Normally, when we’re in the mood for a light, late-night snack, we go for something like gressons spread on hot toast. We’re sophisticated like that. Every once in a while, though, we like to dine with the hoi-polloi. Helps us keep things real. Then too, we know that if you’re got your culinary fingertips pressed against the vibrant and throbbing pulse of the food world, you can pick up on trends. We had one, we were sure, the other night, when after a particularly tedious meeting, we popped by a little late-evening spot where we can go without our critic’s anonymity being threatened.
“The turkey breast,” we ordered, “on whole wheat.”
“We’re out of whole wheat,” said the guy at Subway. “Only bread we have left this time of night is urban cheese bread.”
“Perfect,” we said. “Urban cheese bread is exactly what we want.”
He sets to work on our sandwich and we’re thinking, “Urban cheese bread. This must be the newest thing.” We’re picturing goats frolicking on high-rise rooftops, hand-milked by city herders who labor lovingly in loft cheese-making shops, turning out artisanal inner-city rounds of fromage. Urban cheese. That is incorporated into the dough of fragrant loaves. Maybe there’s a coop somewhere downtown. Goatherds, affineurs, and bakers, all working together. Very hip. Oh, yeah. We’re so scooping Feast and Sauce on this one.
“So, uh, what exactly is the urban cheese in your bread?” we ask. And the guy who’s working the late shift and wondering why he has to get all the oddballs, looks at us.
“Sir,” he says, with the patience of a man who has answered many, many stupid questions, “that’s herb and cheese bread.”
