Victor Asteinza

The Meaning of Cutting a Bagel in Half

January 5th, 2007

I grew up in New York where when one would order a bagel it would come “cut in half” by default. Now let me explain by what I mean by that. When one orders a bagel with cream cheese the person behind the counter slices the bagel horizontally open and spreads cream cheese on it. In most places, but not all, they then wrap the bagel in parchment paper and cut the bagel in half vertically, and then wrap it again in another parchment paper. So one would end up with a bagel that is sliced with cream cheese in the middle and two “half circles” of a bagel. I confirmed with various friends and family members that still live in the East coast, and they confirmed that this is still the case. In fact one does not have to request for it to be cut in half again, it just comes that way. Most of them were a little baffled why I was asking this question. Let me explain.

I have been living on the West coast for almost five years now and whenever I order a bagel I have to remember to always ask for them to cut it in half, which results in a bewildered look. “You mean cut it in half again?”, while making a vertical cutting motion with their hands, they ask. To which I respond, “Yes.” However sometimes they need more of an explanation. “Well its already cut in half to put the cream cheese on it.”, some say. Yes of course it is. How else can you get the cream cheese on the bagel? Just spread it on the top? So I have to explain to them how I want it cut.

Marilee insists that I am asking it the wrong way, that maybe I should find another way of requesting my bagel be “cut in half”. But I refuse. Especially in a New York style Bagel shop. How can they call themselves a New York Bagel style shop when they call the cream cheese “shmear”, toast the bagels by default, and don’t cut their bagels in half?! How else can I ask for it? In quarters? That would produce four pieces of bagel in my mind. This is an ongoing conversation whenever I run into trouble at a bagel shop out here.

Which brings us to this morning. Over the five years that I have lived here I have grown accustomed to asking the server to cut my bagel in half, with about a 90% success rate. I am okay with it. So this morning when the server responded with “You mean cut it in half again?”, and I said “Yes.”, I didn’t realize that she was from the East coast, or at least trained on the workings of an East coast bagel shop. When I got in my car I had four pieces of bagel instead of the two that I was expecting. Which got me started again on the on going rant of how bagels are supposed to be cut.

So to help out, here is a visual explanation, thanks to Marilee’s help.

I present to you a whole bagel.

What does one do with said bagel? Well, you it slice open.

So that you get two pieces to put butter, lox, cream cheese (which I prefer), or whatever one would like in the middle.

You then put it back together, and cut it in half.

Not in quarters.

Any questions?

Tags:

bagels