morning bun

It's pretty great living on the fatness corridor. Tartine is literally across the street. Delfina is next door. Bi-rite is halfway down the block. Pastries, pizza, and ice-cream. As Roger Taylor says: sheer heart attack.

Tartine is my coffee spot. I go every morning at 8 a.m., fill up my travel mug, and make the long drive to work listening to NPR or a podcast, sipping caffeine. There's no line on weekday mornings (in contrast to the ridiculous half hour lines that form on the weekends). Coffee costs a different price every day depending on who is charging me. Still can't figure that one out. But all the change I get for $2 I leave in the tip jar anyway, so why does it matter.

Tartine makes morning buns that are famed across the region. Morning buns are profoundly appealing pastries that combine the best elements of croissants and cinnamon buns - they're flaky, buttery, unheavy, not too sweet but studded with sugar crystals and atmospherically flavored with cinnamon and orange peel. I try to restrict myself to one per week. Hard to do when you live on the fatness corridor. If I eat one on the commute to work, I emerge from the car on the other end with buttery crumbs mashed into my clothes.

Friday I needed a few paralegals to stay until very late. I got emails from them up until midnight. Friday night. They saved my ass. I cannot say that more emphatically: they saved my ass.

So this morning I cleared Tartine out of morning buns. I ordered ten. Tartine is too gourmet to be the kind of place where you order ten of anything. The teddy bearish hipster with monster eyeglasses behind the counter said, "Wait - really?" I said, "I'm serious." He counted ten out and, with a wink, threw in an extra. My heart blew up.

I made this offering to the paralegals. They were effusively appreciative, to the point where I became embarrassed and hid in my office to avoid any more interactions with them. My favorite paralegal said she would bring the extra one to her daughter. My heart blew up.

I just checked the Yelp reviews for Tartine and saw that one of the paralegals posted a review today: "This is totally making my morning... I am lucky though - no need to wait in line - someone brought them into the office for me..."

The moral of the story: living on the fatness corridor will make your heart blow up, in more ways than one.