Some have seen it in the basement of the Women’s Building. A few have encountered it on the fourth floor of the garage at Mission and Bartlett, and — most memorably — on the back of the 22-Fillmore. Rumor is it spent at least a week in the teacher’s lounge at Horace Mann.
Its wherebouts have been the source of intense speculation for months — especially now that the machine is rumored to be a front-runner for the coveted James Beard award. Last year, the award went to the restaurant Flour + Water.
“At first I didn’t realize it was that special,” says Gloria Luo, who encountered the machine for the first — and only — time while having her tires rotated at B&W auto repair three weeks ago. “It was a room-temperature egg salad sandwich on white bread wrapped in cellophane — but it was a room-temperature egg salad sandwich that was — I dunno — different.”
“I should certainly hope it was different,” said the vending machine’s chef and operator, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of complete anonymity. “I cooked those eggs sous vide for an hour in a water bath of 64.5 degrees (Celsius) until they were set to a custard-like consistency. I then chilled them in a cold-water bath. As they chilled, I hand-whipped my own mayonnaise, minced heirloom celery that I grow in a drywall bucket on the roof of my apartment building, added a handful of chives stolen from Alice Waters’ backyard, and ground in salt I hand-harvested from the Pacific Ocean and pepper that I foraged during a backpacking trip down the Malabar Coast and brought back to America in an old sweat sock.”
“I’m not even going to tell you where I grow my wheat. Let’s just say that it’s a very special microclimate.”
The machine’s proprietor asked that nothing — not gender, not age, not educational background — be revealed. But discussion was frank and open the subject of what was described as the challenge of all — the duplication of vending machine white bread. “That texture,” the chef sighed. “Not quite firm. Not quite soggy. Not quite fresh. Not quite stale.”
The solution was found behind the locked doors of the old Hostess factory on Bryant. The Wonder Bread assembly lines were restarted and tinkered with it until perfection had been attained. Once that was accomplished, the production line was replicated at 1/33 scale along the wall of a friend’s studio apartment on Shotwell.
The vending machine’s recent hiatus has had a dramatic effect on the foodie blogosphere, not unlike that brought on by the unpredictable migrations of the chef Peter Chang. The vending machine was last noted three weeks ago, when it appeared at the corner of the Muni bus yard at Mariposa and Bryant, filled with subtly fermented Ding Dongs.
Excited Twitter postings last week of a vending machine in the men’s restroom at Dolores Park led to a mob scene, but the crowds that assembled found only a glass-knobbed vintage cigarette machine filled with hand-rolled cigarettes tucked into individual crocheted yarn cozies. In other words: false alarm.
On the subject of when and where the machine will appear again, the mystery chef remains adamantly silent — but coy.
“I’m just going to say two words: “Jell-O.” And “Salad.”
this is still awesome.