Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.                                          Franklin Roosevelt, 1938   We used to call ourselves a nation of immigrants.   We still are that […]

I have been reading on the Cleveland Park neighborhood listserv an interesting discussion. It began this time with the news that 7-Eleven has rented the space that used to be Dino’s Restaurant, Connecticut Avenue and Ordway Street, and will now open a store one block from the store it closed several years ago. I say […]

We talk a lot at Bread Furst about ways of increasing the wages we pay to staff. It’s complicated. Bread Furst’s starting wage for sales help is $12 an hour; that is 50 cents higher than the minimum wage in Washington but it’s hardly worth boasting about. We’ll increase our minimum wage again at the […]

You don’t have to know precisely where the shop is because the first thing you see as you turn from Divisidaro onto California Street is the line that’s there at almost any time but, of course, especially thickly on weekends.   The line is out the door and down the sidewalk where people wait very […]

I used to believe that the best quality of life is found in America’s smaller cities. That was before I knew Reading, Pennsylvania I spent much of three years in Reading and after I came to know it very well and to love being there, I had a greater understanding of the impact on smaller […]

My son Philippe and I were eating rib steak with our friend Michel. It was his favorite. Someone came to the table and whispered to him that a tray of already baked puff pastry had been dropped on the floor. He left us and went into the kitchen of Central, his restaurant. After perhaps 20 […]

I am driving across the country for no reason other than that I have not driven across the country before and therefore there is too much I have not seen. This seemed like a good time to do that. Seeing Asheville, North Carolina for the first time was wonderful; seeing Hazard, Kentucky again after 52 […]

I recently returned from a trip with Philippe, my son. We were in hot climates and at high altitudes and he reminded me several times a day to drink water. He bought bottled water for me and made me carry it around in my little sack. My other son, Francois, is calmly critical of my […]

I am a not an easy man to work for. (Ask anyone here.) I am frequently pleased but rarely satisfied. Each morning I walk to the bread rack to look at and feel the breads – to see if they are baked to the color I want, whether they were proofed fully before baking, whether […]

I returned early from a conference in California to which I had committed myself. I did that because Bread Furst was robbed. Two men invaded our space and beat Jesse McCormick with a pistol. It was in the middle of the day and brazen. It was awful. I wanted to be here and left San […]