Isle bun- May 17th

First things first: the name of this establishment is supposedly Isles Bun & Coffee, but we refuse to believe such a thing. We have always called it Isle Bun, because … it sounds better? Okay, we don’t know why we call it that. We just do.

We used to live at Humboldt and 28th, around the corner from Isle Bun. At first it was fantastic, because we’d stagger out the door on Sunday morning, get a giant cinnamon bun, go home, sleep it off. Then we realized: we can’t do this all the time, because not only will we die at 27, we wanted it to be a special occurrence. A friend of ours recently said he doesn’t put milk or sugar in his coffee, because what if you’re at a restaurant sometime in the future, and you’re used to having milk and sugar in you’re coffee, and there isn’t any? That was the most New England thing we’d ever heard. And it sounds like our bun philosophy.

So we only go to the fantastic Isle Bun every once in a while, and it’s a revelation every time. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the cinnamon buns are as big as your head. They’re also gooey and warm, and topped off with as much frosting as you can handle (and as much as you can get from the self-serve tub near the door). If you’re not feeling up to the head-size variety, you can try the bite-size kind, which the Isle folks call Puppy Dog Tails. They’re strips of pure joy.

We went back to Isle Bun on Sunday morning – that’s when their food tastes best, when you’re trying to cram in happiness before Monday happens – and luckily the ferocious bees that usually patrol the storefront flower pots weren’t out yet. (Dave has a phobia.) Though the original plan was splitting one bun, we ordered two. (When we arrived, Dave said, “I wonder if that’s too ambitious.” Lizzie replied, “I wonder if that’s not ambitious enough.” Who can argue with logic like that?) We bit into them and remembered why we used to go there frequently, and now only sometimes. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, especially when there’s lots and lots of butter involved. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to take a nap.