transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:01] This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Zapier. AI has changed so much of the way people work day to day. There's so many little tasks that used to eat up all your time, organizing notes, moving data between tools, following up on things manually. Now, with AI helping out, a lot of that busy work just happens in the background. And it's much more useful when it's actually connected to the tools you already use. We cover a lot of trends on this show, and over the last few months, everyone's been talking about AI. But let's face it, talking about trends doesn't help you be more efficient at work. For that, you need the right tools. You need Zapier. Zapier is how you break the hype cycle and put AI to work across your company. With Zapier's AI orchestration platform, you can connect top AI models like ChatGBT and Cloud to the apps your team already uses. That means AI-powered workflows, autonomous agents, customer chatbots, whatever helps your team move faster. Join the millions of businesses transforming how they work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting zapier.com/search. That's zapier.com/search. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Liquid IV. Spring always sneaks up on me with those longer, sun-drenched days. I've learned the hard way that staying hydrated really makes or breaks how much I enjoy them, which is why I've been reaching for Liquid IV, sugar-free, because it's the only clinically tested hydration solution shown to hydrate faster than water. And Liquid IV makes it easy. Just one stick in 16 ounces of water hydrates faster than water alone. Powered by LIV HydroScience with an optimized blend of electrolytes, essential vitamins and clinically tested nutrients. It actually keeps you hydrated longer, up to four hours. It's extremely simple too. Tear, pour and go. And the flavors, mandarin orange and mango pineapple are extremely refreshing. Stay hydrated with the vibrant burst of candy-sweet mandarin orange from Liquid IV. The science-backed hydration you can trust and enjoy. Tear, pour, live more. Go to liquidiv.com and get 20% off your first purchase with code search at checkout. That's 20% off your first purchase with code search at liquidiv.com. Hello. Quick note before we start the show. Search Engine exists because a small but mighty portion of our listeners actually pay to keep us running. They subscribe to our premium tier, which is called Incognito Mode. It's $7 a month or $50 for the full year. Those listeners get ad-free episodes, bonus episodes and discounts on our merch. But really, the thing that they do is they make this show work. Right now, we are in production planning for our next season, trying to figure out the size of the big swings we can take, the amount of episodes we can do. If our show has kept you company on some long commutes or given you something to talk about at the dinner table, and if you're in a position to do it, we'd really appreciate your support. It is a total pleasure to make this show for you. If you're interested, you can sign up at searchengine.show, Incognito Mode, searchengine.show, 50 bucks a year. I feel like I'm doing an ad for us. Okay. This week's episode, starting now. Who are you? Can you identify yourself?
Speaker 2:
[03:35] I'm Caity Weaver, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Speaker 1:
[03:37] And what kinds of stories do you normally report? How do you characterize your work for people that are not familiar with it?
Speaker 2:
[03:43] Oh my god, I still don't have a great answer to this question. Sometimes when you tell people you're a writer, or I don't even say journalist, although maybe technically, they thank you for the good work that you do, and I always have to say, oh, I don't do that kind of stuff. So I don't do anything important. I get to do fun stories about whatever.
Speaker 1:
[04:03] This is a ruse. Caity doesn't actually do fun stories about whatever. She pretends to. A normal Caity Weaver story starts with something that feels defiantly superficial, a profile of Kim Kardashian, or an investigation into the question, what is glitter made out of? And then unspools and becomes something else, while insisting the whole time that it's not. The glitter question, for instance, led her to an industrial glitter manufacturer in New Jersey, who adamantly refuses to say who their biggest buyer is, leading Caity into a 3,000 word paranoid industrial mystery that reads like a thriller. I won't ruin the ending, but that's a Caity Weaver story. Recently, Caity started wondering about something that feels typically Caity Weaver-esque, a question that was weirdly both large and small.
Speaker 2:
[04:50] This is a question that I have been obsessed with for years. What is the best free restaurant bread in America?
Speaker 1:
[04:58] The best free restaurant bread in America. Why? Why did you want for years the answer to this question?
Speaker 2:
[05:04] Because I have a very simple mind. So I would eat free restaurant bread, and if it was particularly good, I would think, is this the best free restaurant bread in America? It was directly inspired by a restaurant in Atlanta called Bones, that I went to a few times with my husband who's from Atlanta. And this restaurant had a particularly good free bread. I really, really, really loved the beautiful gold. It was just a perfect bread. It was like when you think of bread, this is what you think of to me. It didn't really have anything in it. It wasn't trying to do anything crazy. It was just happy to be perfect bread. And when I would eat it, I would think, is this the best free bread? This really might be the best free bread. And I was kind of starting to convince myself that it was. But then, in the back of my mind, I was like, what if it's not the best free bread? As good as this is, what if there's another bread that is also free that is even better?
Speaker 1:
[06:01] But why is it important? Like, I'm-
Speaker 2:
[06:05] Do you, why is it hard for you to understand why someone would want the best free restaurant bread in America? Does that sound like something you would not want?
Speaker 1:
[06:14] I understand. I just wanna make sure that some listener who doesn't immediately understand would understand. I mean, I know the feeling of, I've had a couple of experiences, not of free bread, but where I'm at a place and I'm like, this might be the best version of this thing that exists on earth right now.
