Perq Coffee Bar, 1821 Hillview Street, 941-955-8101. Photo by Andrew Fabian.

Yes, good food begins with good ingredients. Absolutely, the flavor should be a top priority. But food architecture is important too. It’s why certain pasta shapes form a better relationship with certain pasta sauces; or why a burger whose verticality fails is just no fun to eat; or why it’s disappointing if bones slide out of baby back ribs when the hands-on, bone-in experience is part of the joy of eating ribs. Great food maintains a certain structure, and to that end, Perq’s Baja avo smash is a well-engineered item.

In it, the smear of avocado is used as both primary ingredient and secondary structural support. Amply flavored with garlic, the avocado sits atop a dense piece of multigrain toast like mortar atop a freshly laid row of bricks. But the avocado does not serve as a glue for another slice of bread to sit on top, rather, it serves as a substrate within which the finish carpentry is embedded. Those ingredients include chili corn salsa, house-pickled onions and queso fresco, which all stick to the creamy avocado spread like tiles in thinset. This arrangement ensures that all ingredients make it into each bite, even if the toast is tilted off-axis.

The ingredients are all clean, yes. The flavor is all there, absolutely. But it’s the architecture, that unsung synergy of the arrangement, that really makes this a treat.

Perq Coffee Bar, 1821 Hillview Street, 941-955-8101. Photo by Andrew Fabian.

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