My Life in Bagels

The smell of bagels is permanently lodged in my olfactory memory bank.  It is a smell that I have been neglected of since I moved to Chicago from New Jersey years ago. A few months ago my girlfriend brought home some bagels. I had grown to loathe bagels and I ignored the bag she plopped on the kitchen table...thinking it was a batch of Chicago bagels...essentially an inedible and tasteless mass of Wonderbread shaped in an "O". But soon a familiar smell wafted past my nose...a smell that brought back waves of memories and a healthy rumble in my stomach...those are BAGELS! REAL BAGELS! It is a very distinctive smell- doughy, slightly sweet and always accompanied by the scent of a well-worn paper bag.

I have a very nostalgic and emotional relationship to bagels. In high school I had a group of girlfriends that worked at my town's bagel shop (they only hired teenage girls).  It was a dumpy little strip mall storefront that just had the bare essentials- bins of bagels, a couple pots of coffee and a small deli case for lox, cream cheese and butter. Customers rarely came in- giving us free reign of the place to use as our little clubhouse.  Every day after school I would hang out and stock up on bagels...breeding a ridiculous fanaticism. I always had a paper bag of them in my backpack, eating them as I spent hours roaming around town and exploring the woods. Pumpernickel! Sesame Seed! Even a plain bagel was enough for me. I ate at least five bagels a day. A surplus would often accumulate in my school locker, many of them hardening into a concrete that would smash into many pieces when you threw them against the wall.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived in Chicago and bit into the region's bagel! A bagel shop underneath the El tracks by Wrigley Field came highly recommended and I immediately hopped on the train to hunt it down. Unfortunately, what my mouth was greeted with was a puffy and elastic ball of dough. I should have known better when I saw that they offered chocolate chip, blueberry and pumpkin varieties. A bagel is not a muffin! A bagel is not simply a surface to smear cream cheese upon! A bagel is the product of a highly refined recipe and cooking process passed down through hundreds of years- resulting in a bread product whose flavor is rich but simple and a texture that is always challenging. I don't need a goddamn thing on my bagel and honestly, I find bagels most delicious when they are a couple days old and slightly hard.

This obsession with bagels grew around the same time I developed a very regimented vegetarian diet based on a mild case of OCD. I ate a bowl of Grape Nuts at 6:30, a cheese sandwich at noon and a can of peas at 5:30. The times had to be exact- through trial and error I had concluded that this food combination and schedule would make me function well and look good the following day. I had too many days of girls saying "eeeww" as I rode my bike past them...I knew I was all puffy and retaining water from the ham I ate the previous day. I always had dark circles under my eyes, my head was cloudy, my hair was frizzy. I was previously following a different OCD diet of meat and soda. I would broil a hamburger at 6 pm and drink soda and smoke cigarettes until 2 am. This was a formula I stumbled on when I had a good day and tried to deduct why I had a good day. It was obviously due to what I ate the previous day- meat and soda. I sometimes substituted pork chops and steak for hamburger but ham was always off-limits...too much water retention. But after a year, the diet wasn't working; it wasn't solving my problems...so I started the new vegetarian regiment. I didn't view it so much as OCD but as scientific deduction and prediction and a self-imposed discipline that I never had in my life. Why I didn't apply this new discipline to school, I don't know.

The new vegetarian diet would pass through phases and the nightly can of peas would soon change  (through more meticulous deduction) into a bowl of raw pumpkin pie filling. Bagels were just the next phase and with them came the realization that girls didn't think I was gross and icky anymore...my OCD diet was really working. I then started going out with one of the bagel girls, Melanie.

Bagels equal first love in my mind. One night, Melanie and I walked home after her shift and we stopped by the duck pond. We hid out underneath the decrepit wood plank bridge to escape the oncoming spring rain. We noticed a bloated carcass of a raccoon bobbing in the sludgy water a few yards from our feet...the duck pond was constantly polluted, factories were always dumping toxic shit upstream, so it was no surprise to see dead animals and fish littering the pond's surface. We then kissed...our first kiss. Afterwards we broke out some bagels to toast our new relationship. Bagels equal sex! Bagels equal sex! Of course!

Moving to the Midwest, I guess you can say, if you follow my inane and ridiculous logic at the time, castrated me. I no longer had the food that defined my sexuality! I fell into a dry spell for many years, eventually substituting other foods for my much-loved bagels.

But now...that bag of bagels that my girlfriend plopped on the kitchen table...all these memories came crashing at me just by the smell. I haven't smelled that smell in years. But how do they taste? oooh...like the real thing! I ate the entire bag in a couple hours. They came from a shop here in Chicago called "NY Style Bagels" (duh). They supposedly import water from New York to get the flavor right...while I don't really believe this, the bagel shop is pretty consistent with its east coast bagel flavor and texture. Unfortunately, I have been trying to cut down on wheat lately, so I can't indulge as much as I would like. This "no-wheat" rule is my new OCD diet and eggs and Kefir is my new sexuality.

Comments

[wapsie]

What can be said of bagels when they broke from their ethnic/geographic origins can be said of pizza - so much of the good was lost in translation. The midwest stuck hamburger meat on the pie and created the artery-clogging slop that is deep-dish pizza. Californians put pineapple on it. Sauce got bland and sweet, dough lost its proper density and plasticity.

