This morning I ate a chocolate-chip bagel with hazlenut cream cheese. I think it made me become 10% less New Yorker.
Sometimes I don’t even know who I am anymore.
Granted, the bagel was free, discovered in the break room at work, on top of a stack of other similarly sugared bagels from Panera. Stupid Panera, with your sweet candy bagels. If you want a Danish, I say have a Danish. If you want a pixy stick, have a pixy stick. If you want a bagel, have one with some damn seeds and salt on it.
The last time I actually set foot in a Panera, I told my friend that I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring children into a world that had Passion Fruit bagels. I have not been back since. But this bagel invaded my working turf, and everyone knows that when you’re at work you will comfort yourself by eating anything wearing a snack wrapper.
I have always been a purist as far as bagels are concerned. Granted, I do enjoy most bagel flavors in the savory pantheon. Onion, Poppy, Sesame, Everything, even Garlic. (Although I sneer at Egg, and squint at Salt). I am likewise fairly flexible and magnanimous in my allowance of toppings. Bagels can be graced with tomatoes, loaded with lox or ham, strewn with raw onion. I have on occasion been known to use a fancy Lox Spread. Toss a few scallions into my cream cheese and I will not slap your face. But there is no place for low-fat or fat free cream-cheese based spread, and I will NOT stand idly by while cream cheese is sullied with sugar or fruit.
Until this morning. Oh God. I hang my head in shame. No stomach of mine should have accepted that tainted sugarbagel.
I need to return to the city of my birth and devour the delicious boiled bread of my homeland.
I Heard Tell 
britt
although I disagree about salt bagels, i definitely feel you on panera. such a weird baby-boomer phenomenon. it’s like cheesecake factory for bakeries–mega-size prtions and unnatural combinations meant to be classy and interesting
donn
Oh, I hear ya about Panera. For a place that tries so hard to be “eclectic” and “edgy”, they have virtually nothing vegan-friendly on their menu. Growl.
But I do loooooves me some salt bagels. And NYC is the only place on Earth that knows how to make them. When I lived in New York, I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, jonesing for a salt bagel. And the Boston salt bagels are an abomination to the Salt Bagel Gods. A little doughy turd with three pellets of kosher salt on top. Double growl.
chadhend
Haha, I totally agree – cream cheese SHOULD be all creamy and fatty. And I’m always amazed with what Americans come up with to eat every time I visit there. Though you know, I would have eaten that candy bagel, too.
Adam
It’s true. You have sinned against us. You must return, and pay penance. By eating warm, crusty bagels.