Kolaches Are Cool

One of the best discoveries I’ve made since moving to Texas is kolaches.

Kolaches are bready pastries that can be filled with a variety of things. I like the savory ones, filled with combinations of scrambled egg, potato, cheese, bacon, sausage. There are sweet and specialty ones as well. They were brought to Texas by Czech settlers. The Kolache Factory is a chain, with some locations in other cities, that was founded here in Houston in 1982. Our supermarket makes them too.

Think “breakfast taco,” but with a better tasting wrapper that doesn’t fall apart when you eat it.

But while I like them SO MUCH, it seems no one else is as impressed. I was recently in what looked like a brand-new Kolache Factory. It had booths and even a seating area of stuffed chairs, a la Starbucks, it was on a busy Houston street (Westheimer), it was lunchtime – and it was absolutely empty except for me.

Honestly, the Kolache Factories cause some of the problem themselves. I was surprised by how nice this one was. More often, they look like fast-food restaurants – and not nice fast-food places either. Think of what you’d see at a highway rest stop.

And they keep odd hours. My son is always up for a kolache. However, the store near his school is only open until 11 am. And most of the others, according to the website, close by 2 pm.

Meanwhile, I never even knew that my local supermarket made its own kolaches until it dawned on me to ask and then the lady behind the counter told me, “But you’ve gotta get here early. We sell out before 7 am.”

So, MAKE MORE.

If they could give me a latte with my kolache, I might never leave.