition is next? One commenter suggested french fries.
Caity: On it.
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The Week Ahead
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- Michael, a biopic about Michael Jackson (in theaters Friday)
- Half Man, a drama series about the relationship between two “brothers” over decades (out Thursday on HBO Max)
Essay
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In her first year of medical school, Diana Cejas discovered a lump in her neck. She went to the student medical center to have it evaluated and was told that it was likely benign. But the lump kept growing, and she returned to her doctors, who reassured her that it was just a large lymph node. One night, following a 36-hour shift in her residency, the lump hurt so much she couldn’t sleep. The next day, after she begged for help, a doctor finally ordered a CT scan. She looked up her results on the hospital computer system. There, on the screen, was a large mass in her neck. It turned out to be cancerous. Even as she had been learning how to correctly diagnose others, she had not been able to get an accurate diagnosis herself.
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