The Search for the Perfect French Toast - Stables

I've complained several times in this blog about Route 9, the main artery that connects NoHo to Amherst. It's the part of the Valley that looks like it could be anywhere in America. Apart from a few farm stands and the occasional glimpse of distant hills across tidy farmland (oh, and a bison ranch), it's all big box stores, strip malls, prefab motels, gas stations, and chain restaurants. I spend a lot of time driving up and down this road and sometimes run a few errands along it - a visit to Trader Joe's for some reduced-fat brie, a peek inside Marshall's in search of cheap jeans - but I rarely think of Route 9 as somewhere to go in search of a pleasing dining experience. This is probably grossly unfair to Route 9, for nestled in amongst the Chilises and Applebeeses are some genuinely interesting-looking local establishments, but it rarely occurs to me, when food is on the agenda, to brave the traffic in search of them.

Stables is one such establishment. I'd often noticed it squatting there, a bit too far back from the road, behind a rutting parking lot, looking like an old red barn. It was the kind of place that, had I spotted it on a road trip, would immediately have caught my eye as a place where I might see some of the natives in their natural habitat, if not exactly as a place likely to serve memorable food. I pictured lots and lots of country-style crafts adorning the interior. You know the sort of thing: cute signs with homey sayings stencilled onto them, cross-stitched scenes of cows and windmills, hand-painted wooded chickens, lace curtains. The food would be serviceable and salty, the servers boisterous and friendly and maybe a little salty themselves, and the clientele would be well-rounded (in a purely physical sense) and well-aged (in a life-span sense). Had I encountered Stables on a road trip I would have looked around a little for something a bit more exciting before circling back to it. Which is probably why I didn't get around to trying it out until last weekend, and then largely at Kate's suggestion.



On entering, I was pleased to see that my (hasty, ill-informed, potentially unfair) assumptions about the place had been more or less accurate. There were the cute country crafts, there were the salty waitresses, there was the menu promising food that was certain to make you full but unlikely to change your life. The only large point on which I was in error had to do with the patrons - rather than being a gathering spot for elderly townies, Stables appears, at least on weekend mornings, to cater primarily to college students and their parents. The place was packed with them - so packed, in fact, that it enabled us to play a rousing game of "guess the college," in which players attempt to determine, based solely on the (hasty, ill-informed, potentially unfair) stereotypes attached to each of the area colleges, which school a given group of students attends. This is one of my favorite games to play in this college-stuffed valley, and on this occasion we were able to determine without much fear of contradiction that most of the students were from UMass, dressed and groomed, as they were, like conventional frat boys and girls (ball caps, fleeces, absence of facial hair, pajama bottoms). There was one group of dredlocked white kids who were definitely, definitely from Hampshire (the undisputed hippie college of the area), but on the whole this was a UMass crowd - there, no doubt, for the copious amounts of food that could be had for a relative pittance. But then, aren't all pittances relative?




Settling onto our stools at the counter, Kate and I were surprised - and I somewhat alarmed - to encounter a surfeit of french toast options. As I said in the last post, I'm trying, in the interests of science, to be scrupulously fair in my search for TPFT, to ensure that I am comparing dishes that are, in fact, comparable. Imagine my distress, then, when I encountered a vast variety of french toasts from which to choose. There was normal french toast, french toast made with homemade bread, corn bread french toast, zucchini bread french toast, and more. Reader, I tell you I was in a quandary. I wanted nothing more than to gaze upon and then devour a steaming plate of zucchini-stuffed french toast. But then what of my search? How could I compare what would undoubtedly be the heavenly taste of zucchini mingled with eggs and syrup and sugar to the regular, plane-jane french toast I'd had at Jake's and would undoubtedly have again?

But then a tiny, evil voice inside me said, "Oh, quit being such a stickler! If Stables offers zucchini french toast and Jake's doesn't, whose fault is that? Doesn't Stables deserve extra consideration simply because it had the foresight to include zucchini french toast on the specials board, while Jake's didn't?"

"But what about science?" said the larger, better voice within me.

"Science, schmience," said the tiny, evil voice.

"You make a good point," said the larger, better voice.

"Yes," said the tiny, evil voice.

"..." said the larger, better voice.

And then I recalled that I wasn't alone on this particular morning. Kate was here! Would she save me? The solution seemed obvious.

"What will you have, madame?" I said in my normal voice.

To my surprise and delight, she said, "I do believe I'll have the corn bread french toast, my good man."

It wasn't zucchini bread, but it was good enough. Thus assured that I would at least be able to taste one of the gourmet french toasts on offer, I submitted to the larger, better voice and ordered the french toast with homemade bread (if I were a stronger person I would have ordered the plain old french toast, but even scientists have to allow themselves to be human sometimes). I was thrown briefly off-balance when the waitress asked me if I wanted the homemade cinnamon swirl, chocolate chip, banana, or white bread, but I regained my composure quickly and ordered the white bread, thus ensuring that the playing field would remain more-or-less level.

When our orders came out they looked absolutely delicious. I took a picture, and the waitress expressed surprise.

"You're taking a picture of your food?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "It looks really good."

"That's nice," she said. "That's real nice."

Here's the picture:



Then it was crunch time. Or, um, brunch time. We doused our bread with real maple syrup (at least I'm pretty sure it was real) and started in, munching on brunch. Kate's corn bread french toast tasted like corn bread covered in syrup. We determined that it had been cooked in some sort of egg mixture, but the influence of that mixture was more evident in the crisp shell surrounding the toast than in the taste. And my homemade bread, while nice and thick, was bland. Bland and mushy. The middle of the toast was more like pudding than toast, and even with the addition of copious amounts of real maple syrup and butter it tasted like nothing at all. Or like a slightly sweet air pudding. Yes, that's it precisely.

I was disappointed, but I can't say I was surprised.

I'm glad to have gone to Stables and will happily go back, but when I do, I believe I'll have something other than french toast. The prices were good, the service was friendly if not wholly competent, and they get points for adding a bit of flair to an otherwise pretty basic breakfast menu. And maybe, once the search for TPFT is over and the winner has been announced, I'll be able to relax a bit and finally give that zucchini bread a crack.