Speaker 2:
[06:30] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[06:31] And that's exciting.
Speaker 2:
[06:32] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[06:33] And I've also had the feeling of, I would like to know if that was true. And then immediately I thought, but I can't know if it's true. And then I thought, and that's okay.
Speaker 2:
[06:42] You're a quitter, you gave up. What if, what if you could find out if it was true?
Speaker 1:
[06:47] So, Caity, not a quitter, fell deep into finding the answer to her maybe impossible question. She began to research, in fact, the entire history of free bread at restaurants as a human tradition, which then led her to the entire prehistory of bread itself as a meal that people eat. Here's what she learned. She learned that for much of the time human beings have been on earth, some form of bread has been our most commonly eaten meal. Unleavened bread for most of that time, but bread. For most of human history, people did not pay money for that bread, but only because for most of human history, money did not yet exist, not because the bread itself was free. Taverns first appear around 2000 BC in Mesopotamia, and continue as late as the 19th century in America. A tavern is a place where you can eat a meal someone else has made for you, for money, but you don't get to choose the meal. You just pay for the one fixed meal they offer, which often was something like beer and bread. Bread you were paying for. Free bread cannot exist until restaurants do. Caity says that restaurants are actually a pretty modern phenomenon.
Speaker 2:
[07:56] So restaurants where you can pick your own food, and then they bring it and you pay just per item, are really fairly new concepts. The one that is generally regarded as being the first restaurant in the United States is Delmonico's here in New York City, and that began operating in the 1830s.
Speaker 1:
[08:15] That's how recent?
Speaker 2:
[08:15] Yeah, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1:
[08:17] That is crazy.
Speaker 2:
[08:17] Yeah, it seems like a good idea, but we just weren't doing it this way before.
Speaker 1:
[08:21] They're the first people we think who were like, what if people could choose and then you could charge them different amounts of money?
Speaker 2:
[08:26] Well, they described this as a French experience. They were maybe the people who popularized it in the US, we should say.
Speaker 1:
[08:34] When they started, do they offer free bread?
Speaker 2:
[08:38] It's a little bit hard to tell. It seems like yes, but starting from back then through now, people just don't put free bread on their menu. It doesn't say, don't worry, you're going to get bread. Even though you can sometimes find menus from very, very old restaurants, it won't say that there's free bread because they just don't advertise it.
Speaker 1:
[08:57] You know that feeling you sometimes get where you're trying to understand something that happened in long ago history, and you can see there's something the text isn't mentioning, and there's almost a profound sadness of trying to squint at the past and not quite seeing it? It's funny to me that restaurant bread is one of those things.
Speaker 2:
[09:14] You're right, that's heartbreaking to think about. You're right. Yeah. Well, so I found what I think is probably the first restaurant review in the United States. It was published in the New York Times. Which is, I mean, it's really funny to read because it's very kind of meta. It opens with the writer explaining that his boss gave him this crazy assignment, like go out and eat and report what people are eating. And he has to sort of explain to the reader that he's doing this, like it's a totally novel premise. He's just like, okay, now what you're going to read is me going to restaurants and talking about what I find there. And he mentions bread at different places. Then he doesn't say that you're charged for the bread or da-da-da. So you can kind of infer from how he phrased it that it's just being handed out.
Speaker 1:
[10:02] Okay. So we think that this, I'm just trying to trace where we're coming from. So we think that free bread in restaurants exists because before there were restaurants, there were taverns. Bread would have been a big part of the meal because bread was relatively cheap. Once restaurants become a thing, bread stays on probably because people are used to it, because it's a cheap way for the restaurant to kind of signal hospitality.
Speaker 2:
[10:26] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[10:26] Because people are going to complain in some cases if they don't get it.
Speaker 2:
[10:28] Yes. As a marker of hospitality, I think that's a good way to put it. Also, people were always used to eating bread. I asked a historian who I interviewed for the article, where did free restaurant bread come from? He said that it's the opposite of what you asked. It's always been here and it's only recently that it's kind of disappearing and a lot of restaurants now charge you for bread.
Speaker 1:
[10:47] I find that disgusting.
Speaker 2:
[10:48] I hate it. No, it could be the absolute best bread in the world. It will not taste as good to me. If I have to pay $1 for it, I would rather have a less good bread for free. That would make me happier.
