Bagels for Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner

For a person like me, who exercises excessively, and who is obsessed with eating non and extremely low fat foods, a bagel just seems to be the perfect choice for a full breakfast or a "big" lunch. But for a long time, finding the best bagel meant fighting too much highway traffic.

That is no longer the case.

This past summer, Fair Oaks got it's share of accessible bagel shops. Sonoma Valley Bagels opened at Greenback and Sunrise, and just a month later Bruegger's opened its doors in the Almond Orchard Center. A month ago, Noah's opened a location in Madison Mall, at the corner of Hazel and Madison.

Suddenly, the problem is no longer where to find a good bagel. The problem is now a matter of what bagel do I want. With a teen-aged daughter, several caged animals, a wife, neighbors asking me to start and head a Neighborhood Watch, deadlines to meet and papers to deliver, the last thing I want is to have to think about my food.

So, I dropped by Sonoma, Bruegger's and Noah's and picked up sun-dried tomato and cinnamon-raisin bagels from each shop. To add some pep to my bagel comparisons, I also picked their premier bagels. For Sonoma Valley it was spinach-parmesan. For Bruegger's it was parmesan. Noah's chose their Bialy.

Though my taste-test was not scientific, I was surprised by the results. My hypothesis was wrong. But on any given day, I now know what bagel I will buy, and from whom I will buy it.

Service

Walking into Bruegger's, I'm always greeted as though I'm a long lost relative just returned from a lengthy sojourn. It's a lost art of customer service in the Sacramento area, and I enjoy receiving such a warm and friendly greeting. The service at Sonoma Valley is cordial, but is not on the same gosh-we're-pleased-as-punch-you're-here level as Bruegger's. Both shops were quick to provide me with nutrition information sheets, though Bruegger's already had a pre-printed brochure waiting for me. I had to wait for a Xerox copy of the information at Sonoma.

The service at Noah's was also cordial, but the staff seemed a bit harried—perhaps because they are new in the community and because, at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday they were experiencing a "rush."

But a rush is a subjective event, which leads to the second part of my test.

Facilities

Bruegger's and Sonoma Valley use the "Disneyland" system, the weaving through a roped corridor that makes it seem like you're not standing in line. Waiting in line at Bruegger's, you can read a few informative posters (with some great artwork) that hang on the wall. When finished reading the posters and looking at some of the cutest cartoons in the community, you can watch bagels boil behind a window. But it's rare to wait long in line at Bruegger's. Lunch seems to create the biggest lines, because it takes longer to build a bagel sandwich than to simply throw a dozen bagels in a bag for a take-home breakfast, but the service corridor is spacious, and several customers can move simultaneously about, making it easy for the staff to wait on many customers at once. Bruegger's has several cash registers to help move people quickly on their way. Sonoma Valley has a big open space where customers can easily peruse the various bagels while others order and go. The corridor funnels folks to the two registers for quick turnaround. Numerous customers do not seem to be a problem at either shop. Bruegger's was actually hosting a meeting when I arrived, and Sonoma Valley could have hosted the Democratic National Convention.

I dropped by Bruegger's at 10:45 a.m. on Sunday, with nearly twenty other hungry customers, ordered my bagels and was on my way within 90 seconds. Though Sonoma was also serving about twenty customers, I could have been in-and-out of there in 60 seconds if I hadn't stopped to gawk at the enormous number of bagels that they display on racks behind the counter.

Eight customers in Noah's, however, was a melee. I had to order from the same spot on the floor where I was to pay my bill, but to get to that point, I had to push my way through a crowd of three people to see the display case, and then had to push my way back to the register. Unfortunately, after all of the pushing and shoving, I arrived at the spot to order and was told that I had just missed the cinnamon-raisin bagels, and that I'd have to wait fifteen minutes for the Bialy. I settled for the sun-dried tomato, a blueberry and a pumpernickel (a particular favorite of mine that Bruegger's and Sonoma Valley no longer make). Noah's had a great Yiddish dictionary in pamphlet form, and a great report on what makes food kosher, but no nutritional information that I could take home. It took nearly five minutes to get my bagels.

The Bagel

The most important part of my test I was able to do at home. I ate the bagels. But as I mentioned earlier in this essay, I was surprised at my discovery.

It is important to note that I reheated the bagels in the oven inside their individual bags. Each bagel was taste-tested at the same temperature. Each bagel was cut with the same knife. But unlike wine tasting, I did not spit out the bagels. I did eat them, sharing sections with my daughter and my wife. Not one of us was used to eating so much food at a single sitting, but for the sake of pseudo-science, sacrifices had to be made.

