Ebenzer: Waiter, more bread.
Waiter: Ha’penny extra, sir.
Ebenezer: [pauses] No more bread.
It’s safe to assume Charles Dickens liked his food. His most piteous characters - poor little Oliver Twist springs immediately to mind - were tormented by the hunger gnawing at their Victorian tummies. He wrote roast goose with a verve bordering on mania. But it’s the scene in A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge waves away the ha’penny’s worth of bread that ought to strike an uncomfortable chord with his modern readership.
Few people would choose deliberately to align themselves with literature’s most famous miser (“Bah,”said Scrooge, “Humbug.”) yet Australia’s belief that receiving bread in a restaurant is enshrined in the constitution is being challenged in our economically straightened, post-GFC times. As restaurateurs try to stop the bottom line sinking into the basement, more and more diners are being confronted with the character-defining question: Would you pay for bread?
It’s still a gutsy move for a restaurant to put a price on bread (or not - Noma caused a stir by not serving bread with its $485-a-head degustation during its Sydney visit). The latest to get a kicking is Sydney hotspot No. 1 Bent Street where, amidst an otherwise favourable review, The Australian critic John Lethlean praised the “outrageously good sourdough” then swiftly undercut it with this caveat: “All well and good, but we paid $4 per head for exactly half a thick slice of the stuff each, with nice butter. On that yield he must be grossing around $48 a loaf.”
In a word - ouch - but Bent Street chef and owner Mike McEnearney is unruffled by the accusation. “I’ve always charged for bread because I like to be transparent and upfront about what things cost,” he says. His point is fair: bread is never “free”. The cost is hidden in the fine print, factored into the price of entrees and mains: “You end up paying over the odds for other things.” (In the No. 1 Bent Street cash-for-carbohydrates scandal, the devil is in the detail: McEnearney says the waiters are instructed to tell diners that the outrageously good sourdough is $4, but they can have as much as they like: “You just have to ask.”)
The shibboleth against paying for bread arguably goes back to its ceremonial role in the dining experience. The peaceful notion of breaking bread wouldn’t be so convivial if it came with a price tag, says Melbourne chef Scott Pickett of Saint Crispin, Estelle Bistro and ESP, who plans to serve both baguette (free) and garlic bread (at a cost) at his forthcoming Queen Victoria Market deli. “I can understand why some people charge for it, though… it is a huge expense.”
In the future we’ll be paying for bread more often, but we’ll be getting more for it... good bread comes at a cost.
Reading the tealeaves across the restaurant industry nationally, in the future we’ll be paying for bread more often, but we’ll be getting more for it. Paying for a slice of dehydrated Vienna loaf and foil-wrapped butter is an experience none will embrace, but good bread comes at a cost.
At Clare Valley restaurant Seed, the house baked ciabatta arrives with smoked ricotta from local Jersey cows and ashed olive (olives that have been dehydrated then powdered). It will cost you $2.50. Go the set menu, however, and it’s factored into the cost, which makes good sense for chef Guy Parkinson. “Every restaurant is different. If you’re offering more of a set menu or degustation, I really think that’s a situation where bread is tailored into the experience.”
For anyone who complains about the $2.50 impost, he has this rather salient point to make: “The bread is something we put a lot of effort into. It’s a two-day process, it’s baked just before service and we cold smoke local Jersey milk to go with it.” And then there’s this: “Ninety per cent of our customers go the set table experience so it’s not an issue. Running a restaurant is getting tougher across the board, and as a restaurateur this gives you the opportunity to build that into the cost. (For the other ten per cent) those few extra dollars makes a difference at the end of the week.”