Speaker 1:
[11:08] But of course, what would make Caity happiest is knowing that she was eating the best free bread in America, a country of between 750,000 and 1 million restaurants. After a short break, the experiment, the methodology, the investigation, the results. It's after these ads. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Mint Mobile. Take a look at your wireless bill. Between the high monthly price, random fees, and included perks that somehow make the plan more expensive, you're probably overpaying, which is why you should consider switching to Mint Mobile. Compared to what you pay with a big wireless carrier, you'll be saving a lot every month. Mint Mobile exists to fix the whole overpaying for wireless thing. They offer premium wireless plans starting at just 15 bucks a month. You still get high speed data, unlimited talk and text, all delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Plus, switching is easy. You can bring your own phone and number, activate with eSIM in minutes, and start saving immediately. No long-term contracts, no hassle. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com/search. That's mintmobile.com/search. Upfront payment of $45 for three month, five gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra, see Mint Mobile for details. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Bombus. Okay, I don't know about you, but the second it starts feeling like spring, I just want to be outside, walking more, making plans, just moving again. It's also when I start swapping in my warm weather staples, starting with Bombus. I've been getting into longer walks lately, and their sport socks have made such a difference. They're cushioned, moisture wicking, and they actually stay in place, so I'm not stopping every five minutes to fix them. And once the boots go away, Bombus slides are back in rotation. They're made from this lightweight waterproof material that's really soft but still supportive, perfect for quick errands or just hanging out at home. Also, their underwear and tees are a hidden gem, super soft, breathable, and just way more comfortable than your standard basics. And for every item you buy, Bombus donates one to someone facing housing insecurity, which makes it even better. Head over to bombus.com/engine and use code engine for 20% off your first purchase. That's bombas.com/engine, code engine at checkout.
Speaker 2:
[13:48] Let's check in on the Serta Counting Sheep. Why aren't we counting anymore?
Speaker 3:
[13:52] Well, the all new Serta Perfect Sleeper has the Q4 support system that helps relieve aches and back pain.
Speaker 2:
[13:58] We'll never get counted again. Nope.
Speaker 3:
[14:01] Serta, we make the world's best mattress.
Speaker 1:
[14:14] Welcome back to the show. So, I want to get into your methodology and your results. Okay. How do you even set out to understand a question like this? Because it's not like, you're not a magazine writer in the 1990s, you're not gonna go to every single restaurant in America. So, what do you do today? Like, what's step one?
Speaker 2:
[14:31] Okay, step one was, I just decided to ask every single person I could think of, everyone I ran into, like everyone I know, what's the best food restaurant brand in America? And I started tracking all their responses.
Speaker 1:
[14:41] Tracking how?
Speaker 2:
[14:42] I made a little spreadsheet for myself, and I would just put the restaurant location, who told me this, and sometimes it was someone I knew, and sometimes it was like cousin's friend. And then I would tally the number of votes. And also if they gave notes, if they described the bread in any way, I would put that down. So, if they said it was really pillowy, or if they- I remember one woman remembered the color napkin that the basket is served with, the black napkin, and that was like, it really stood out in her mind. So, I ended up amassing several hundred responses this way. I also should say the Atlantic, I think tweeted it out and put the link a couple of times in one of our email newsletters. So, I got some responses that way. But a lot of it was really just me directly asking strangers, like if I was in an elevator or something, I was going to ask them, what's the best free restaurant bread in America?
Speaker 1:
[15:38] Here's what Caity learned from her initial research. Chain restaurants were statistically over-represented, not because they necessarily had the best free bread, but because they're everywhere. Caity made a mental note to find a way to adjust for that distortion in the data later. She learned that people listed both fancy restaurants, which they'd apologize for, and unfancy restaurants, which they would not apologize for, and that many people's memories of great free bread clustered in their childhoods. At restaurants, their parents had taken them too. Caity's dad was still alive during her survey. And when she asked him about his favorite free bread, his answer surprised her.
Speaker 2:
[16:15] So his answer was bread that he was served in the 1960s at the Four Seasons in Manhattan. And I didn't even know my dad had ever been there.
Speaker 1:
[16:25] Very fancy place.
Speaker 2:
[16:26] Super fancy place. My dad was not a fancy guy. So that was how I found out that he had even gone to this restaurant was that he remembered the bread.
Speaker 1:
[16:36] Why was he at the Four Seasons?
Speaker 2:
[16:37] He was at the Four Seasons because he was visiting his dad, who he did not grow up with. His dad was pretty much out of his life. He saw him a few times over the course of his life, I want to say. And he and my uncle had gone to New York to visit him. And my dad said that my grandfather, who died before I was born, liked to show off. And so he took his sons, and I think my dad was a teenager, to the Four Seasons for lunch. And my dad remembered that the bread was warm.
Speaker 1:
[17:05] So it was like an emotionally complicated experience, but he remembers the bread being very good.
Speaker 2:
[17:10] When I said, what's the best for your restaurant bread? He said, the only one that I can really remember. Which also surprised me because I thought that any member of my immediate family would be like me. It was like, oh, it's this restaurant. Yeah, that was the one that just for some reason, like really stuck in his mind as being the best.
Speaker 1:
[17:26] And were you seeing generally across your data? Like I understand that it's not like census level perfect data.
Speaker 2:
[17:33] Almost.
Speaker 1:
[17:34] You're trying to lasso a cloud. Like I think it's okay. But one population you attempted to survey were celebrities?
Speaker 2:
[17:42] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[17:42] First of all, why?
Speaker 2:
[17:44] Okay. I had a real reason for this because I thought, who has access to all the best restaurants in the world? Celebrities. They can go anywhere. And they don't mind paying a lot for a meal. But many celebrities did not grow up wealthy. So I'm thinking, if I became a celebrity, I would still be well aware of where I had eaten bread for free and where it was something I had to pay for. So I thought, oh, I'll just ask a bunch of America's beloved celebrities, where's the best restaurant in America? And they let me down.
