The Search for the Perfect French Toast - The Lone Wolf

I think I may have found it.

The Lone Wolf in Amherst is what you might call an incongruous restaurant. Or, better, a restaurant at war with itself. In many ways it's a typical Valley crunchy-brunchy cafe. They do the tofu thing, the vegan thing, and the locavore thing, and they make a point of fancying up traditional dishes with all sorts of creative ingredients, many of them deriving from root vegetables. But the ambience is strikingly at odds with the menu. For one thing, and for reasons that I can't begin to fathom, the decor tends toward the Southwestern-kitschy end of the decor spectrum. I overheard one lady on my recent visit remark that it reminded her of Arizona. Maybe so, if by Arizona she meant a gift shop in the Tucson airport. It's not that I object to the introduction of a bit of Southwestern color to this lily-white bastion of old New England, but there's nothing distinctly Southwestern about the menu. And that seems odd to me.

The other odd thing is that the place is almost always packed with large groups of sweatpantsed college students, instead of the expected Subaru-station-wagon-driving, New-Yorker-subscribing, NPR-contributing, beard-sporting, pipe-smoking, left-wing, middle-aged, middle-class diners that normally flock to places like this. The waitstaff, too, consists largely of sullen college students who are more interested in flirting with one another than with bringing you (and by you I mean me) a timely coffee refill. This shouldn't be too surprising, given that Amherst - home not only to Amherst College but also to the gigantic UMass campus - is stuffed to the gills with students for nine months of the year, and their presence is much more marked than it is in NoHo - with its tiny population of Smithies - which has become my frame of reference for these things. But still, it seems a bit strange.

All that aside, I have never had a meal at the Lone Wolf that wasn't outstanding, or at least very, very close to outstanding. So I was expecting to be impressed by their challah french toast (the only french toast on the menu), but I wasn't expecting what happened to happen. What happened was this:



Do you know challah bread? You don't? Well, you should. Go get some right now - I'll wait.

No, hold on, don't go. I've got a better idea: stop reading this immediately and go book a flight or hop a train or start the car, wherever you are, and meet me at the Lone Wolf by the time it opens tomorrow morning so we can have their challah french toast together. According to the menu, the bread - large and chunky but very, very light and spongy - is dipped in a cinnamon-vanilla sauce before cooking, and, while I didn't taste much obvious cinnamon or vanilla in it, I suspect that these ingredients exert some subliminal influence on the wonderfulness that unfolds when you bite into it. While cooking, the the bread develops a crisp outer skin that cracks, like the thinnest of creme-brulee crusts, under your teeth. And overall, it maintains its spongy consistency throughout, gleefully welcoming the (what I'm pretty sure is real) maple syrup and melty butter like long lost friends, sitting them down, making them comfortable, getting them a cup of tea. And the best part? The part that made me weep with joy right there at the table, while my waiter tried to impress one of the waitresses with his knowledge of Japanese cinema and a nearby table frat boys started hurling spitwads at a hand-painted kokopelli figurine? It was dusted with powdered sugar. Yes, for only the second time since I started this search (the other one being at Amanouz a few days earlier) I encountered french toast in its natural, bespeckled state, and it was glorious.

My only complaint - and this was entirely unexpected, I assure you - is that it was almost too much for me to eat. I soldiered through to the end, mind you, but I don't mind admitting that it nearly got the best of me, and I was forced to take a few breaks before completing it entirely. Which meant that the last piece was pretty cold, which was a shame.

I intend to keep searching, of course - to stop now would be a disservice to all of you who've traveled with me this far. But I would advise you to take a good, long look at the photograph above, for it may very well be The Perfect French Toast.