Bread first. Then everything else.

Sage Ellsworth opened Toast of the Town in March 2020 — two weeks before the world stopped. The plan had been a soft launch: a few weeks of brunch only, then dinner service by April, then a real wine program by summer. Instead it was takeout sandwiches and bread loaves through the back door for the first six months. The regulars came. They kept coming. By the time dining rooms reopened, the place had a soul.

Sage grew up in Boise and left at nineteen for Poilâne in Paris — the bread house her mother had clipped a magazine article about. Six years on the bench, the oven, the levain. Then Suzanne Goin’s A.O.C. in Los Angeles. Then Roman’s in Brooklyn. By 2019 she was looking for an Idaho building, because Idaho is where bread starts. Camas Prairie wheat. Wood River Valley water. The Pioneer Mountains right there. The space at 211 N Main came up that November.

The toast concept came from Poilâne too — a slab of country sourdough with a single thing on top, eaten standing up in a Paris bakery in 2009. Bread is a vehicle for what you taste next. So is toast. The menu is twelve toasts, the plates that go with them, six bloody marys for the weekend, and a wine list Eli built for the room.