In praise of the plain bagel

Bagels on display at Katz’s Delicatessen in Manhattan.

Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images

People really identify with what they eat. Our taste buds can even take on a personality. Seeing strangers on social media eat what we enjoy makes us feel part of a community. We get worked up when others misrepresent or disparage our favorite food. (Look no further than the impassioned foodies behind the evolution of the bagel emoji.)

This societal pressure is why I used to be ashamed about my plain-Jane bagel order. Why — given the exciting, ever-growing array of flavors out there — would my go-to be the plain bagel, the breakfast equivalent of vanilla ice cream? I must have an unrefined palate that has not matured beyond Uncrustables and Goldfish.

So to dismiss any judgments suggesting I might have boring taste buds — and thus less of a personality than Wonder Bread — I have landed on some pretty airtight logic.

The naked bagel is a litmus test for the quality of an establishment. Just as a true chef must prove her technique with a simple omelet, so too can a humble bagel reveal the shortcomings of a baker without the crutch of seasonings.

More and more, variety and flamboyance are crowding out the plain bagel. Sometimes the only options left in the bakery case are poppy seed and sesame seed. There might be an errant rainbow bagel, jalapeño cheddar or maybe a mystery flavor that I’m pretty sure disqualifies the food from being a bagel. If there are plain bagels, there’s always the risk that the plains may have gotten too cozy with the everything bagels. Worse, there are those who dare to corrupt the plains by scooping out their chewy insides.

There’s no religious, geographical or cultural…