Café menus in and around San Francisco have been afflicted by a glut of gourmet toast, and Pacific Standard’s John Gravois tracked the unlikely origin of this trend, not to tech employees with too much money or a realization that we’ve run out of food mash-up ideas, but to the eccentric owner of a little café called Trouble. It’s a poignant story about fleeting, personal connections that can both spread ideas — say, from a person served toast in San Francisco to a New Yorker reading this article — and act as a form of self-preservation. Gravois bets that the sweet, comfort-food-oriented toast craze is headed to New York next, and with places like Bergen Hill and the Shakespeare already serving dedicated, albeit savory, toast menus, it just may be. [Pacific Standard]