Synchronicities, Treats, and Sauce and Bread Kitchen

Patio at Sauce and Bread Kitchen in Chicago

“Oh my goodness you are missing the BEST ONE OF THEM ALL just blocks away. Sauce & Bread Kitchen,” she replied on the Chicago Food Subreddit when I asked about a few different brunch options Jon and I were deciding between.

I’d been curious about this inviting-looking place on the corner of Devon and Clark since reading about it and driving past it more than once, but I’d not yet had the opportunity to stop in. We wound up brunching at Tweet in Uptown that day and afterward swung by S.B.K. right on the border of Rogers Park and Edgewater to check it out and have an after-brunch treat.

To say that my Redditor friend was right is an understatement. The treats were delicious (croissant divinity), and we returned for an early Saturday dinner a few days later. The menu is eclectic comfort food with plenty of vegan and veggie options. The online menu does not quite cover all the goodness of this place and we were happy we’d walked in to check it. The specials board is constantly changing. I was reminded of life in Chicago before the internet took over some twenty-plus years ago.

We ordered at the counter, eyeing treats for later, and went to sit outside in the lovely late-summer air. Soon after, a smiling and welcoming woman brought our food to us. I introduced myself and when she said her name was, “Anne” I asked if she was one of the owners. I’d looked at their Instagram page enough to recognize her from a photo of her baking bread back in their kitchen.

“Yes, one of them,” she said. Mike is the other owner, and they are also a couple.

We started chatting and mentioned we’d just wrapped up teaching a class together that day. “And you’re still talking to each other? Impressive,” she replied.

So yeah, it’s a lot to work together, play together, live together, hardly ever be apart from one another for every moment of every day, for days and months and years on end. We mentioned we moved from Ojai and Ann exclaimed, “I know Ojai. Well, I follow a baker there on Instagram”.

I knew exactly who she meant as soon as she said it. “Oh yeah, we know her,” I said. “Her sister used to live across the street from us.”

Our meal came and one of the items, a pile of coconut braised greens with onions and garlic and other flavors, was served atop a thick slab of Anne’s spelt and sunflower seed bread and another dish was on her baguette (we also had a salad, for balance, we’re not monsters.) We shoveled the food into our mouths, oohing and ahhing at the deliciousness of it all. Anne is the baker and Mike is the chef and hot sauce creator extraordinaire of their sister company Co>op Sauce - which began as Mike’s way to financially support a free youth arts program he had created called Co-op Image over a decade ago (at least that’s my understanding of their collaboration. I am sure the story is bigger and the lines are more blurred than this). They also collaborate with other businesses and farms prominently mentioned on their menu and labels and are all-around good people.

Just a sampling of their sauces

After dinner we wandered back in to choose some treats and found ourselves bantering with Anne and Mike, laughing together as if we’d known one another for much longer than the one hour we’d been there. I noticed a couple sitting at the counter observing our silliness.

The certainty that we’d found our vibe settled in. It’s like a mashup of The Farmer and The Cook with Pinyon in Ojai, two of our favorites, with its own Chicago essence embedded.

Once home, I opened Reddit to thank the woman who had recommended SBK a few days earlier. It turns out that she was one of the people sitting at the counter watching us an hour earlier. Because of course, she was.

And here it is, the magic, the flow. Even though she told us to go there for brunch, intuitively we went elsewhere that day running into someone we knew from Ojai (who actually has the same first name as the baker Anne and I would later talk about, this is just occurring to me as I am typing), which then opened the door for us to return for dinner a few days later right when she, the person who recommended it to me on Reddit, would be sitting at the counter.

She and I will be getting together for coffee soon, and I am happy to have connected with her. She’s a cinematographer which is synchronistic in and of itself. Years ago, another cinematographer moved right next door to us in Ojai while he was simultaneously asking someone else for my contact info as he wanted to interview me for an article he was writing after making an independent film about channeling, which also coincidentally happened to feature someone I knew in college. Shortly after, that cinematographer connected me with someone instrumental in opening up more of the world to my work. Whew!

I’m currently sitting at SBK, happily writing and chatting on and off with Ranada (one of the lovely employees we’re getting to know) and Anne as she bounces between the kitchen and the front counter. I am having a snack and enjoying an iced vegan chai as it’s sunny and in the 70s today as it’s been all week and will continue to be next week as well. This is not the late September/early October Chicago weather I remember.

The sauce collection on our dining room table is growing as is my gratitude that I cleared up the past life trauma previously preventing me from enjoying spicy food. Much of the food at SBK includes something spicy (which, of course, can be modified when ordering).

I don’t know where any of these connections will lead or if I will ever be able to draw a direct line between them. What I do know is that the connections are happening, which means I am listening, going with the flow, and not questioning the magic as I wrote about just recently here. This means life is more fun and exciting as I revel in the mystery and wait for my story to reveal itself to me one piece at a time.

Treats and Breads and So Much More

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