The Quest for the Best

Dear Pros,

Erika here. I can't resist a deeply serious look at a deeply unserious topic, and Caity Weaver's cover story for The Atlantic this month delivered in spades.

In her gonzo quest chronicle titled "I Found It: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America," Weaver surveyed 550 people across the country with the same question: What's the best free restaurant bread in America?

According to novelist Stephen King, the best free restaurant bread in America is served at Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse in Sarasota, Florida. An unnamed man from Boston maintains that it can be found at any restaurant in the North End. (As a part-time Bostonian, I feel that it is my duty to note that this unnamed man from Boston is dead wrong.)

Weaver determined that the best free restaurant bread in America can be found at restaurateur Stephen Starr's bistro Parc in Philadelphia, as well as his Washington, D.C. brasserie Le Diplomate. It's a brown cranberry-walnut bread that "has an Everlasting Gobstopper-ish ability to harmoniously convey the sensation of eating an entire meal, with dessert, in every bite," Weaver wrote. (It should be noted that a correction at the conclusion of a Search Engine podcast episode about the story explained that she'd misstated the fictional Willy Wonka candy, and was instead referring to the three course dinner chewing gum from Roald Dahl's book and film.)

She arrived at this conclusion after assigning a "bestness" rate to each restaurant nominated in her survey, then hitting the road to taste-test the ones that ranked the highest. I read her methodology five times over, and I'm still fuzzy on the details, but it involved dividing the number of survey votes a restaurant received by the number of locations it has across the U.S. The higher the resulting figure, the higher the "bestness" score.

This 10,000-word report underscores just how subjective a "best" quest is, the rich cultural storytelling that can underlie these pursuits, and the fact that "best" is an endlessly debatable designation. There are undoubtedly scores of folks readying themselves right now to settle into the banquettes at Parc and Le Diplomate and declare whether they think that this restaurant's free bread is the best in the country.

Pros, I'm tossing this to you now. What's the "best" quest that you want to embark on this year? Rank all the restaurants in your neighborhood using a 10-step set of criteria? Ride your bicycle to every ice cream shop in your city this summer and grade their flavors, like this guy? See whether you agree with our Global Tastemakers rankings on the country's best bars, best cities for coffee, and best airports for food and drink? Tell me your plan. (You already know mine.) I may be asking you for your "best" list at the end of the year.

Take care,
Erika

P.S. If you're planning to be in Chicago on Sunday, May 17, and Monday, May 18, I want to put this cool industry event on your radar. A bunch of the country's top chefs are gathering for two days of business seminars, food throwdowns, and a live restaurant pitch competition at Utility, a community-first hospitality trade show geared towards independent restaurant leaders and brands, produced by Tilit NYC and Luce Ends. Use our special offer code FW50 for 50% off Utility tickets.