I finally walked into Tart to Tart for the first time since they remodeled this past winter. They were initially to be closed for a month or two, which dragged on to several months. “We’ll be open in December,” I recall one of the signs promising. But the dust didn’t settle until some time in mid-January. After taking a look at the changes, I honestly don’t think they should have been closed that long – a few new lights, some new flooring, nothing that spectacular. Perhaps they should have hired the contractors that worked on the MacArthur Maze overpass.
The offerings seemed to be the same, too. The tarts, which I find to be edible but not good enough or bad enough to write home about (or review, for that matter), were still the same. Yawn… what took them so long to re-open if everything was the same?
And more importantly, why am I writing about this?
One day, my wife Lucky came back from rotations with a look of excitement in her eyes. Strange, I thought, she often comes home so drained I can barely see her eyes. She thrust a half-eaten muffin at me, its white insides spilling out. “Here, you have to try this. It’s the best muffin I’ve ever had,” she exclaimed. I look at her worriedly. Maybe she was running a fever or was delirious from the day’s workload. Very seldom does she ever proclaim anything “the best I’ve ever had.” But she declined my attempts to get her to sit down and relax. I sighed and took a bite of the muffin. Despite being most-of-the-day old, she was right. It was the best muffin I’ve ever had, too. I tried to get another bite in but she had already pulled it away from me and was finishing it off herself.
Apparently her office is always full of goodies that people bring in. Her preceptor, bless her soul, had brought it in that morning – the muffin’s outside still a bit crispy warm and the insides, fluffy and fabulous. When I asked her where they were from, her face blanched. In all the excitement and enjoyment, she had forgotten the name of the place. Tart something. It must be Tartine Bakery. That’s the only bakery that starts with Tart that can actually have something worthy of Lucky’s “the best I’ve ever had” award. So we looked up the menu online (http://sanfrancisco.menupages.com/ - isn’t the internet wonderful?) but could find no mention of the muffins. Perhaps it was a special occasional item. We decided to be safe – Lucky should just ask her preceptor the next day.
“What?!? No way!” I responded when she told me that the origin of this delicious little morsel was the Tart to Tart on Irving. I was dumbfounded, flabbergasted. How could a place that mediocre have something so heavenly hidden in there? I wouldn’t believe it until I actually ate one that I knew came from there. And knowing meant that I would have to buy it myself. Sure enough, behind the glass counter sitting in the corner was the little chocolate muffin with his friends vanilla muffin and lemon muffin. We decided to get a couple of each – if the chocolate one was that good, the others must be too, right?
Well, the chocolate muffin was just as good as the first one I tasted. A white wavy swirl of meringue consistency was the only decoration on top of the dark muffin. The swirl, and the white filling that resides in the bottom half of the muffin below the popped up part are a delicious cream cheese-based filling that adds just a hint of tangy sweetness. The muffin itself is dense enough to stick to your ribs, but fluffy enough that it doesn’t sicken you to eat the whole thing in one sitting. It had the density of poundcake with the airiness of angel food cake, if you can imagine that. The cream cheese is just delightful, though it would be better if it was spread throughout the muffin rather than residing in the bottom half only.
Unfortunately, the vanilla muffin and lemon muffins were not as impressive as the chocolate muffin. Both muffins had the consistency of the chocolate muffin, but the fillings detracted from them. The vanilla muffin had a pudding-custardy filling that was not very smooth. On top of that, it seemed to have deflated, leaving pockets of air in places. The lemon filling would have been better had they not injected so much of it into the bottom. Halfway through it, I had to scoop some of it out because it was so sweet. I felt like I was eating lemon jam with a small piece of cake.
I still think that Tart to Tart is mediocre at best, save for that delicious little muffin they have hiding in the corner. Perhaps it would be to their advantage to close shop for a few months to remodel their sign and call the place Chocolate Muffin to Chocolate Muffin. For $1.75 a muffin, it’s quite a steal for the “best I’ve ever had.”
641 Irving St.
504-7068
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