There is a house in New York City, it’s called Eric Kayser, and it’s a worth a pilgrimage. My order there is always the same: smoked salmon, creme fraiche, sunny side-up organic egg, capers, and shaved red onion, all that served on sourdough bread. It’s really good, consistently good. But…this is not the reason I am going there. No, dear. It’s because of their baguette. Halleluyah! It’s delicious beyond any other bread known to mankind. Its flavor is transcendental, it takes you to the altered state of being, into your own world where you can bask surrounded by a gold, crusty, crunchy, perfectly salty piece of art. The balance of the ingredients is optimal. It is so good it deserves to be the main exhibit at the World Museum of Food… if something like that existed. It’s an Eric Kayser baguette. It’s divine, sublime, superb, it has a status of being one of the top reasons I find life not just bearable but worth living. Have you tried it? Eric Kayser’s baguette delivers an orgasmic sensation. No need for olive oil or butter. Nothing. Just baguette. I usually eat a half of it on my way home (much to my partners chagrin). Yes, they sell the golden product in their store.

I come from a part of the world where bread has very important standing. We have been spoiled with quality of bread. It must be fresh, yes on daily basis. Moreover, both my parents worked in the food industry; mother in a grocery store and father in a bakery. At one point, for about three years in mid-70’s, in the beautiful Novigrad, small city in Istria, he was running a bakery. One of my summer jobs was delivering fresh bread for the bakery my father worked for (a little nepotism played a role here). The smell of fresh-baked bread runs deep. There, in that bakery called “3rd January”, now called “Brionka”, there was then (30 years ago) a bread called Servolane. That bread is the only bread that could hold a candle to the Kayser baguette. I don’t know if the “Brionka” bread is still good. There are now many other bakeries in my homeland. One of them, by the way, named “Mlinar”, is spreading all over Europe, as an another example of how good bread is made in Croatia.

          My quest for the Holly Grail of bread has been an ongoing process since I landed on this side of the pond, 16 years ago. In Columbus, Ohio, where I lived for 11 years, and whose metro area counts about 1.8 million people, I found only one bread that deserves my bow, made by Omega Artisan Baking. In New York, the best is found in the house of bread called Maison Kayser. There are eight locations of this magnificent bakery in Manhattan, and one in Brooklyn. Mine is the Flatiron.

P.S. Service is great, too.

P.S.2 I wish they served cocktails.