Speaker 1:
[18:17] Well, I want to walk through them. So LeBron James, you reached out to LeBron James.
Speaker 2:
[18:21] Too busy. Focused on the upcoming season. How's it going for you, LeBron? Actually, I don't know. Hope it paid off. What made me crazy was this is a question, even if you don't have an answer the second you hear it, as I do, with a few seconds of thought, I think you can come up with something.
Speaker 1:
[18:41] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[18:41] It doesn't take a long, I'm not asking you to go through your taxes and give me some, just think of your life, something that happened in your life. Can you tell me about it in a couple words? They can't.
Speaker 1:
[18:57] Chris Pratt was another person who reached out to you.
Speaker 2:
[18:58] Okay. Chris Pratt's publicist response when it came in. I do think they were trying to be polite. It was phrased so rudely. Here, let me get the exact quote. The publicist responded, we need to politely hold off as there is an interest. You don't have to tell me that there is an interest. You just say we need to politely hold off.
Speaker 1:
[19:19] Why do you think you're getting stonewalled on this stuff?
Speaker 2:
[19:21] I don't know.
Speaker 1:
[19:22] Do you think they felt like maybe this is a practical joke? That there was some opportunity to belittle them? Or do you think that they thought that maybe when people talk about, even though food is something everyone eats, that there's something revealing or it's hard to answer that question without it feeling like they're trying to signal in one direction or another?
Speaker 2:
[19:38] I don't know. I don't know if it's that their reps didn't want to bother them with this. I think some people maybe thought that they could be being made to look foolish. They wanted to know who else was participating and it's like, well, when does it matter? Is your answer so crazy that you're going to make a fool of yourself by giving it? I was so surprised by how few celebrities were willing to even entertain this question. I only got one. In the end, I only got one.
Speaker 1:
[20:09] Who is that?
Speaker 2:
[20:10] Mr. Stephen King.
Speaker 1:
[20:11] What did Stephen King have to say about free bread in America?
Speaker 2:
[20:13] Okay. Stephen King's favorite for bread in America is, quote, crusty and warm, end quote, and has served at Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse, another steakhouse in Sarasota, Florida. You know what? That's all I needed. I didn't even need him to say it's crusty and warm, but I'm glad he did. That's the sign of a wordsmith. He's bringing the bread to life for you. All he had to say was, Hyde Park Steakhouse, great, done.
Speaker 1:
[20:37] So he went into your spreadsheet?
Speaker 2:
[20:38] He went into the spreadsheet. He's the only vote for them, but... I better put him there. So he's wrong.
Speaker 1:
[20:48] This is why celebrities don't want to play your sick games. They don't want to be humiliated, and they lose either door that they pick.
Speaker 2:
[20:56] What could be more relatable than a celebrity revealing their favorite free restaurant bread? They're going to look like a man of the people, a man who knows what bread is free and what isn't. They're going to look like someone who eats bread. That's the other thing that made me crazy.
Speaker 1:
[21:08] I think they smelled a trap and didn't smell it well enough. I think they should have told their publicist not to write you even though, because it's going to end up in your place.
Speaker 2:
[21:15] Well, many of the publicists did not. But the crazy thing to me was, say anything. I'm not going to know if you're telling the truth. You can pick whatever restaurant you like. Just say anything. It doesn't matter. And it'll calm me down. But no, they wouldn't. They refused.
Speaker 1:
[21:32] You also reached out to the CEO of Red Lobster. Why and what did you learn?
Speaker 2:
[21:37] Okay, I love Cheddar Bay Biscuits. I'm an American. We all love Cheddar Bay Biscuits.
Speaker 1:
[21:41] Why are they so good?
Speaker 2:
[21:42] Oh my God. I don't know what the hell they're putting in them. But they are just, they're soft and warm and really salty. They're shiny with butter.
Speaker 1:
[21:53] Oh, I've had these biscuits. These biscuits are tremendously good.
Speaker 2:
[21:56] There we go.
Speaker 1:
[21:57] They have some Domino's pizza DNA in them somehow. They give me the feeling I like from Domino's. There's the breadsticks there. There's something really greasy about that.
Speaker 2:
[22:07] Yes. Oh, God, yes. Yeah. Your hands will be shiny.
Speaker 1:
[22:10] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[22:11] Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1:
[22:12] Wait, can you describe these biscuits, though?
Speaker 2:
[22:14] Yeah. Okay. So they are, what's this size?
Speaker 1:
[22:19] Hockey puck?
Speaker 2:
[22:21] I don't really know how big anything is.
Speaker 1:
[22:22] Apple?
Speaker 2:
[22:24] No, smaller than an apple. I'm looking at my fist and thinking of things that are smaller than it.
Speaker 1:
[22:28] Egg?
Speaker 2:
[22:29] My fist, years ago as a child, is probably the size of these biscuits. Maybe like a kiwi and a half.
Speaker 1:
[22:37] Okay. Flaky, buttery, greasy.
