Call it the tasty tristesse.
The meal-based melancholy. The let-down feeling one briefly gets when they spy a dish on a national magazine cover, a dish they know they'll not sample any time soon.
Because that dish is made by a father-and-son-run, two-stool cafe in the northern Adirondacks. And you're here, in distinctly non-Adirondacky Los Angeles, lusting over the food in the photos.
Sweet relief is ahead, photo-lusters: Look upon the cover of the February issue of Bon Appétit and admire the glisten-y short rib sandwich fantasia that you -- yes you -- could be eating today, if you so choose.
Those short ribs aren't sizzling in some distant time zone. They're made by Joan's on Third.
If you're a Joan's joneser, and so many are, we've got a nice anecdote for you, direct from Bon Appétit editor Barbara Fairchild. "I knew that the magazine was going to hit the newsstand in about ten days, and knowing our readers I suspected that people would come in and start asking for "the sandwich on the cover of Bon Appétit," says Ms. Fairchild.
She continues. "So I wanted to give Joan a heads-up that this would probably happen. When I showed it to her, she jumped up from the table, said she had to go "take a moment," and then came back a minute later with tears in her eyes. I thought she would be happy, but I never expected THAT."
A sweet story, plus savory short rib sandwiches, plus a local, loyalty-garnering restaurant. Morning officially de-grouched. Stomach rumbling. Now we're thinking we'll buy the issue and read it at Joan's, just to be fully meta about our meal.