Bagel Sandwiches: Why?

Drew Magary has a Take.
Bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon
Photo Illustration/Getty Images

I spent the majority of December stuck in a hospital (I’m home and fine now, though that fact may not relieve you after you endure this take), and over those four weeks, I had friends, family, and loved ones all smuggle food into my room for me, all so that I could avoid the hospital fare. This was right kind of them. My parents even made sure to bring me a fresh bagel with cream cheese and lox nearly every day, because they’re the bestest. They did this because they know damn well that a bagel with cream cheese and salmon (or its wealthy stepbrother, sable) is my favorite food. It was the first food I realized that I loved as a child, and it’ll be the LAST food I eat if I get sent to the electric chair. Fingers crossed!

BUT… Well now, this is an official Take, and by law all Takes must include an unwelcome BUT to spoil everything and to set off fires in your psyche. I loved all of these bagels, but the standard operating procedure of most bagel shops is to serve your bagel and smoked salmon as a full-on sandwich, with the cream cheese and smoked fish jammed inside the full bagel.

This is, in my opinion, a sub-optimal way of enjoying a bagel. Bagel sandwiches are dumb.

Please note that I issue this take as a card-carrying gentile and as someone who has never actually made a bagel from scratch. I am an unwelcome interloper here dealing with a baked good that enjoys no shortage of both tradition and fanaticism. Back at the turn of the century, my favorite bagel shop in the world was a joint in Midtown Manhattan called Tal Bagels that REFUSED, on principle, to toast their bagels, even if you asked. So I’m aware that people take their bagels seriously, and I respect that. I don’t respect that puritanism enough to keep my mouth shut, but still.

So, bagel sandwiches have problems. A good bagel is perfectly crunchy on all sides before yielding to a spongy, chewy interior. In my opinion, a whole bagel wasn’t designed to handle fillings. Typically, when I bite into a bagel sandwich, what happens is (A) my jaw can barely accommodate such a thick sandwich, and (B) when I first bite down, the bagel’s exterior is so strong that it just sinks with my teeth and forces the sandwich filling to squirt out in every direction. When you eat a sandwich, you want equal portions of bread and filling in most every bite, yeah? A bagel sandwich denies you this pleasure. You usually end up getting a bite full of wet bagel, a few strands of red onion, and some messy wax paper, with cream cheese all over your fingers. It’s a pain in the ass. I still eat the whole thing, but it's still a pain in the ass.

If I’m making a bagel with cream cheese and lox at home, I always go open-faced. I toast both halves of the bagel, then top each half with cream cheese and salmon, and then eat the bagel one half at a time. That way, a single bite takes less work, and I get a little bit of everything in each one. Then I nap for six years. That’s my preferred method of bagel consumption, and if you want to yell at me about it, just know that I cannot hear you because I am full. So fucking full. I’m so stuffed that oversize children can use me as a hippity-hop ball.

If you’re in the mood for a sandwich, get it on a roll, or on rye, or between two processed chicken patties, or on whatever traditional bread you like. But if you’re in the mood for a BAGEL, you gotta respect the limits of that bagel. I’ve had bagel sandwiches of every kind: with cream cheese, with lox spread, with cold cuts, even with hummus. In nearly every instance, I came to regret my epicurean hubris. Oh, that sandwich is fuckin’ huge! But not too huge for me because I'm a REAL MAN. Oh, but it was too huge.

Sometimes, when I get a bagel sandwich, I literally crack it open and redistribute the cream cheese so that I can eat it open-faced, like a pretentious effete. I even did this in the hospital. Don’t you make the same mistakes that I have. Recognize what a bagel is and what it’s for. It was not meant to be the centerpiece of a turkey sandwich. If it was, there wouldn’t be a hole right in the center.