The Best Piece of Toast I Had

Was at Trouble in San Francisco, 2018. My friend Leila took me on a morning run around Golden Gate Park. I maybe had oversold that I “ran,” but we somehow made it three miles. She told me about the owner on the way; something about being homeless and only wanting toast? We ran up to a tiny storefront with a big bench outside, people spilling all over it. Inside, maybe four barstools along the window and room to squeeze in and order at the counter. They had regular old Sunbeam toasters in plain view, two, and were popping them down nonstop. Thick slices of locally made sourdough. Like, at least an inch thick. You could choose between banana peanut butter or cinnamon sugar. We ordered one of each: The perfect swipe of crunchy peanut butter, not too thin, not too thick. Fat slices of Banana. That’s it. Pat of butter, heavy sprinkle of cinnamon sugar. That’s it. Light crunch all along the outside; soft and pillowy inside. Served fresh and hot right out of the toaster, so that the bananas slid around in the peanut butter, all melty; and the butter was put on cold and melted into the cinnamon, slurry sticky cinnamon sugar. Peanut butter hands, licking them clean. We got fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, too. It felt like home. It smelled so good. I think about it all the time, all of us licking our wrists and smiling.

This is not that toast. This is from Arsaga’s, also a great piece of toast. Imagine a piece of toast twice this thick.

At first, I couldn’t remember the name of the shop, so I trolled Google Maps along what I could remember of our route. Couldn’t find anything. So, I tried to Google it. “Toast only cinnamon small outer sunset San Francisco.” Nothing; or, only the wrong things. Eventually I landed on this episode of This American Life, based on this article from 2014:

“Trouble’s owner, and the apparent originator of San Francisco’s toast craze, is a slight, blue-eyed, 34-year-old woman with freckles tattooed on her cheeks named Giulietta Carrelli. She has a good toast story: She grew up in a rough neighborhood of Cleveland in the ’80s and ’90s in a big immigrant family, her father a tailor from Italy, her mother an ex-nun. The family didn’t eat much standard American food. But cinnamon toast, made in a pinch, was the exception. “We never had pie,” Carrelli says. “Our American comfort food was cinnamon toast.”

The other main players on Trouble’s menu are coffee, young Thai coconuts served with a straw and a spoon for digging out the meat, and shots of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice called “Yoko.” It’s a strange lineup, but each item has specific meaning to Carrelli. Toast, she says, represents comfort. Coffee represents speed and communication. And coconuts represent survival—because it’s possible, Carrelli says, to survive on coconuts provided you also have a source of vitamin C. Hence the Yoko. (Carrelli tested this theory by living mainly on coconuts and grapefruit juice for three years, “unless someone took me out to dinner.”)

The menu also features a go-for-broke option called “Build Your Own Damn House,” which consists of a coffee, a coconut, and a piece of cinnamon toast. Hanging in the door is a manifesto that covers a green chalkboard. “We are local people with useful skills in tangible situations,” it says, among other things. “Drink a cup of Trouble. Eat a coconut. And learn to build your own damn house. We will help. We are building a network.”

The owner lived in her shop for months, and opened it with $1,000 borrowed from friends. She renovated it herself with found materials.

Carrelli, icon. She wears the same outfit everyday because, “I need to be well-known.” Not my photo; found here.

Other good toast I’ve had includes my mom’s. It was varied throughout my life. Toast for breakfast, usually Publix-brand thin-sliced white sourdough, slathered with butter, sometimes cinnamon sugar, too, put on a baking sheet at 400 with all my other siblings’ slices of toast, and toasted in the oven until the butter soaked all the way in and the whole thing was crunchy. Actually, I didn’t like that toast but it seeded my aspirations for the perfect slice. I often tried to grab mine out of the oven early, but that always made me feel like a brat, insinuating that I knew better than my mom and/or didn’t like her cooking. After school’s toast was better, when we’d sometimes have bagels. Bagels are like chewy extra thick toast that you can hook your thumb through. My mom would slice a whole six-pack of Lender’s, toast them one by one in the toaster, and we could choose between Philly cream cheese or salted butter. It was always hard for me to choose. We ate them first-come-first-serve, by the half, standing at the counter. I remember salivating watching my sister eat her bagel next to me while I waited for mine to pop. Sometimes, instead of a-la-carte, my mom would do her baking sheet trick, twelve halves covered in white cheddar, melted in the oven after school.

My mom is a resourceful and frequent toast eater. She treats it like dessert, and like an all-purpose, all-day snack. Someone picks the top slice off of their tuna sandwich? She swoops in, toasts it, slathers it with butter, pours a second coffee. After dinner, while we’d have cookies or ice cream, she’d pull a frozen ciabatta roll from the freezer, put it in the oven at 400. There was always a stick of butter on the counter, ready for impromptu toast. Once thawed enough to cut, slice the roll open, toast it, softened butter, a glass of milk before bed. Sometimes she’d scrape the leftover butter from the knife onto the last bite.

I eat toast like this sometimes; like a special secret. Late at night if I can’t sleep, sometimes I remember that I don’t need to stay in bed; I can get up and toast myself a slice. I also prefer buttered toast to sweet dessert after a meal, and tend to treat the butt of a loaf as a freebie, popped down and eaten impromptu when I finish the bag.

The only photo I have of that day in San Francisco. We also ran to this beach and took off our shoes.

Me (right), my sisters and my mom on a beach.