I tried to leave my New Yorkers know best attitude at the
door when I left to become a Midwesterner 16 years ago, but there are some
things that people in these parts really need to learn from Gotham. That your legs don’t stop working when you step
onto an escalator is one. Another, which
will be the subject of this post, is bagel service.
Mind you, bagel service is not complicated. By no means am I implying that only New York
minds could come up with the proper way to serve a bagel with cream cheese. We can’t even figure out a reasonable way to
transport people to our airports, for goodness’ sake. No, serving a bagel with cream cheese the
right way is so easy that even a PS 169 grad like me can do it. You slice the bagel and you put cream cheese
on it. That’s it! There’s nothing more to it, yet there are countless
ways in which Midwesterners overcomplicate the process and ruin it. I’ve listed some of these egregious errors below with
the hope that anyone with bagel service responsibility will heed my warning, and that anyone who knows a person
with such responsibility will pass it on.
After 16 years, I’m getting angry about this. Do not keep screwing up
my bagel with cream cheese.
Four Common Midwestern Bagel Service Atrocities:
4. Double slicing. A
bagel should be sliced across its equator so that cream cheese can be
applied. Under no circumstances should
it then be sliced again longitudinally.
I don’t know if it’s the more heavily Christian population here or what,
but this cross-pattern slicing has got to stop.
The cream cheese oozes out of the center and it’s a mess to eat this
way. Stop it. Really.
3. Cream cheese on the side.
If a man orders a bagel with cream cheese, he wants a bagel with cream
cheese on it. This practice of handing over an unsliced
bagel with a plastic tub of cream cheese and a flimsy plastic knife is
insulting. Those flimsy knives can’t
even slice a ripe, peeled banana. They’re
hopeless against a bagel, and even more hopeless in spreading the rock-hard
cream cheese in that tub you took directly from the ice box. Do you give these knives out because you’re
worried about customers having weapons to use against you? Continue this cheese on the side practice,
and such worry might become justified.
2. Calling the thing a “schmear”. This is the only one that makes me think,
maybe Midwesterners really are less intelligent than New Yorkers. “Schmear?”
You’re an adult, for Willett’s sake!1. Toasting. Toasting ruins a bagel’s chewy reason to exist. Toasting is for, well, toast. A bagel is not toast. Stop this. If you encounter customers who insist on having their bagel toasted, I’ll allow you to decide whether or not you want to accommodate such misguided people. If you’re the kind of place that allows people to add grilled chicken breast to any salad on the menu, then you should go ahead and accommodate this equally ridiculous request too. But so many places toast by default, without even asking if that’s what the customer wants. Stop this. People complain to me: “But what if the bagel isn’t fresh? Isn’t it better toasted then?” If you’re eating or serving a stale bagel, stop reading this blog and think about what your life has become.
