You all read my expletive-filled rant about the demise of the French patisserie, the only source of decent bread in this benighted pseudo-Euro neighborhood of mine. (I mean, it’s enlightened for a million other reasons. Only on the subject of bread is it still in the dark.)

I don’t feel the urge to swear and hurl things anymore, like I did last summer. But I still wouldn’t mind a good chewy baguette now and then.

So, Peter and I are walking along 35th Avenue today, over by the megaplex near Steinway. If you haven’t been there, just imagine the burbs: there’s a Starbucks, and a Pizzeria Uno. Also a FedEx/Kinko’s. And a Carvel. Even the non-chain restaurants, Cup and Cinema Paradiso, look like chain restaurants.

Peter and I are walking, and past the Pizzeria Uno, we see a new Applebee’s! “My god! This landlord must be stopped!” we gasp. (Ironically, the Applebee’s has replaced a Gold’s Gym.) This is just too much of the suburbs to bear! How can so much mass-market horror be packed into such a few short blocks?

And then just as I’m done sucking in my breath, and my eyes have settled back in their sockets, I see a smaller sign (perspective at work) just past the Applebee’s:

Panera.

Now, just up until last week I scoffed at this chain. But there I was in Santa Monica, and I was instructed to go buy bread for dinner at the Panera, and I followed orders. The bread was not bad at all. There was a good selection–various baguettes, loaves, boules–and the sourdough was actually, really sour. I’m more west-coast-oriented in my food roots, and I appreciate a serious, California-style sourdough bread–goes great with apricot jam for breakfast, and with sloppy joes for dinner.

So Peter and I went in. The soft jazz was toodling, the cheesy overstuffed armchairs were filled with bright-eyed folks using the free wi-fi. The muffins and scones were as big as your head. But they had some alluring sourdough, and some crunchy-looking baguettes. In this case, the fact that it looked exactly like the Santa Monica branch (5th & Wilshire) was encouraging.

We got our bread home, and it really is sour and delicious. And the crust is crispy-chewy like it should be. (We also, incidentally, passed Applebee’s and felt a twinge of too-well-off-for-our-own-good guilt. “I guess Applebee’s is great if you don’t have a lot of money,” said Peter. “Where else are you going to go out for dinner?” “Oh, yeah, huh,” I admitted. But later we had boreks from Djerdan! $8.50 for, like, three servings’ worth! True, no ambiance at all, unless you count guys in track suits, and no blue cocktails.)

So, I give. If we can’t keep the damn French guys in business, can we at least keep Panera going, and buy enough sourdough that they don’t stop making it?

(PS: Panera’s bagels look like an abomination: crazy flavors like “french toast” and “crazy sweet-and-chunky something-something”–OK, I’m paraphrasing. But if you order one, they dump it into the most hardcore-looking slicer, a piece of industrial machinery that is both brutal and elegant, not to mention ten times larger than it needs to be. When the counter girl used it, let me just say that Peter and I were not the only people to say, “Whoa!” out loud. It almost made me want to order one of those crazy bagels.)