Speaker 2:
[22:40] I don't know if they're even flaky. Like I couldn't, the texture of them, you're never going to eat anything else that has this texture, this taste. They are warm, salty, buttery. Oh, I think they have garlic in them. They will keep them coming. They'll keep them coming. That's important. And they're free. They're absolutely free.
Speaker 1:
[23:00] Free biscuits feels like a luxury.
Speaker 2:
[23:02] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[23:03] And so, okay, so why, but then why, like they were just on your list probably.
Speaker 2:
[23:07] They were, they, you know, a lot of people named them. They are my personal favorite of the chain breads. And they're also something, even people who kind of were struggling to come up with the favorite free bread would often think of red lobster. It was a bread that is distinct in many people's minds. And maybe they would say, oh, you know, red lobster. But they were trying to come up with something, maybe that wasn't a chain or that they like more.
Speaker 1:
[23:34] But this was their real answer.
Speaker 2:
[23:35] But it was, maybe not even their real answer, but it was just what they could think of. It was like their brain is kind of frantically scanning for files labeled bread and red lobster is one of the only ones they can pull.
Speaker 1:
[23:45] So what did you want to know from their CEO?
Speaker 2:
[23:48] Anything at all. I want you to know what are you putting in these cracked out biscuits that is making them so good? I would be very curious to know. They seem like they must be of tremendous importance to red lobster because definitely for myself and for many people who I spoke to, the biscuits are truly why you go to red lobster. The food at red lobster is whatever, but you know that you can have as many of those biscuits as you want while you're there. So it's almost like red lobster is a Cheddar Bay Biscuits restaurant, and then they have seafood options. And the best thing at the restaurant is this thing that it's giving away for free. That's very interesting to me. It's like a restaurant that is very strongly associated with bread in the American consciousness in 2026. Another one that came up but not because people were voting for it a lot was Olive Garden. People would say, oh, is everyone saying Olive Garden? Olive Garden actually performed kind of horrifically in my poll.
Speaker 1:
[24:48] I think that's fair.
Speaker 2:
[24:49] People sort of associated with bread, but they, and maybe they even like the breadsticks, but even among chains, Olive Garden was not one of the top ones.
Speaker 1:
[24:58] Wait, but so what happened when you reach out to the Red Lobster CEO?
Speaker 2:
[25:02] So I was going through a kind of third party PR firm that Red Lobster works with, and I had visions of myself like going down to Red Lobster HQ, going in the test kitchen. Maybe he and I are learning to bake the Cheddar Bay Biscuits. I don't know, and I'll never find out, because they would not let me get close to this man. They didn't refuse to participate. They offered me, you know, I could talk to like a kind of random VP of whatever. They were not as excited about the bread story as I was.
Speaker 1:
[25:33] I feel like a surprising amount of people in your reporting treated you like a journalist out for blood.
Speaker 2:
[25:39] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[25:40] And I'm not totally sure why.
Speaker 2:
[25:43] The only person who saw me as a human was Stephen King.
Speaker 1:
[25:47] Or he just talks to monsters.
Speaker 2:
[25:51] Damn. Good. Fair enough.
Speaker 1:
[25:54] But did you strike them from your list or did they stay on?
Speaker 2:
[25:57] Oh, no, I couldn't strike them from my list. You know, I'm tracking the data. So if they had had the most votes, I would have said, well, if they had had the most votes through my complicated equation that I eventually developed, then I would have said, okay, they're the best.
Speaker 1:
[26:10] Okay, so tell me your results.
Speaker 2:
[26:11] Okay.
Speaker 1:
[26:12] Who's number three?
Speaker 2:
[26:13] Number three might be Red Lobster. But it's a little bit hard to say because the equation that I eventually came up with took into account the number of locations and the number of votes.
Speaker 1:
[26:28] Because the idea is that some places are going to be overrepresented survey because more people have been there.
Speaker 2:
[26:33] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[26:33] Whereas the best bread might be in a place that fewer people have been to.
Speaker 3:
[26:37] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[26:37] So you came up with some Haiti math to try to.
Speaker 2:
[26:39] Exactly. Yes. I looped in a statistician, a professor emeritus of statistics at the University of Cambridge to ask him, hey, I've collected all this data haphazardly. Can you make it into a magazine article for me?
Speaker 1:
[26:56] So he helped you refine it?
Speaker 2:
[26:57] No, he did not. But he did explain the conundrum very well. He said, if a restaurant had 10 customers and 8 thought that it had the best bread, this would seem more impressive than if another restaurant had 100 customers and 10 thought it had the best bread.
Speaker 1:
[27:12] So the thing you're trying to say, what percentage of the people walk out of this place thinking it's the best bread in the world, not how many customers?
Speaker 2:
[27:18] Exactly. Yes. So that's why it's a little bit hard to get to number three because I think Red Lobster maybe had the third most votes overall numerically.
Speaker 1:
[27:26] But that has as much to do with the denominator of people who have gone as the numerator of people who think it's awesome.
