Remember those good old days when bread was an expected service included in the price of your restaurant meal?
Recently, I’ve visited two Kansas City restaurants where bread is now a menu item. That’s right. You don’t get bread unless you pay for it.
Sarah’s Eat Drink Art, which is exclusively a soup, salad and sandwich operation by day charges diners at night for “Fresh Baked Assortment of Bread” for $6. I don’t know who’s the bigger sucker – them for serving it or us for ordering it. I admit, we may have self-implied “house-made” into the descriptor. I highly doubt that what we got was house-made. In our opinion, it definitely wasn’t freshly-baked either.
Then, there’s Cassis, in Town Center Plaza. They do serve complimentary baguette slices with your meal. But, diners also have the option of buying the Artisan Français multi-grain bread basket for $3. It comes with vanilla olive oil. Now, Artisan Français does make quite good bread; I’m not sure I need to pay for it in a restaurant.
Have any other cities out there noticed restaurant’s charging diners for bread? If so, I’d love to hear about it.
[Update: Sarah’s on Grand closed in late Spring, just a couple of months after this post. Cassis closed early November, 2008.]
1 reply on “no such thing as free bread…”
I’m glad they do charge for bread…I hate wasting it if I don’t want to eat it (because I am one of those humanitarian guys who do volunteer work slaving in a kitchen/galley in third world countries where it is a sin to waste ANYTHING).
The bread not good enough to pay? Don’t eat it.
Most of the time it just works as a filler so if I can’t eat my whole meal I either waste that or eat it again reheated (IE less quality)
And whatever happened to just figuring in the price of the bread by small increments in the rest of the products (there by collecting for the bread, whether they want it or not – pennies to profit), AND/OR asking people if they want the complimentary bread?
Whether the ‘free bread’ crowd realizes it or not, its not really free now is it?! (rhetorical question)
Good post, it was thought provoking for me…so whether we agree or not, thank you!