The Current - Would you buy a $60 loaf of bread?

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Turns out a lot of New Yorkers will. A bakery opened in NYC stocking one product — a $60 loaf of rye bread, served by the slice or by the loaf. As influencers flock to try the now infamous loaf, we look at whether the price tag fits the product, and what bread says about our relationship with wealth in the midst of a cost of living crisis. 

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Germany is now talking about your $60 bread. So here in Germany, you can buy this rye bread at almost every corner for a fraction of this price. This man is a criminal or an evil genius? Actually, he's both, because he would never get away with selling bread for 60 euros in Austria, where he's from, but he knows damn well you can get away with that in the U.S., especially in New York City. Yes, you heard that right. A bakery in New York City is selling a loaf of sourdough rye bread for $60.60. The bread and its price tag have become an internet sensation, dividing influencers,

bakers, average New Yorkers, and whether the bread is worth the price. The bakery is run by an Austrian family that has been in the bread business since 1936, selling the same loaf of bread at their bakery back home in Austria for a fraction of the price. So why the price hike for New York is buying this bread just another status symbol? What does $60 bread say about an economy of halves and have-n-n-nots? Elizar Sontag is the food critic for The Washington Post. He's in Washington this morning. Elizar, good morning.

Good morning. I'm so happy to be here. I'm really glad to have you here in part because you have had the bread. What is it like? I have had the bread. Well, I can confirm the tab. It is very expensive. It does come in at $60.

And I have to say that even knowing exactly what I was going for when I saw that number come up on the little screen before I tapped my phone, you know, it is kind of an eyebrow-raising moment. The bread itself is delicious. I think, you know, you'll notice if you've been in on this discourse or following this conversation in New York or, you know, internationally because it's really grown and spread. People aren't really talking about the taste of the bread because, you know, to most people, it's kind of beside the point. But if what you really are wondering is,

is the bread delicious, the answer is yes. Is the bread worth it, I think is a much more complicated question. And we'll get to that question in a moment. Just describe, part of it is the experience of going to the bakery, right? You said it's like an apple store in some way. Yeah, it has this very stern but also sort of aspirational feel that I think, you know, will be familiar to anyone who shops at designer clothing stores. Like I said, you know, people who who buy their technology from Apple. You know, an Apple similarly is sort of going for a certain kind of of aspirational living, very clean, very minimal. it's not necessarily what you expect from a bakery. There's so many kind of signifiers in there about lifestyle, right?

Like you feel like you're walking into a place that's telling you how you should want to live, as opposed to necessarily just selling you a loaf of bread. Who is buying a $60 loaf of bread? Well, the short answer is at the moment a lot of people, you know, because of this discourse and how far. it has traveled. But, you know, I actually asked one of the employees when I was in there, and this was, you know, in the first weeks, first days maybe even of business. I asked him this question. And, you know, he said, like I just said, that a lot of people were coming just because

they were curious. But he also said that, you know, it should be noted it's in a very wealthy New York neighborhood and that there were people who were coming in and buying 10 loaves. Now, that's about $600 of bread. and you know he said yeah there's a lot of wealthy people in the neighborhood who have already made this just sort of their go-to bakery but if if i had to if i had to just take a guess i would wager that those are probably the outliers not not the standard right now the owner has admitted that the same loaf sells for much less in austria you heard one of those people uh from social media at the beginning is this person a criminal or an evil genius I mean, probably neither. You know, I think really this person is sort of just fitting into the long and storied tradition of kind of outlandish New York businesses. I think the idea that people have latched on to that this is really a sign of some new awful era of New York and, you know, a time when Americans can just sort of be hoodwinked and cheated. you know, there's something there.

I think the way that social media amplifies these sorts of conversations can make our culture feel very, very bleak. But, you know, as I pointed out in my column when I was writing about the bread, New York is a city of ridiculous contradictions. And, you know, the idea that a $60 loaf of bread is so novel in a city where you could get a sushi dinner

for one that costs a thousand. You know, it's a little silly. to me, of course, the bread is also totally ridiculous. But I don't know that it's an indicator of some evil genius. It's certainly not criminal, you know, as long as people are willing to sign up for the bread, you know, sort of enter this contract. What's he doing wrong? I mean, it's a little outlandish, but how outlandish is it for New York? Bloomberg called this a K-shaped loaf of bread, pointing to the idea of the K-shaped economy, which has this huge gap between the rich and the poor.

What do you make of that? And the fact that, I mean, the bread is stamped. So if you buy the loaf of bread, everybody knows that it's not just a normal loaf of bread, that this is the $60 loaf. Is this just about conspicuous consumption? Yes. I mean, the shortest, shortest answer is probably yes, but it's not about the loaf of bread.

And I think people understand it's not about the loaf of bread, that the loaf of bread is a symbol, right? that, you know, when people are getting on the internet and saying, I think one of the most common lines right now is, you know, bread is supposed to be a food of the working class and the poor and it's flour and water and how are we making something that is about access and about nourishment, you know, a symbol of this just sort of disgusting,

offensive level of wealth. And, you know, I take that. But I think it's important to remember that, you know, this is not a bakery that dropped into a working class under-resourced neighborhood, and now suddenly the only option people have is the $60 bread. I think that the tension and the anxiety is that it does point to something very real in America, certainly very real in New York, about this case-shaped economy, as they called it. And there are so many tensions and anxieties right now about food insecurity,

and I think that, you know, it was sort of a perfect storm for this bread, which is, you know, again, it's ostentatious. It comes in this bag that's, you know, printed with big blocky rye letters. And, you know, it does feel like a status symbol. And I think it does say something a little foreboding about our culture right now that bread is a status symbol. But avocado toast was a status symbol 10 or 15 years ago. I have to let you go. But what do you do with a $60 loaf of bread? Do you make avocado toast with it?

Like, is it a sandwich? Is it, do you just dip it in olive oil? What, like, what do you do with a $60 loaf of bread? You savour it. That's very good. No, and that can be up to the purchaser, I suppose. Yes, you eat it very slowly. LISR, thank you very much for this.

Thanks for having me. LISR Sontag is the food critic for the Washington Post. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.