I Ate a $17 Slice of Avocado Toast and I Learned Something About Myself

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Like every Sunday morning in some liberal elite urban enclave, it’s customary to spend them in a quaint little indie coffee house—all re-purposed wood and metal on the inside — just to participate in the boujee ritual of sipping on fair trade coffee alongside an overpriced brunch. The cafe bustles all around. The sounds of mundane conversations, gurgling espresso machines, and whirring coffee grinders provided a narcotic ambiance that almost distracted us from finding the perfect meal to complement our $7 lattes.

This is auditory consumerism at its most pretentious.

The air was overpowered by the aroma of coffee beans and glazed pastries. Trees lining the street outside swayed gently with the light September breeze, shedding Trump-colored leaves and projecting an autumn pantomime on the rickety barn wood floor that creaked and squeaked underfoot as we shifted our weight side-to-side in each chair, nervously deliberating and scouring the text-heavy menu. Breakfast pizza? Too many carbs. Chocolate chip muffin? Maybe if I wanted to look like a perpetual “before” picture.

At last, my girlfriend’s eyes lit up when she spotted a dish so ridiculous and so exorbitantly priced, that it just had to be eaten. Avocado toast topped with shredded crab and a fried egg. All for a cool $17. Normally, I would avoid such a cliche like heroin-laced PCP, but on this particular Sunday, I didn’t care if such a financial travesty would prevent me from ever purchasing a house. “Treat yo’self,” says Tom Haverford in Parks and Recreation, even if my bank statement literally states that I’m not worth it.

Several minutes after we placed the order, our racially and sexually ambiguous server brought this magnificent brunch delight in all its late-morning glory. Thick, chewy Texas toast. Smashed avocado. Spiced crab. Scrambled egg. It was almost like a work of art, a culinary Sistine Chapel worthy of an Instagram picture, if I was into that sort of thing. This ethereal dish almost seemed like an illusory dream, as if the gods of Urban Outfitters and farm-to-table kale descended from a Prius dealership to hand-deliver this slice of hipster heaven to me. I stared at it. I sniffed its scenty scent. Dear reader, I even took a bite.

With a medley of flavors overwhelming my pallet, my taste buds swirled as a cascade of toppings came crashing down on the back of my tongue.

This was the stuff of liberal dreams — even better than tandem bicycling to a Whole Foods salad bar to have a threesome with an endangered Northern Right Whale and Bernie Sanders on a pile of quinoa with NPR Tiny Desk playing in the background. Even though this single bite propelled me into the echelon of the cosmopolitan elite, I couldn’t escape an epiphany that hit me with the blunt force of a hacky sack to the groin. It was some real deathbed-level regret.

I thought to myself, “Well… I’m officially an asshole.”

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