Artisanal Toast?

[randomness]

I missed this when it came out last summer, but C.A. Pinkham gets quite a rant on about artisanal toast:

You've got to be shitting me. Artisanal Toast? "Artisanal" goddamn TOAST is a trend now. There's officially no reason to try to save our species. Let's just send the Earth crashing into the sun and be done with it.

...

The most rage-inducing part about Artisanal ferretbuggering Toast has to be the price: The Mill sells theirs for $4 a slice, and I think a blood vessel just popped in my brain. Apparently, there are places in LA and New York which sell pieces of toasted fucking bread with ricotta and jam on them for upwards of $7. Like you do for toast.

...

This is a step too far, Hipsters. This is a step too goddamn far.

Also, “Artisinal Kool-Aid” is on a page referenced in comments.

Also this:

ETA: Yes, guys. I'm now aware that there was an NPR/This American Life/other media outlet story about the lady who invented Artisanal Toast, and that it was inspirational and uplifting and incredible and that it brings unicorns back to life and travels through time to go kill Hitler. You can stop linking me to it now, please.

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Finally, I found this from Hannah Goldfield in The New Yorker:

In the case of artisanal toast, the backlash seems directed more at the societal phenomenon it evinces than at the food itself. Who doesn’t like toast? The economic and moral objections to it could be used against many of the things we consume in restaurants—coffee, for instance—and Clement admits that the toast she sampled at Tallulah’s, a café in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, was excellent. Artisanal toast is hardly the first harbinger of our food obsession, or even necessarily the most egregious, but it’s become a scapegoat for a growing, broader cultural backlash; the toast that broke the camel’s back.

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a funny rant. Also I think Ms. Goldfield's piece summed up the whole situation well.

That said, I think there's quite a possible range. For me, two of the post's comments really give a sense of that:

I live a few blocks away from the Mill and grudgingly ordered this infamous toast. I decided on the rye bread with cream cheese, naively hoping there might be some special addition of some seasoning, maybe fresh dill and sea salt (wouldn't that be lovely and surely this tattooed hipster would make my 4 bucks worth while, right?) but got a thick slice of mediocre bread with plain cream cheese. I've been more satisfied with stale bagels and country crock than this racket. Sometimes living in SF feels like an episode of Portlandia...

But then there's this, which sounds closer to what you're saying:

I get charged $2 for wonder bread that has only a whisper of butter on it. I will pay $4 for a thick slab of good bread, and if you have toppings that don't suck I would be a customer all the time.

Personally, I think I'd have to see just what $7 in toast, ricotta, and jam was going to be. But I'd honestly start out skeptical.