In San Francisco, I broadly categorized cafes into two categories. In the first, everything is clean lines (including the pastries), the tables and walls are immaculate, and everybody has a Macbook. In the second, everything is in piles (mm pastry pile) the furniture is mismatched, and everybody still has a Macbook. Usually, I prefer the latter — I like to feel like I can sort of disappear into the background rather than stand out in the foreground. But, there’s no better reason for exceptions than exceptional pastries, right?
It’s super sleek-looking, but the staff at Craftsman and Wolves are very friendly and have fielded many of my questions about their extensive and very interesting pastry collection. And, seriously, those are some good-looking pastries.
One of their most famous, of course, is The Rebel Within, which is a savory muffin with, astonishingly, a soft-boiled egg inside. I’d avoided it for ages because it has bacon in it, but this particular day, my will was weak, and I gave in. It was really, really good. It may have also been the coffee, but I was actually shaking a little as I ate it and tried to take some quick pictures. (At $7 a pop, I wanted to remember it.) The muffin is dense and savory, and the egg really was perfectly soft boiled, which is something I struggle to do even without the muffin part factored in. I tried to figure out how they do it — maybe flash freezing the egg? This is one pastry I can confidently say that I have no idea how to make at home, so I only feel a little ridiculous buying it.
