Plain Toast

The Hebrew language has a word for toast: tznim. You probably know what I am referring to, taking a piece of bread, sticking it in the toaster, and voila! You now have a nice piece of toast, perfect for spreading shmear on. This understanding does not always follow here in Israel. Toast here usually means what we call grilled cheese. Asking for toast in a restaurant is usually followed by the waiter/waitress asking you what you would like in it. I myself love a nice slice of toast with my breakfast. I would not eat sunny side up eggs or have a spread of jam any other way.

I went to a French style breakfast place recently and requested toast to have with my eggs. The waitress gave me a puzzled look and asked me what I wanted in my toast. Explaining I didn’t really want toast but actually tznim, I though I had averted a cultural crisis. She took my order and went into the kitchen, only to reappear several moments later. She asked me to explain what exactly I would like in terms of my tznim/toast. I explained what exactly I wanted, and detailed how one makes toast. I went through all the stages from slicing the bread to sticking it in the toaster. She looked confused and frustrated; I guess I was the first person to ever order something as exotic as a plain piece of toasted bread.

While she went off to explain the concept of toast to the kitchen staff, I read an interesting story printed in a corner of the menu. It seems that a few years ago, while waiting for a flight to France, the owners of the restaurant had their flight canceled. Undaunted, they decided to open a French breakfast restaurant in Israel instead. It’s a cute story; it’s just a small example of how Israeli cuisine is really global fusion.

After about twenty minutes the waitress came back with something that had gone from being bread to toast and proceeded to a lump of coal. I thanked her for the effort; they really toasted that bread, and got full points for being extremely thorough.