Sometimes, you go to a place purely because it’s funny to make a reference to it. I’m not proud of that, and I wouldn’t do it for a) a shit reference or b) a shit place, but I’d be lying if I said the thought process didn’t go down these lines. In this case, it is Le Pain Quotidien, with many thanks to John Mulaney and The Sack Lunch Bunch. I know this isn’t some quintessential little independent New York bakery, but it’s here, and that song exists, and there’s one right near the office. I am suitably unlate that I have time to pop in on the way, and so I do. I get a hot chocolate and an apple pastry, and as breakfasts go, it’s not the most substantial, but it is what I really wanted in that moment. The hot chocolate is nothing special, but I feel that’s to be expected. The apple pastry has the right level of crispness and flakiness, the filling reaching the sides and then some. Unfortunately, though, at no point in the process though does anyone quote Joan Didion at me, and to be honest it’s hard not to deduct marks for that alone, but I am a more objective thinker than that.