I've gotten tired of the self-deprecating "look at us eating $4 toast" conversations. It's like, hey, we get it hip San Franciscans, you like fancy toast. I love fancy toast occasionally too, especially when eating it gives me an excuse to visit Trouble Coffee in the Outer Sunset. But while I'm tired of the mock complaining (and grand generalizations) about toast prices, I loved this thoughtful exploration of the amazing woman behind San Francisco's love of thick bread slathered in butter: Trouble's Giulietta Carrelli.
Pacific Magazine's John Gravois did some detective work on the origins of the fancy toast phenomenon and ended up with this moving profile of Giulietta. If you've been to her outpost by the beach, you know this animated, chatty, engaging woman covered in scarves and tattoos. And you've likely snacked on her Build Your Own Damn House combo: the mouth watering, adrenaline-spiking combo of coffee, cinnamon toast, and a fresh coconut that costs just a little more than you pay for a bagel and cream cheese elsewhere. The story of Build Your Own Damn House, and her other creative menu names, doesn't originate in some sort of silly attitude, rather it offers insight into Giulietta's lifelong struggles with poverty and mental illness.
"She has a good toast story," writes Gravois. "She grew up in a rough neighborhood of Cleveland in the ’80s and ’90s in a big immigrant family, her father a tailor from Italy, her mother an ex-nun. The family didn’t eat much standard American food. But cinnamon toast, made in a pinch, was the exception. 'We never had pie,' Carrelli says. 'Our American comfort food was cinnamon toast.'" He goes on to write about her "schizoaffective disorder, a condition that combines symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolarity. People who have it are susceptible to both psychotic episodes and bouts of either mania or depression."
I really loved getting a well-written history on the woman my friends and I mainly know as the owner of the most charismatic cafe in town. I highly recommend reading about her – and sharing her story with other folks – the next time you're stuck in a conversation with people bitching about pricey toast.
P.S. Build Your Own Damn House is a really great deal and always has been.
Photo by Myleen Hollero for "Josey Baker, Bread Winner"