I'll Fork Over Extra For A Decent Slice
The world was shocked the other day by the announcement that Waffle House is going to be charging a fifty-cent per egg surcharge. Well, at least it was shocking in the part of the world that knows what a “Waffle House” is. That means my two eggs, scrambled, with bacon, hash browns (plain) and buttered toast is now gonna cost me an extra buck. Boh! (That's pretty much the Italian equivalent of “meh”.) Like it or not, (and I don't) it is what it is and there's little to gain by screaming about it.
You really want something to scream about, though? How about the aforementioned buttered toast? I mean, why in the hell can't I get a decent piece of buttered toast at a Waffle House? Or an IHOP? Or pretty much any other chain breakfast place? Buttered toast. Emphasis on the “buttered.” It's a simple enough preparation. It seems like something anybody could do. I, myself, have been doing it since around the age of five.
I Googled “buttered toast” and was rewarded with numerous results containing actual recipes for how to make buttered toast. Seriously. But the very first one pretty much summed up the process: “Evenly spread butter onto toasted bread using a butter knife or spreader.” Ah-HA! THERE'S the rub! It's those first two words, “evenly spread.”
See, when I make buttered toast at home, I by golly make buttered toast. That means that you can actually see the butter on the toast and it also means that said butter is “ evenly spread” from the top of the bread slice to bottom and from side to side and corner to corner. In short, the toast is completely, thoroughly, and unequivocally buttered.
Not so in your average breakfast emporium. In many of those establishments I have to bring out a magnifying glass to detect the little spot of butter they administer with an eyedropper to the center of the slice of toasted bread. And in a lot of places, it's not even real butter but rather some unholy chemical concoction euphemistically labeled as “buttery spread,” “butter-flavored spread,” or my favorite “Liquid Butter,” which is actually liquid and hydrogenated soybean oil with a trace of salt, soy lecithin, and natural and artificial flavor, with beta carotene added for color and with dimethylpolysiloxane thrown in as an anti-foaming agent.
Honestly, I can't remember the last time I asked for buttered toast that it didn't arrive on my plate with a vague yellow smear across the center of the bread that made it look as though Remy, the delightful little rat/chef from the Disney classic “Ratatouille,” had dipped his tail in butter and scampered quickly across the surface.
Actually, I really do know why restaurants serve sub-par buttered toast. I don't like the answer any more than I like the surcharge on eggs, but.....
Let's bring Remy back into the discussion. A good chef like Remy would know that the magic number for an even, thick coating of butter on a piece of toast is one-and-a-half tablespoons. That's equal to about three-quarters of an ounce.
But, being a canny and cost-conscious little guy, Remy would realize that, with sixteen ounces to a pound, he's getting twenty-one slices of toast per pound of butter. As I'm writing this today, a pound of salted butter at my favorite restaurant wholesaler is going for about $3.25 for the cheap stuff and about $4.25 for the better quality product. Let's split the difference at $3.75. Twenty-one slices of toast per pound of butter equals roughly eighteen cents worth of butter per slice of toast.
Now, the standard two pound (thirty-two ounce) loaf of white sandwich bread that most restaurants use contains about twenty-eight slices and wholesales for about $5.25. Roughly nineteen cents a slice. Nineteen cents worth of bread and about eighteen cents worth of butter equals around thirty-seven cents that Remy's got to shell out for every slice of toast he serves if he's preparing it thoroughly buttered with real butter. An “order” of toast is generally two slices, so about seventy-four cents for an order of well-buttered toast. If Remy has a hundred covers (restaurant-speak for “diners” or “customers”) a day for breakfast, he's spending $74 a day on toast. $518 a week. $2,072 a month. You get the idea.
Now, “Liquid Butter,” on the other hand, wholesales for about $11.50 a gallon. There's 128 ounces in a gallon and if Remy just dips and smears maybe a teaspoon of cheap butter substitute on the toast he serves, that's 1/6 of a fluid ounce or about a penny-and-a-half per slice of toast. Add the bread back in to the equation and Remy can prepare a slice of “buttered” toast in this manner for about twenty-one cents. Forty-two cents an order. Forty-two bucks per hundred covers, etc. Does it matter that it's a crappy excuse for buttered toast? Nah. Not when the bottom line is on the line.
And then there's the toast itself. Inconsistent, at best. My grandmother used to like her toast burned to the consistency of carbon. Don't ask me why. My mother, on the other hand, liked hers barely warmed. A little brown was okay, but don't overdo it. Most restaurants strive to hit the middle ground. But lately I've been getting a lot of toast that is charred black on one side and barely warmed on the other. Or it's not really “toasted” at all. Lacking an actual four or six-slice commercial toaster in the kitchen, the cooks are slapping the bread in a pan or on the flattop and “toasting” it that way, or they're putting it on a sheet tray and sticking it under a broiler for a minute or two. Yes, technically it's “toasted,” but it's not really toast.
Tell you what; if you're gonna jack up the price of eggs by half-a-buck to cover the increased cost, I'd be willing to fork over an extra quarter to have a real, honest-to-goodness slice of buttered toast on my plate next to those high-dollar eggs. Real toast. Real butter. Slathered all over.
But I, as usual, am naught but a voice crying in the wilderness. It ain't gonna happen. And since Waffle House, IHOP, et.al. would likely look askance at me for bringing in my own buttered toast, I suppose my breakfast fate is sealed.
Or toasted.
