Looking for Mr. Breadboard
Jun 21st, 2008 by Marilyn
One of our frequent hometown haunts is Teller’s, which serves modern Italian in a one-of-a-kind restored bank building. Teller’s is only a few blocks from our house and provides great wine and just the right amount of lighting for date night.
It also provides very nice prosciutto, figs and parmesan – good on any night. 
But it’s not just making drunky-googly eyes at my husband over brick-oven pizza that keeps me coming back here. That is a lovely perk, to be sure – but this is what brings me back. 
After your drinks and before your meal, they bring out nicely crusty bread on a jagged board holding olive oil and two built-in treasures: rock salt and ground pepper. I love this board. I wait for the board. Greg might say your hair’s on fire, but I am still watching the kitchen like a calf waiting for milk. I want that bread to come out.
The wood is so tactile, so rustic and pretty that I’m quite sure it makes the bread taste better. Dip, salt, dip, pepper, dip, dip…hmm…can we get some more bread over here? It makes for chewy crust nirvana, and after looking everywhere for my own salt-and-pepper indented board, I’ve decided they probably have theirs made.
What…ask them? Please! Enough with that sensible talk. I just want them to keep bringing more, so I can turn that board over and over as if I’ve never seen the wonder that is bread and wood before. If you have seen one like it, know how to make it or where to get it, I’d be eternally grateful, and that usually involves cookies. Many thanks.
No help here. After the kiddo went to Johnny Carino’s, he fell in love with dipping bread, only it involved roasted garlic bits and Italian seasonings. Johnny Carino’s isn’t that anymore, and doesn’t have timballos anymore, so we make do at home. On Corelle.
Well, I *said* I wouldn’t be any help…
It’s not as cool as Teller’s breadboards, but when we have the dinner that, in my younger, more hick days, was called ‘snack for supper’ (basically antipasti not followed by anything), I set out the bread (for tearing! cut bread? please.) on a square wooden cutting board. It’s old enough to have a tiny bit of character, unlike the delightful if too-new-for-character bamboo cutting boards I favor otherwise.
I also want a wooden cheese plate. With a glass dome. There is certainly something about wooden serving utensils that feels comfortingly rustic to me. Like I’m doing things how they should be done — like there’s the weight of tradition behind it.
Wouldn’t be hard to make. Toughest part would be finding the right piece of wood with the perfect amount of character.
Umm…bring a BIG handbag? LOL
I’m kidding. Well…my Mom would do that. She’s got sticky fingers.
oh…I would adore this bread board…I need one,too…
Ooooh, Tellers. I’m so glad I agreed to eat there again this year for Valentine’s Day. It was yummy and darkened the memory of my daughter puking her pasta on me in Tellers 12 years ago.
Hi. Found your blog via Slashfood (I’m so making those mini-muffins). But then I kept reading and saw your post on Tellers and I knew where you were.
I miss Lawrence…
Carino’s, part II: when we took Mom for her birthday dinner, they served the timballos in Lodge cast iron skillets (yes, we looked under to check), on charred wooden trivets even more weathered than those breadboards. Carl looked at them and said “You need one of those,” and our waiter overhead, picked one up, and placed it atop our stack of to-go boxes. (It was too small, so I threw it back… think they were 8″ skillets, my smallest two(!) are 9″)
Sadly, their bread boards are really boring, or I’d've acquired one for you in the same manner.