no such thing as free bread…

Remember those good old days when bread was an expected service included in the price of your restaurant meal?

Recently, I’ve visited two Kansas City restaurants where bread is now a menu item. That’s right. You don’t get bread unless you pay for it.

Sarah’s Eat Drink Art, which is exclusively a soup, salad and sandwich operation by day charges diners at night for “Fresh Baked Assortment of Bread” for $6. I don’t know who’s the bigger sucker - them for serving it or us for ordering it. I admit, we may have self-implied “house-made” into the descriptor. I highly doubt that what we got was house-made. In our opinion, it definitely wasn’t freshly-baked either.

Then, there’s Cassis, in Town Center Plaza. They do serve complimentary baguette slices with your meal. But, diners also have the option of buying the Artisan Français multi-grain bread basket for $3. It comes with vanilla olive oil. Now, Artisan Français does make quite good bread; I’m not sure I need to pay for it in a restaurant.

Have any other cities out there noticed restaurant’s charging diners for bread? If so, I’d love to hear about it.

~ by ulterior epicure on April 7, 2008.