Today In New York City Provincialism
By 
Readers who are unlucky enough not to live in the only urban area in the United States of America with any trace of civilization are missing out on a truly remarkable culinary invention:
It can be hard to explain the appeal of a buttered roll.
Unlike the breakfast sandwich or the cruller, the humble buttered roll makes no claims to lusciousness. It’s not really greater than the sum of its parts: a round roll, sliced and slathered with butter. There is no alchemy involved.
And yet, like many New Yorkers, I’ve breakfasted all my life on buttered rolls, wrapped in plastic, foil or wax paper and sold for about a dollar at any corner deli, bodega or coffee cart.
Do I love them? No. That is not really the point. I love that they exist, an unsung, charmingly ordinary hero of the city’s mornings.
Though of course bread and butter are eaten all over, the buttered roll (or roll with butter, as it is known in parts of New Jersey) is a distinctly local phenomenon. Mention its name outside the New York metropolitan area and you would very likely be met with blank incomprehension.
Yes, certainly until I lived in New York City I had never heard of a roll served with butter. This was certainly not something that, say, I had been served in every meal I have ever eaten with my relatives in rural Saskatchewan. I would guess that if you don’t live in New York City, you don’t even understand what these words mean.
Stay tuned for our next lesson, “New York City and maybe Westchester County are perhaps the only places in the world where people get visible tattoos.”