The Mightiest Cinnamon Rolls On Earth

I’ll be damned. According to Wikipedia, cinnamon was used in Ancient Egypt to embalm mutherfuckin’ mummies. Herodotus, that acid head of antiquity, named Arabia as the fabled source of the stuff, and claimed gigantic cinnamon birds collected it from an unknown land and brought it back as nesting material. Pliny the Elder didn’t believe him, but had little to add. Even Marco Polo was circumspect. Cinnamon floated on rafts without sails, riding the trade currents from Indonesia to Africa. As cinnamon floated through time, it gave rise to many magnificent things. I’ll be focusing on the cinnamon roll. Here are my three picks for the greatest.

#3 The Frontier, Albuquerque New Mexico

Located in the UNM student ghetto in Albuquerque, NM, the Frontier Restaurant is home to a cinnamon roll so good that if you eat one, it is possible to ignore your surroundings. Imagine a Denny’s. Then imagine you are inside, but you’ve just had a peyote yogurt enema. The place is fixed in my memory. When I was 16, I used to haunt the place. Late on a winter night, with a quarter refill coffee and one of those big, calorie bonanza rolls steaming in front of you while the New Mexico styrofoam bead snow falls, well. The roll is big. It is soft. The icing is a thick, buttery fluid. The smell is a huge part of it. Imagine sweet, cinnamon movie theater popcorn butter and you’ll have it.

#2 The Cardinal Lemoine Metro Stop, Paris France

Its on line 10, in the 5th arrondissement. I think it may be called Le Petit Cardinal. But its right there. An old man and his old wife run the place and they look like owls. They mostly sell chocolate, but early in the morning, they have these little palm sized cinnamon rolls with GOLD raisins. No frosting but a kind of floral honey. I will say no more.

#1 The Fresh Sourdough Express, Homer Alaska

The croissant style cinnamon roll they had may have changed with the name. It was once called the Sourdough Bakery. The cinnamon roll was rich, flaky, buttery, even light, and it had raisins. I remember eating them on dark mornings before the sun came up and the wind howled down the Homer Spit. Somehow food tastes different when you’re at the edge of the wilderness. Really great food, in a place like that, can make even the hardest rebel lunatic feel connected to something bigger. Chewing a mouthful of that and staring out to sea, well. All of human history carried you to that moment. It carried all kinds of other people to all sorts of different places, but you? You’re there, right then.