Grand Central: the Hawthorne Como, on a Tuesday

Southeast loaf fans have been treating “good bread” like a Saturday-only sport for so long that walking into Grand Central on a random Tuesday still feels like cheating, and we FINALLY want to say the quiet part out loud: the Hawthorne cafe is the everyday loaf counter, and the Como is sitting there on a Wednesday like that is a normal thing! Grand Central started in Seattle in 1989, when Gwen Bassetti bet that people were ready for a crusty, hand-formed Italian loaf inspired by Carol Field and a European memory, and in 1993 her son Ben Davis opened the Portland shop in a remodeled nursery building at 2230 Southeast Hawthorne. That is the counter this post is about. There are other Portland Grand Centrals. We are talking about the original room, the Ladd’s shop, the one where the pale flour-dusted Como is stacked where you can actually reach it.

The remodeled cafe is the first visual hit. It mixes modern cafe lines with vintage bakery decor — warm wood, a bread rack that still looks like a bakery rack, pastry trays under lights that make the cinnamon rolls look a little dangerous — and it sits next to Talarico’s produce stand with ACTUAL dedicated parking, which in close-in southeast is not a small plot twist. You can do bread and vegetables in one stop. We have built entire weeknights out of that fact. Inside, the Como is the loaf the company is still built on: a pale, flour-dusted Italian loaf with a tight-enough crumb for a sandwich and a crust that still counts as bakery crust, not grocery-aisle crust. Peasant levain and the darker Italian loaves are the other rack names worth asking for if tonight is not a Como night. Challah shows up on the weekly program, golden and braided, because this is a shop that bakes the breads people actually finish, not only the photogenic ones.

Pastry and sandwiches are why the room works as a cafe, and the Hawthorne shop leans into that without pretending those trays are why the address is on a bread map. Morning pastries, breakfast sandwiches, a cinnamon roll if you are already standing there, a Sasquatch-level sausage situation if lunch is the errand. We will take those. We will not pretend they replaced the loaf rack. The feature of this counter is that you can walk in at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, check the rack, and leave with a real loaf instead of a story about the one that got away. Online ordering stays open until 3 p.m. for same-day pickup, which is the unromantic reason the weekday bread is actually there when we said we would get it.

This page is not “Grand Central, the brand.” It is Hawthorne / Ladd’s at 2230 Southeast Hawthorne — Hosford-Abernethy on the map, Ladd’s Addition in the way people talk, the diamond of streets right there so you can walk the loaf home if you live in the addition. Other counters exist in Woodstock, Sellwood, Beaumont, Multnomah Village, and the rest of the Portland set, and the loaf quality is the company quality. We still send people to Hawthorne first because it is the original Portland room and because it behaves like a neighborhood bakery that happens to have a wholesale engine behind it. Hours are roughly 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, with weekend mornings busier because Hawthorne is busier, not because the oven only runs then.

We like this shop because it does not make a virtue of scarcity. A lot of bakeries we love are better if you arrive early and slightly afraid. Grand Central is better if you need to feed people tonight and you do not want a legend about a sold-out basket. Take the Como. Take challah if it is the end of the week. Take an Italian loaf if you are building a table. Then walk it toward Ladd’s, or put it in the car, and remember that “reliable” is a compliment when the bread is still a REAL loaf!

The short version lives on the Grand Central Bakery page.