It is 7 a.m., 59° and headed to 72°. Details for today and the next ten days are here.
Tokyo, London, Los Angeles, Pluto—Tartine Bakery plans to expand and why shouldn’t the world have the perfect bread? (After all, I started a column using Tartine’s “perfect” bread as an excuse.)
But can one get too big for one’s britches? I don’t know. Certainly if you eat too much bread, but otherwise—I’m unsure.
It is kind of wonderful to think that people must come to the Mission to get perfection in bread, but then again, why not open perfection to the world? I don’t know. Is it selfish to want to keep Tartine Bakery here and no where else? Probably.
Is there a value in being local and eating Tartine’s bread here but some other wonderful concoction abroad or south that the Brits or the Angelenos or the Japanese have conjured up?
Is Tartine’s bread so easily replicated without Chad Robertson? I’m not so sure. At least I don’t want it to be so. I guess I want to believe that there is magic happening at 18th and Guerrero that can’t be replicated in far flung places. I want those places to have their own magic. I’m sure they already do and I want to enjoy their magic there. I don’t want to eat Tartine’s in Tokyo or London or L.A. Maybe Pluto.