The Search for the Perfect French Toast - The Green Bean

Before I tell you about my latest french toast (mis)adventure, I've got a couple of items that I need to mention. First, it has come to my attention that sometime in the late 1970s a British band called Streetband recorded what may be the only, and is certainly the best, song about toast. It is not specifically about french toast, and, indeed, some of the song's percussion would have been completely impossible if it had been about french toast, but it still deserves a mention here.

Watch this and you'll see why. You'll also grin, giggle, and wonder how you've made it this long without this song in your life. That's a promise.



You're welcome.

The other thing I need to tell you also pertains to toast, naturally, and to french toast, specifically. Earlier this week I was in Oklahoma, and while there I went with my father to a restaurant called the Classen Grill. The Classen Grill is an OKC staple, one of the city's few non-chain restaurants that manages both to draw a loyal clientele and to produce some pretty tasty food. I'd been there several times before, usually to try one of their southwestern-inflected brunch items, but this time my french-toast antennae, in prime toast-finding condition, called my attention to a menu item called "Memphis French Toast." As someone who's about to move to Tennessee and who, moreover, hadn't yet considered the possibility that there might be regional variations in the manner french toast is prepared, I was intrigued. What if I were to go to Memphis soon and unexpectedly find myself forced to eat french toast? Would I be prepared? I already knew that I'd fare well if ever I got myself into a similar predicament in the Mediterranean, but in Memphis? I simply had no idea.

So of course I ordered it.

It's a good thing that I've been limiting my search for The Perfect French Toast to the restaurants in and around the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, because otherwise the Classen Grill's Memphis French Toast would have presented me with quite a dilemma. This is not because it is, in fact, TPFT - it's very good, but it's not perfect. What it is, rather, is The World's Most Ridiculous French Toast. Or at least I'm pretty sure it is. If I'd discovered it in Massachusetts I might have been forced to open up an entirely new category and scour the Valley for other potentially ridiculous french toasts. As it is, I'm under no such obligation, and thank god for that.

Unfortunately, I failed to take a photograph of this meal, so you'll just have to trust me. Memphis French Toast, apparently, is this: two large slices of thick white bread, dipped in a cinnamon batter and grilled. One of the slices is topped with banana slices, honey, and peanut butter, then the other slice is placed on top of it - like a french toast sandwich. The whole is then sprinkled with powdered sugar and served with maple syrup, butter, and a compulsory side of bacon.

It was deadly.

No, I'm serious. It was deadly.

It was also enough to get me excited about moving to Tennessee again (I've been afflicted with a bad case of ambivalence lately), assuming, of course, that they really do eat their french toast like this in Memphis. It's only like two hours from Nashville, which means this question can be pretty easily answered, once I've recovered sufficiently.

But anyway, on to the main object of this post, about which I actually plan to say very little.


The Green Bean

The Green Bean is a relatively new establishment that has quickly become one of the most popular brunch spots in NoHo. They serve locally grown, organic food in creative ways to ethically-minded diners, most of whom live on the gown side of the town-gown divide. I've been there quite a few times - it's one of the places I've spotted Dinosaur Jr frontman J Mascis - and always had a pleasant experience. The servers are friendly, the food is yummy, and they let you get your own coffee by choosing from an array of second-hand porcelain mugs that hang from an iron tree above the coffee pots. On this visit, I chose a souvenir mug from Gene and Jen's wedding, and event that took place in January of 2008 and which, presumably, was long enough ago for at least one of their guests to decide he/she could safely donate their souvenir mug to the Green Bean. The mug made me wonder how things were going with Gene and Jen, people whom I've never met but who have adorable taste in animals, and whom I therefore liked immediately. I hope they're doing well.



Unfortunately, the mug was about as good as it got on this visit. I'd had the Green Bean's 8-Grain French Toast before - in fact, it was one of the things that inspired me to go on this quest - but I'd never had their Challah French Toast, which I was intent to try after my transcendent experience of the same item over at the Lone Wolf. Kate joined me in ordering the Challah French Toast that morning at the Green Bean, and when it came out it looked promising enough - a little floppy, perhaps, and not nearly as glamorous as what the Lone Wolf was serving, but it was thick and it had powdered sugar and I was pretty sure everything was going to be fine.



It was not. The bread wasn't just floppy, it was soggy. Eggy and mushy and lacking in flavor, it was like the Lone Wolf's evil twin. Kate agreed, and we beat a hasty retreat just as soon as we'd eaten all we could (just because french toast is bad doesn't mean it shouldn't be thoroughly eaten).

If I, Streetband-like, should ever feel moved to write a song about the Green Bean's french toast, I'm pretty sure it would be a dirge.