Bagel Daze

Some people, like my husband, can't live without a good cut of steak. Others, many others, crave chocolate. I can do without all of that. But I can't go by a day without a bagel. And here is not the space where I wax on about the perfect bagel, do I prefer boiled versus steamed (who cares -- be glad you're not a bagel, one sign in town reads), so sorry, chowhounds. I even eat goy bagels -- the raisin ones. And whole wheat.

Well, I've been noticing for some time that the place where you go buy a bagel -- I guess back in the day it was a deli -- now is its own special place, with its own special name. Like Bagel World. Or Bagel Delight. Or, in the case of my neighborhood, House of Bagel. I'm not sure why it is that these kind of places always have such overblown names for such a small, holey piece of bread. When I was in New York there would be like 17 on every block, each with its own sort of unique name.

In my mom's neighbhood on the Upper East Side, TAL bagel is now all the rage. Where else can you go to hear a 70-year-old, otherwise perfectly normal, neurotic New Yorker tell his server to give him a bagel, but "scoop it out," and then spread the cream cheese on thick. I mean, it is bread, what did the guy expect?

It's also the place of new math. Buy two more it will cost $6, not $7. Buy three more and get five free. Really, it is truly impossible to understand the kind of sudoku logic. Especially if you haven't had coffee yet, the line is winding out the door, people are staring at you like you're an idiot, and maybe you are but you have no idea, because this formula wasn't handed down to you at birth as it seems to be for the guy patiently explaining, for the 11th time, why you should buy two more bagels and not the usual half dozen that you just ordered. Or maybe you didn't, because you weren't counting. But I digress.

So I'm picking up my weekly supply at House of Bagel today, and this place, it's been around for years. It's always been no-frills. Dingy may be the better word. Badly lit inside with simple racks of bagels and a refrigerator full of Philly cream cheese and generic OJ in back. They even let a homeless guy sleep in the doorway. But he's gone now, and in his place is a garish mural and a new sign (same name), and inside they've dolled up the place. Put in some seats, added a menu for sandwiches with names like the Geary Blvd. Don't ask: I mean, if Geary could be a sandwich, it would be full of dirt and traffic, so I'm not sure what is the inspiration. I think there's some turkey in it.

But ahead of me is a woman ordering a so-called breakfast bagel. "Give me a breakfast bagel," she says. And now that means something at House of. "And put bacon on it," she adds. "I'm sorry," the teen working the counter says, "we're Kosher. No bacon."
"OK, then ham." She doesn't even miss a beat. "Sorry, we're Kosher. No ham." "Out of meat today?" Clueless asks. "Only beef," she's told. And for the third time, "We're Kosher style." "OK," Clueless gives up. "Do you have any regular bread?"
Then it hits me. This is the reason for the big names on the signs. What part of BAGEL does she not understand?

I guess this is just the price Jewish culture pays for going white bread on the West Coast.