I’ve been getting bagels from the same deli—The Coffee Grinder Cafe—since I was a child. The people who work there know me by name, and still remember my order even after I’ve spent months away at school. Anyone who's anyone has a strong opinion about bagels, and has their own favorite bagel shop. My gold bagel standard is—and always will be—the Coffee Grinder.
The bagels I ate growing up were chewy but not tough, dense but still light. They were large and thick-crusted, with bubbles on their subtly shiny surfaces. While some bagel lovers deride toasted bagels, I enjoy my bagels lightly toasted and slathered in cream cheese that's melty, but never slimy. A good bagel can also, of course, hold its own untoasted.
A good bagel doesn’t come from a chain store. A franchise can’t reproduce the time- and labor-intensive craft that goes into a good bagel, which is without exception boiled and then baked. Boiling, after all, is what gives a New York (or New Jersey) bagel its signature chewy texture—it’s scientifically proven. A good bagel is best enjoyed fresh, and is hardly worth eating even just 24 hours after it comes out of the oven.
While good bagels come in a variety of flavors, my go-to is everything. My ideal everything bagel is generously coated in poppy seeds, sesame seeds, salt, and dehydrated onions. I spent many a morning my senior year of high school holding a bagel in one hand and driving with the other, craning my neck to check my teeth for stray poppy seeds in the rearview mirror. These were, I now know, the best mornings of my young life.
When I left New Jersey at the end of high school, I knew that I would spend the rest of my life searching for bagels that rivaled those I ate growing up, bagels that brought me back to Sunday mornings in my hometown bagel shop. I’m spending this summer in San Francisco, where I intern for a large software company as a technical writer. San Francisco is known for its food scene, which is inarguably one of the best in the country. Bay Area cuisine has a reputation for being organic, natural, locally sourced, and minimally processed. This philosophy of food has obvious benefits—by all accounts almost everything I’ve eaten in San Francisco so far has been excellent—but just does not lend itself to good bagel making. People in Northern California are, frankly, too healthy to really enjoy a properly carb- and cream cheese-loaded New York bagel.
On the weekdays, I write usable documentation for enterprise software. On the weekends, I search the hills of San Francisco endlessly for a bagel that meets my standards. My hopes aren’t high, but I have nothing to lose.