If you’ve never heard of Bagel Bites, be thankful. They are pretty much terrible: a little bagel with a few sprinkles of pepperoni cubes and cheese over tomato sauce, sold by the dozens ready to be microwaved at a moment’s notice. As a midwestern teen fatty first discovering the glory of the sprawling processed fooditarium that is Sam’s Club, however, they were a brand-name item of obsession and flash-frozen desire. I mean, tiny pizzas were one thing, but tiny bagels, the most exotic of all breakfast starch delivery vectors? (Did you know bagels were made by *looks around midwest and whispers* Jews?)
I don’t miss Bagel Bites. (Although don’t get me started on Totino’s Pizza Rolls, because, Good Lord…okay, I can’t. But easily a whole bag, no problem.) But when someone mentioned Bagel Bites to me today as a harm-reduction tool after I confessed to eating an entire pizza last night, I got to thinking: Bagel Bites would be something that a New York chef could really do up right. We have the pizza technology. We have the world’s leading bagel scientists. And best of all, they’d probably taste terrible with foie gras, so it’s a challenge that couldn’t simply be met by putting a dollop of duck organ on top of the existing product and serving it up with a smirk.
So that’s a freebie, chefs of New York–and you’re welcome. If you reinvent the pizza bagel as haute cuisine and it changes the face of reinterpreted American classics forever, all you owe me is a free lifetime supply. (Also, I’m happy to help you in the testing process. For instance, what if you used a regulation-sized bagel? This is the sort of thinking I bring to the table.)
And yes, Bucky is on vacation this week. Why do you ask?
I concur with the challenger's challenge.
Excuse me! We have the leading bagel scientists in Montreal and you know it!
I haven't had as many Montreal bagels as one needs to pass proper judgement, but I've liked what I've had. There's a Montrealese deli somewhere in the city, I'm told. I'll go do the testing!
Yikes! That sounds of pure awesome.
As is our wont every Easter, my family dined on a traditional holiday meal of lox and bagels. Well, no lox this year. When I approached the seafood counter at our local Safeway and inquired where I might find lox, I was met with a blank stare from the corn-fed boy behind the counter. Spelling it out "ell-oh-ex" didn't help, either. "I don't know what that is," he shrugged, clearly not intrigued to bother finding out by inquiring of anyone else.
And that's when I remembered why I will never again live in a small town with no Jews.