San Francisco is My Home

14
Nov

Tartine

Author: kris, Category: Food

I had a minor professional setback this morning and spent a couple of hours scrambling around in fix-it mode. By the time I left the house to meet a friend at Tartine, I was walking under a little cloud of self-absorbed gloom, which the brilliant blue November sky, the flowers bursting out everywhere and the balmy weather did nothing to dispel.

Then I got to Tartine, and remembered why I love being a freelance writer so much. It’s because weekdays are the only time you can possibly get a seat at this toothsome little bakery, which is always full of people and often has a line reaching out the door.

Today I got there before my friend and ordered coffee for me, a cappuccino for her, a pain au chocolat and a slice of almond lemon pound cake, fortunately scoring two seats at a communal table by the door. I draped my sweater over one seat and put the drink and pastry in front of it, then sat down in the other. After about ten minutes I realized that I looked like a little girl giving a tea party to my imaginary friend.

My imaginary Harvey and I sat watching the room, which, being shy, I don’t often do. But there’s something about Tartine that relaxes me. Probably it’s the steamy bakery smell that wanders around crawling up people’s noses, and is so sweet that you don’t even mind how many other noses it was in before it got to yours.

And speaking of sweet…not everyone understands the art of making pain au choclat (or chocolate croissants, if you are not all pretentious like I am), but Tartine understands. The croissant is huge and flat and flaky, and filled all the way through — not just in one tiny strip — with gooey, perfect chocolate. And Tartine is the kind of place where you can turn to your neighbor and ask if you’ve got chocolate on your face, even if he’s eyeing your imaginary friend and, increasingly, you, with a raised eyebrow and a kind of worried expression, wondering whether you’re so crazy he’ll have to change seats.

This is not a place where you can kick back for a couple of hours and advance your novel or read the paper, but if you want to sit for 40 minutes or so — and you come during the day on a weekday — it’s perfect. On a weekend, come for the food, by all means, and since you won’t get a seat, take your bakery bag and your coffee one block to Dolores Park, where you can watch the golden retrievers bounding around and cheerfully get chocolate all over your face.