Because Noah's had run out of cinnamon-raisin, I compared their blueberry to the cinnamon-raisin bagels from Bruegger's and Sonoma Valley. The Bruegger's cinnamon-raisin bagel was much smaller and more dense than the Noah's blueberry and the Sonoma Valley cinnamon-raisin. It was incredibly shiny, an indication that the outside of the bagel would be hard. It was hard. I hate to fight it with my teeth to get to the chewy inside of the bagel, and in the fight I got an abrasion on my palate. After a few minutes the exterior became softer, but became so chewy that it stuck to my teeth and made me wonder whether I was chewing gum. And while the Bruegger's bagel had more raisins than the Sonoma Valley bagel, and more raisins than the Noah's bagel had blueberries, the taste of the bagel was as flat as it looked. The Noah's bagel was much softer and more pleasing in texture, but the Sonoma Valley cinnamon-raisin bagel, also light but chewy the way a bagel should be, had hints of nutmeg that added unexpected pleasure. It was sweet, but not overly sweet like the Noah's and Bruegger's bagels.

I'm not a big fan of sun-dried tomato bagels, and so I thought that I would have to leave this section of the experiment to my wife and daughter, who love sun-dried tomato bagels. But when you taste something that you don't like of something that you really don't like, you know that you really, really don't like something. I enjoyed the texture and the spiciness of the Noah's bagel, but I did not like the heaviness of the flavor and the lingering after taste. In stark contrast, the Bruegger's sun-dried tomato bagel barely had a flavor. My wife and I preferred the subtleties of the Sonoma Valley sun-dried tomato bagel. My daughter, however, raved about the spicy Noah's bagel.

Because the premier bagels of Sonoma Valley and Bruegger's were similar, we moved right along and saved the Noah's pumpernickel for an isolated taste test. I wouldn't normally eat a bagel with 400 calories, 6 grams of fat and 890 milligrams of sodium, but again, sacrifices had to be made in the name of pseudo-science. The calories, fat grams and grams of sodium in the Bruegger's parmesan bagel were not listed in the handy take-home guide, but I am sure that the figures are comparable to those listed above for the Sonoma Valley parmesan bagel.

The figures don't matter. I will never eat another parmesan bagel. Bagels should not taste like that. The parmesan cheese on the Sonoma Valley bagel was shredded, and baked long enough to make the cheese crunchy. The cheese on the Bruegger's bagel was sprinkled, but was just too much. Who came up with the idea of a parmesan bagel? I didn't like them, but my wife and daughter loved them, even though what they ate were not bagels.

With two whole bagels under our belts (literally), we still had a remaining bagel—the Noah's pumpernickel. What a fine bagel. The texture was nearly perfect, firm but not hard on the outside, light and chewy on the inside. The flavor is perfectly pumpernickel. I'm not sure that pumpernickel is a traditional bagel flavor, but if not it should be. Too much can be made with a pumpernickel bagel, from a ham and honey-mustard sandwich with mustard greens for lunch, to being topped with apricot jam for a breakfast.

The Results

I expected the Sonoma Valley bagels to fall at the bottom of the list. After all, the bagels that you get at their shop at Greenback and Sunrise are the same that you buy at the grocers next to the run-of-the-mill bagels—the only difference being the preservatives that they must add to the grocery store bagels to insure an adequate shelf life. Much to my surprise, the Sonoma Valley bagels proved to be excellent fare. The speed of their service and the spaciousness of their shop also pleased me. But though I was a bit irritated by having to rub elbows with other customers in Noah's, I did enjoy the pumpernickel bagel, enough that I will tolerate the longer wait just to get one.

Conclusion

The following morning, a representative from Noah's arrived at my door with a bag full of blueberry and cinnamon-raisin bagels, and three Bialy's. I was dumbfounded by such extraordinary service, and decided to give Noah's a fair shake. I tossed one of each into the oven, though my stomach begged me not to because of my previous day's over-indulgence. My bagel belly was killing me.

The cinnamon-raisin was firm on the outside and tender on the inside. I loved it, and so did my wife and daughter. The Bialy had 5.4 grams of fat, a bit high for someone like me who tries to keep his daily fat intake below 25 grams, but still I had another. The Bialy was too good to tuck into the corner of the bread basket. I was tempted to fight my wife and daughter for the third Bialy, but I knew that I would lose.

The folks at Bruegger's are so friendly that I would invite any one of them to my house, and because my daughter liked their fare the best, I have no choice but to visit them every so often. I am wise enough to know that I should not argue with a teenager when she's hungry. Sonoma Valley makes a very fine bagel. I would choose them over Bruegger's, but for my picky eating habits, I will spend the extra time waiting in line and tossing a few elbows just to get a Noah's bagel. The bagels are that good.