Speaker 2:
[27:31] Yes. So I really can only tell you kind of, I could tell you the chain restaurant that had the most votes. So this overall on paper is going to look like the best free restaurant from America because it has the most votes. So this is just raw votes. Cheesecake Factory.
Speaker 1:
[27:43] Cheesecake Factory.
Speaker 2:
[27:44] Cheesecake Factory. People love that bread. They love that brown bread. Have you had it?
Speaker 1:
[27:49] I have, but my memories of Cheesecake Factory are the cheesecakes, not the bread.
Speaker 2:
[27:52] Okay.
Speaker 1:
[27:53] The bread's really good.
Speaker 2:
[27:55] That's what people tell me. It was not my favorite free restaurant bread.
Speaker 1:
[28:00] And it's brown bread?
Speaker 2:
[28:01] It's brown bread.
Speaker 1:
[28:01] Like what they eat in like Middle Earth or whatever?
Speaker 2:
[28:04] Absolutely. Yes. We want breads that look like they involve more labor. They're different in some ways. So this is like a dark brown bread. It looks healthy. Turns out it's not that healthy. Sticks out in people's mind because it's, oh, this is a shade of bread I'm not seeing all the time.
Speaker 1:
[28:20] Did you try it?
Speaker 2:
[28:21] Of course. Yes, I tried it and I thought it was perfectly fine. Some people think that it has chocolate in it, partly because of the color and also because they find that it tastes a little bit sweet. I really love sweets. I love sweet things. This bread to me was not sweet. It was sweet in the way that you get a basil sorbet for dessert at a restaurant that doesn't have real desserts. For some people, that's going to be sweet enough. For me, uh-uh, no. So I didn't consider this bread sweet. But a lot of people named it, and specifically the brown bread. Actually Cheesecake Factory brings out a brown bread and a white kind of sourdough loaf. But most people named the brown bread specifically. They would say Cheesecake Factory brown bread.
Speaker 1:
[29:18] Cheesecake Factory's Brown Bread, the highest-ranking chain restaurant in Caity Weaver's survey. But what was the very best free bread in a non-chain restaurant? Where was that bread to be found? Caity Weaver has the answer. She's gonna share it with us after these ads.
Speaker 3:
[30:05] Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. Ever Google a money question and end up 12 tabs deep with 12 different answers? This podcast is your shortcut back to clarity. NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast breaks down financial decisions with a team of trusted journalists. They explain the why behind decisions like investing, home buying and choosing credit cards with clear research-backed insights. No jargon, no misinformation. Make your next financial move with confidence. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast on your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 1:
[30:35] This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Gusto. Okay, quick question. Have you ever sat down to just check one payroll thing and suddenly it's like two hours later? You're buried in forums, Googling tax stuff, and questioning your life choices? Gusto is here to relieve that problem. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. It handles automatic payroll tax filing, does direct deposits, and even helps with benefits like health insurance and 401Ks. Basically, all the stuff that you're used to stressing you out just gets handled. It's one simple monthly price with unlimited payroll runs, no weird fees popping up. Plus, if you ever get stuck, you can actually talk to certified HR experts, which is a lifesaver. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/search, and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/search. One more time, gusto.com/search. Hello, Search Engine listeners. I am here to tell you about a podcast I love. It's called This American Life. It's hosted by Ira Glass and his team of some of the best producers in audio. Each week, they choose a theme and bring you a variety of stories on that theme, stories that are funny, moving, big, small, but above all, true. I literally used to burn the CDRs of This American Life, and then on my 14-hour drives from Philadelphia to Montreal and back, I would just listen to 14 hours of the show, back to back to back to back. I think I've listened to more of This American Life than I've listened to almost any other piece of media. It's where I learned to love audio. It's where I learned to do the thing that I do. It's also such a beloved show that it feels a little bit like recommending people try summer vacation. But I'm doing it anyway because the show competes with summer vacation. Please check it out. If you're a Search Engine listener who somehow has not heard This American Life, I'm very happy to be the bearer of good news. Please go listen and tell them we sent you. Welcome back to the show. So, the answer to the question we'd been hunting for this week, the winner of Caity Weaver's Intensely Reported American Survey of Free Bread.
Speaker 2:
[33:07] I think there were ultimately two restaurants in the top 10 that were not chains, and they were the only two in the top 10, I believe, that were not chains. And it turns out that they serve the exact same bread because they're owned by the same person, even though they're different restaurants.
Speaker 1:
[33:21] So they're different restaurants, but same bread.
Speaker 2:
[33:23] Two different locations, same bread. One in Philly, one in DC.
Speaker 1:
[33:26] And what are the restaurants?
Speaker 2:
[33:27] The restaurants are Le Diplomate in DC and Park in Philly.
Speaker 1:
[33:31] And tell me about the restaurants and tell me about the bread.
Speaker 2:
[33:33] So the restaurants are owned by Steven Starr.
Speaker 1:
[33:36] Oh, very famous Philadelphia restaurateur.
Speaker 2:
[33:38] And I lived in Philadelphia for years and I walked by Park many times, and I never went inside because I assumed it was too expensive. But actually, it's funny, a college friend of mine who still lives in Philly was the first vote for Park and I was like, oh, I'm glad there's a Philly restaurant nominated. And then people kept voting for Park. Park ended up with of the two restaurants, even though they served the same bread, Park had slightly more votes.
