A Crisis of Bagels

It's a truth I've known for some time. I knew it when I made my way into Manhattan for lunch this past Saturday and I knew it when I returned to Long Island for Thanksgiving break three days earlier. I probably even sensed it several weeks into my first year at Harvard, all those many months ago.

The Square has a serious bagel problem.

And as important as bagels have been in my life--I think back to meals at Manhattan's Ess-a-Bagel, late night jaunts to H & H Bagels and the thousands of bagels in between--I always find myself surprised by the vast gulf in bagel quality between the two cities I call home. I may have learned to suppress the observation and block it out. And who could blame me? When done right, the bagel can serve as the focal point for an entire diet. But in the hands of lesser baker...it's nothing more than a carbohydrate-rich sandwich fragment.

For those who haven't consumed a steaming-hot H & H bagel at three o'clock on a Sunday morning, it may be difficult to understand what all the fuss is about. But just as the art expert will never be able to convey to the color-blind woman at the Picasso exhibit what she's missing, the bagel-lover will have a hard time converting the uninitiated. The allure of the fresh, well-made bagel, alas, defies verbal explanation. And yet despite this handicap, in recent years the bagel has been popularized across the nation, a development which culminated in the Dunkin' Donuts chains decision to enter the bagel-making field. In cities such as Memphis and Atlanta, bagels are becoming everything from an occasional bread substitute to a dietary staple.

With such a pervasive influence, it's hard to believe that the main problem with the bagels available in Harvard Square is that they aren't made in the Empire State. Still, New Yorkers have developed no shortage of urban myths to explain the superiority of their regions bagels, myths which inevitably culminate in the conclusion that bagels simply can't be baked as well elsewhere. "It's the water," several friends explained to me over the break, each taking on a hushed-voiced, as if entrusting me with a valuable secret.

And when I responded in turn to their New-York-bagel-elitism with the retort that I once ate an excellent bagel in Toledo, Ohio--one which would have been at home in a New York City bagelry--they remained firm: "They must get the water pumped in special," they said.

As conversations with similar punch lines occurred time and again, it became clear that among my family members and friends there are more than a few bagel experts--individuals who have come to see themselves as the food's self-appointed defenders and trustees. It's as though they've all secretly swore an oath of regional loyalty, one which bars them from acknowledging the integrity of any foreign product. Eventually my sister entered the debate, breaking the deadlock and introducing a sensible if still questionable explanation for discrepancies in bagel quality: bagels are best if boiled, she intoned, and it is this practice--one which is widely observed in New York but not viewed as bagel-making-orthodoxy outside the region--which makes the difference. Her argument was just reasonable enough to prompt me to venture over the Bruegger's in the Square. But when I got there, around lunch time on Tuesday, the place was hopping and I had to do a little investigating on my own.

Sure enough, the unthinkable happened. Over toward the corner of the store I found a large kettle-type structure, bubbling and giving off steam. So there it is: Bruegger's puny, bland, generic bagels are also boiled. Maybe it is that New York water after all...

Dan S. Aibel's column appears on alternate Wednesdays.