Let us shudder for a moment at the horror that was hippie pizza, with its whole wheat crusts and alfalfa sprouts as topping and tomato slices making the whole works sopping wet. Or its obnoxious offspring, the California yuppie 'gourmet' pizza (caviar and french chesses as toppings).

Bad as that all this, though, it doesn't compare to the culinary rape that is the strawberry/cherry/blueberry bagel, which I first encountered in Iowa. I think the midwest owes some kinds of reparation payment for that, or at least a awkward hearing before a truth & reconciliation committee.

[Ivy]

Here in the UK, small bagel shops in London and some other cities with a large Jewish population offer the real deal. Bagel and sandwich chains offer tasteless slop. There's a product called New York Bagels that's sold in supermarkets and advertises on TV. I haven't seen any blueberry bagels or the like sold anywhere: the varities so far offered by the imposters include poppyseed, multigrain, onion, and cinnamon and raisin. Apparently in Glasgow bagels and lox is eaten without cheese cheese but with a squeeze of lemon. A few years ago I saw a bagel and lox like this being ordered on a show called "The Fabulous Bagel Boys". It was a pilot about a Glasgow detective who has a brother who runs a kosher deli. It was very good and it was a pity it didn't get commisioned.

[G.]

For the best bagel and bialy in the Chicago area:

New York Bagel & Bialy Corp
4714 W Touhy Ave
(between Keating Ave & Kilpatrick Ave)
Lincolnwood, IL 60712
(847) 677-9388

I've been going there for over 30 years and they have never disappointed me.

[BIg A]

Midwesterners cannot help it. They think "crappy food" is "normal food." However, they have mastered the Art of The Bratwurst. I will give them that much.

It would take well over 3 trillion Dollars in stimulus funds to make any noticeable dent in either eating habits or food quality in that region of our Once-Great Land.

[JJZ]

G is right. The one in Lincolnwood is the best in the area. Also, 365-24-7

[fatty jubbo]

thanks, G- I will definitely try it if I'm ever out that way.

wapsie- midwest pizza! another abomination! I was quite perplexed when someone ordered pizza and it came cut into squares and the crust tasted like a buttery croissant and the scab of cheese came sliding off on the first bite. while in St. Louis, someone brought me to a St. Louis style pizza place (???) which consisted of a sludge of cheddar and swiss on a big saltine cracker. yum!

[toober]

Midwestern bagels do generally suck, so get some real bread from a nice Italian/German/Polish bakery. There are plenty of them in Chicago. Bagels are pretty much overrated anyway. Put a quality New York bagel next to a hunk of olive or rosemary bread from an Italian bakery and...well, I know what I will be eating.

[newberry]

I third the vote for New York Bagel & Bialy. I've never tried NY Style Bagels, but I'd be surprised if they're better or even as good as NYB&B. It's right near the highway, so you can get up there pretty fast. And I think they're open all night.

Big A: not all midwesteners are without taste. Toober: good bagels are not overrated.

[John]

As with Bagels you can get good pizza in Chicago, you just have to know where to go. Spacca Napoli serves a great Neapolitan style pizza, and Coalfire has an somewhat Americanized version that's also excellent. I've heard that Vito and Nick's on the southside is the best thin crust but haven't gotten there yet. Burt's Place in Morton Grove has a unique style that was recently featured in Saveur magazine, and is truly wonderful.

[fatty jubbo]

coalfire is good.

but the thing with pizza here is that it's always a goddamn ordeal- like they are serving me a meal. I just was a greasy slice for cheap and not have it served with a fork and knife. Luigi's in Lincoln Park is good!

[John]

The best thing about Chicago food is the Mexican restaurants here. Of course Rick Bayless has the famous one, but there are a number of others just as good, and less crowded with tourists. Maiz and it's sister place Tamalli are delicious and really authentic. Sol de Mexico is also outstanding. Mixteco Grill is both sublime and near where I live/work, in fact maybe I'll go there for lunch and get some uchepos gratinados. LTH Forum is the best resource for information on Chicago area restaurants, a little browsing of the expert opinions there totally disproves BigA's claim "Midwesterners cannot help it. They think 'crappy food' is 'normal food.'"

[E.O. Smonk]

The #1 oasis of authentic bagels in the Midwest is Common Roots Cafe in Minneapolis. Legit as hell. http://commonrootscafe.com/

[NewYorkIsTheWorstThingToEverHappenToABagel]

Standard East-coast jingoism. NYC itself has fully converted to "bagel sandwiches," as if such a thing were possible. No, long before midwestern shops were selling tasteless rolls with holes, New York was pioneering the 'bloated bread dressed as bagel' (e.g. H&H, Essa). It's not the spread to the midwest that destroyed the bagel (in fact there have long been amazing bagelries in Detroit that serve better traditional bagels than anywhere in the NYC area). It was instead the spread through NYC itself that destroyed it, and the international fake-bagel chains have merely copied what New Yorkers now hold so dear.

Anyway, you'd never expect to find a reasonable bagel at any of the highly esteemed NYC bagel shops, so you shouldn't expect any more from a random midwest shop.

[water-retention-linda]

You write very well - I could smell the bagels and was salivating along with you... I'm on a mostly wheat-free / gluten-free diet too. Have reached that time in life when almost anything makes me put on fat weight and water weight!
One tip I use for cravings: if your cravings get too bad and you eat too many bagels, try to buy them only from somewhere you have to travel to quite a long way, so that you'll never buy more than a couple a week. Then you can spend the rest of the week looking forward to them!