Speaker 1:
[33:57] It also feels like it's meaningful that people were identifying this as the best bread appearing in two different places. Like that feels like a pretty strong signal.
Speaker 2:
[34:04] Yes, totally. And they were, this was a bread that people tended to give a little bit more information about. They would describe the bread to me in detail. They would not always accurately.
Speaker 1:
[34:16] What types of things would they say about the street bread?
Speaker 2:
[34:18] So the bread has cranberries in it and some people would name that. Some people would say it had cherries in it. They're just picking up that it has some kind of reddish fruit. Some people seem ashamed to be naming this bread. They were like, it's an obvious one, but I have to say it. They noted the temperature, it arrives warm, that they serve it with a nice soft butter. It was just a bread that similarly to the Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits. This is a bread that sticks in people's mind.
Speaker 1:
[34:51] So did you try the bread?
Speaker 2:
[34:52] Absolutely.
Speaker 1:
[34:53] And?
Speaker 2:
[34:54] I loved it. It was great.
Speaker 1:
[34:56] The best?
Speaker 2:
[34:57] I think it might be. I feel like this many people can't be wrong.
Speaker 1:
[35:03] Many people are wrong on many things.
Speaker 2:
[35:04] I know, but I feel like they can't be. I'm not a scientist.
Speaker 1:
[35:09] But what was your experience of it? You had it, your subjective experience.
Speaker 2:
[35:12] So it reminded me of the scene in Willy Wonka where they try Everlasting Gobstoppers. And Willy Wonka explains that it's a great candy for children with very little pocket money because it kind of gives you like a full... Wait, is that the Everlasting Gobstopper?
Speaker 1:
[35:29] I think so. He said candy where it's like a full meal.
Speaker 2:
[35:31] It's a full meal.
Speaker 1:
[35:32] And it like evolves as you're eating it. Like you feel like...
Speaker 2:
[35:34] Yes, you get like soup and you're moved through the mains and then you end on dessert. And it sort of felt like that because it has this kind of nice warm, rich, buttery, savory, nutty component with the walnuts. But then you also get the cranberry. So it's like you have the savory, you have the sweet. It is a thick, hearty bread. It really felt like a meal by itself. Like I could just have this and a glass of water and be good to go.
Speaker 1:
[36:03] Like this is what people would have happily eaten 20,000 years ago.
Speaker 2:
[36:07] Oh my God, they would have been over the moon to eat something this good. I'm sure they weren't even bread this good. But yes, it's like bread. You know, it just felt like this could sustain my life. I could live off this bread.
Speaker 1:
[36:18] Did you feel, obviously this is a hard question to answer, but like eating it, did you feel either like certainty or at least satisfied that you had found the thing you were looking for?
Speaker 2:
[36:30] I was like, okay, this bread is really pretty freaking good. Everyone's right. Yeah. God, if I hadn't liked it, I guess we would have scrapped the story months in. It was a relief to find the bread really delicious. But if I hadn't liked it, like the Cheesecake Factory bread, I would say it was ultimately slightly disappointed by it because so many people loved that. But they disproportionately loved this other bread. And I think that the people who love this bread were right. I think it's really good. I mean, anyone else is welcome to do a more thorough study than I have done. I think you're going to have trouble getting funding for such a study. I have probably pushed to the extreme outer limits of what anyone will tolerate in terms of time and money spent investigating this.
Speaker 1:
[37:20] But you want people who have theories to continue to email you forever for the rest of your career.
Speaker 2:
[37:23] Honestly, yes.
Speaker 1:
[37:24] Really?
Speaker 2:
[37:25] Why not? I mean, if you really think you know the best one, I'll put it on my list, like my personal list of, oh, if I'm ever in St. Louis, I have to try this bread and see if it's better than the bread that I've named the best.
Speaker 1:
[37:37] So you both found it and you feel like you're still looking.
Speaker 2:
[37:40] I guess so. I'm pretty confident I found it.
Speaker 1:
[37:43] And what did you learn from being the best free restaurant bread in America?
Speaker 2:
[37:45] That I love the best free restaurant bread in America. That I love free bread.
Speaker 1:
[37:52] Okay, the names of the restaurants in Philly and DC are?
Speaker 2:
[37:55] Are Park, P-A-R-C, it's French in Philly. Actually, they're both French, I guess, and Le Diplomate in DC.
Speaker 1:
[38:03] There's this thing you mentioned in the story, which I didn't totally know what it meant to you. You mentioned this almost offhandedly where you say, you talk about your dad getting sick, you talk about visiting him in Santa Fe, and you describe how he ordered the red lobster ultimate feast, which includes the biscuits, but that he didn't finish his bread, he said it tasted like sawdust. What did that story mean to you? Why did you mention it in the course of this reporting?
