If you’re one of the many, many people that have waited in line to sample the goods at Tartine Manufactory then the Chronicle’s top food reviewer has a message for you: You’re an idiot. At least that appears to be the takeaway of Michael Bauer’s recent review of the sprawling “multi-faceted maker’s space” that opened this past August on the corner of 18th and Alabama.

It seems that Bauer’s beef isn’t with the restaurant itself—which he practically falls over himself to shower praise on—but rather the fact that anyone could be bothered to wait in a line to eat there. 

“Much has been written about the Manufactory, and the lines have been long for breakfast and lunch; oftentimes there are about as many people waiting outside as there are seats inside,” he writes. “On at least three occasions I drove by with the intention of stopping, but even with the lure of the fabulous pastries, I couldn’t abide the lines and the prospect of scrambling for a seat inside.”

That’s right, the dude who literally gets paid to wait in lines can’t abide.

Thankfully for the ever-so-busy arbiter of all that is good, the restaurant started taking reservations in November—”a godsend for those of us who refuse to stand in line,” he notes. And yet, as the fact that he once reviewed Mission Chinese proves, Bauer has clearly spent plenty of time over the course of his 30-year career waiting in lines. So why the newfound aversion? Was he just trying to avoid being harassed by this guy?

Maybe. Or maybe he simply wanted to let you know that in the eyes of this esteemed critic, all you line-waiters are merely a bunch of chumps.

[Photo: northernfirespizza]