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Here's the promise you and I must cling to across the thousands of words that follow.

This is Katie Weaver. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine. She's reading from the beginning of her recent cover story.

At some point within this text, I will reveal to you what, after 555 responses,

13,000 miles of travel, and months of monomaniacal research,

I have determined to be the best free restaurant bread in America.

I will not attempt to slither to the moral high ground, arguing that best is a meaningless

measure, or insisting that all bread is dear in its own way.

Even if you attempt to betray me, for instance, by merely scanning the text that follows for

the phrase, here it is, the best free restaurant bread in America. I will uphold my end of the bargain.

This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies. It's for eaters. I am Dan Pashman.

Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.

Katie Weaver writes for The Atlantic. Over the year, she's also written for the New York Times, GQ, and Gawker. She specializes in two things, celebrity profiles and going on quests. She's interviewed Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Cardi B, and Justin Bieber, among many others. And her quests include an attempt to quit sugar, which became a journey into hell, she tracked on a mystery inside a glitter factory,

and once spent 14 hours at a TGI Fridays that promoted endless appetizers. I find Katie's writing

to be sharp, incisive, and very funny. And as a guy who spent three years trying to invent a new shape

of pasta, you know I love a quest. So when I heard that Katie had set out to find the best free restaurant bread in America,

I knew he had to talk.

My first question, why?

Why is this something she needed to find out?

The answer is very simple.

It is my own mental illness.

The direct inspiration was a restaurant that I have been to now a few times in Atlanta that

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