Speaker 2:
[38:30] So, you know, it's funny, when my dad named the Four Seasons, I had actually been expecting him to say red lobster because I knew he loved that bread. And so I was surprised that he hadn't named it. And I guess I included it because maybe it was to show that I do also have like a real life where things happen to me. And it's not just like, I create the adventure and try and free bread like endlessly on someone else's dime. Like there, I was also like living a real life while I was reporting this story.
Speaker 1:
[39:03] Here's what confused me about the piece I really loved and what confused me about your reporting, which I really loved. I mean, the thing that like a listener is not going to get from this interview, is like the piece is like, it's written in such an over-the-top, beautiful way. Like there's these highly evocative sentences about the bread in different restaurants, and it's hyper-focusing on this small pleasure that can totally go unnoticed in your life. And then there's several times you mention your dad, you mention what bread meant to him in the context of this like complicated relationship with his dad. You mention briefly on this like otherwise very like silly quest, this experience of being with him near the time when he was dying. And then Park, which is like the restaurant that ends up being the best one, he shows up there too where you say like he was from Philadelphia, it was the first time going to a city where he didn't know about it because he had died. And it's just weird because it's like you have this person who's trying to answer like the smallest question in the world. You're trying to marshal everyone's like focus and attention on this like tiny pleasure in the world that could go easily unnoticed. And then there's these just like background references to the fact that the person who's taking you on this adventure is also grieving. And I have like the intuition that these things are connected, but I don't totally understand. What do you think? Am I crazy or are these things connected to you?
Speaker 2:
[40:23] No, no, no, I think they are connected. Well, part of it is also that my dad was someone who, it's so funny, he would like describe himself as a gourmand, but had no money and in many ways, no one lived worse than this man. Like he grew up really, really poor in South Philly and had a lot of, much later in life, had a lot of health problems and physical problems that he just, he couldn't really get around very well, so his world became kind of very limited. But he still would not only think of himself, but tell people like when they met him, he's like, well, I'm a gourmand. And he's like, are you? Because you're just like sitting in this room eating like McDonald's. But he's definitely someone who, it's funny, you know, like you could say he enjoyed the little things in life, but he also enjoyed like very fancy things in life. And he, he and my mom were kind of opposites in the sense that when they would go to a restaurant and look at the menu, my mom would invariably order whatever is the cheapest thing. And he would very often order the most expensive thing. So I don't know, I guess I really associate both of my parents with just the experience of being at restaurants and trying to figure out, are you getting your money's worth? And one way to ensure that you are is if the thing you're getting for free is really good. You know, good free bread, that's you got to build that into the mental price of the meal. So, I don't know, maybe that's one of the reasons why I worked him in. It's also just the fact that it was happening at the same time. So truly, I was, you know, like, flying around to these different places. And he died before I went and tried the bread that I ultimately named the best. He knew I was working on the story. He was a big Atlantic fan, and I am bummed that he didn't get to see my cover story. He would have been really, really excited about that. And actually, one reason I took this job is when I was interviewing, I mentioned that my dad really liked it. And the woman I was interviewing with was our executive editor. She said, oh, what's that? I was supposed to have some tote bags. And actually, that is sort of like free bread to me. The fact that she just lightly was instantly, you know, she didn't know if I was going to take the job or not, but she's throwing out free tote bags just for the heck of it. And I was like, that's a classy move. I love this place. So it really, it gave me early on one of my first really good impressions of the Atlantic. I was like, they're going to send my father tote bags even though they don't know if I'm going to take this job. And it's like, they're going to give me incredible bread even though they don't really know, they don't know what I'm going to order. They don't know if I'm going to order. I might have this bread and leave. I guess I'm just easily won over by very small token acts of kindness.
Speaker 1:
[43:21] Small token acts of kindness. Maybe that's what this is. Things people give you, even if they're comically small. Without the expectation they'll get something back. Fortune cookies and bank lollipops. Things most of us barely notice, but which one American writer completely obsesses over. Our country's foremost free-bred investigative journalist, Caity Weaver. Caity, thank you.
Speaker 2:
[43:43] Thank you.
Speaker 1:
[43:46] You can find Caity's article and all of her work these days over at The Atlantic. Also, an important correction about fictional candy. While Willy Wonka's Everlasting Gobstopper is good for kids without much pocket money because it never gets smaller and changes colors and flavors, the candy that provides the sensation of a full meal is the three-course dinner chewing gum. Our apologies to Mr. Wonka. That's our show this week. If you're looking for a way to help our show in a very minor way, something that we always appreciate if you have time is to head over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. Our parents read these reviews, it makes them happy. And it algorithmically helps people find the show. Please don't jump on to leave a mean review, which people sometimes do when I ask them to leave reviews. Nice reviews only. Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Sruthi Pinnamaneni. Garrett Graham is our senior producer, Emily Malterre is our associate producer. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Our production intern is Piper Dumont. This episode was fact-checked by Madeleine LaPlante Duby. Our executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey, Rob Morandi, Greg Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Shove. If you have a business and would like to advertise on our show, please e-mail us, pjvott85 at gmail.com, subject line, advertising. If you'd like to support our show as a listener, if you'd like ad-free episodes, zero reruns, and bonus episodes, please consider signing up for Incognito Mode, searchengine.show. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.