Everything Is Everywhere
Enthusiasm for Everything Bagel seasoning has always been present but dormant among true New Yorkers. Since the dawn of the bagel store, foodies have long coveted the falloff that remains at the bottom of a brown paper bag after the last bagel from an assorted dozen is gone. On many occasions, I have flipped over the bag to let the contents spill onto my open-faced bagel with cream cheese, giving it a flourish of garlicky crunch.
But recently, Everything Bagel seasoning has moved on from its humble beginnings, first sprinkled on avocado toasts and then ascending to grocery shelves in prepackaged seasoning shakers at Trader Joe’s. Everything Bagel Seasoning is seemingly everywhere, ready to be sprinkled over whatever one wants—even ice cream.
The origins of the Everything Bagel—just like the seasoning itself—seem to be all over the place. David Gussin claimed in a New Yorker article that he invented the Everything Bagel in 1980, only to be immediately refuted by Seth Godin, who claims to have beaten Mr. Gussin by three years. If Brandon Steiner is telling the truth, then he beat everyone else by four years, but who knows if that’s true, since Joe Bastianich also claims to have invented the Everything bagel. And to be fair to all, it’s easy to see how any or all of them could have innocently and independently stumbled upon the idea, either for economic reasons or by simply looking under the bagel baskets.
The craze makes sense. From Chinese scallion pancakes to Middle Eastern za’atar bread, anyone from anywhere can relate to the flavor combinations of some distant relative of the “Everything Bagel.” Since its birth, the Everything Bagel has spread throughout society, from a metaphorical representation of a Schwarzkopf radius in Everything Everywhere All at Once to an outlawed shaker of seasoning that Koreans are forced to sneak into the country. It comes as no surprise that we’re starting to see these classic flavors interpreted in new ways.
Successfully fusing two iconic New York City dishes is a magic trick more dazzling than any of the molecular gastronomy Wylie Dufresne showcased at wd~50. So when I learned that Chef Dufresne was attempting such a mashup at his new restaurant, Stretch Pizza, I was immediately out the door to try it. The Everything is an Everything Bagel reconstructed in pizza form, comprising Everything Bagel “spice,” cream cheese, chives, and Parmesan, sitting atop their light and elevated pizza dough. The dough is good enough to eat on its own, and the toppings on The Everything blend harmoniously, though the scallion flavor lingers a bit long. Like every other pizza there, it was thoughtful and delicious. However, the pizza's uniformly hot temperature sacrifices some of the textural nuances that exist only in the original bagel form. The cool, silky, cream cheese is the perfect foil for a properly toasted bagel’s warm, crispy, and chewy exterior, creating a textural interplay that doesn’t exist in pizza form. I’ll absolutely return to Stretch Pizza, and I’ll order The Everything again, but if I’m craving an Everything Bagel, I will probably just get an Everything Bagel.
Weeks after trying Stretch Pizza, I strolled through the West Village and came upon a reimagining of an Everything Bagel so bold that it may come close to eclipsing the original. At Taco Mahal, NYC-born Danikkah Josan pays homage to her Latin American mother and Indian father by fusing their native cuisines into inventive Indian tacos. Casually advertised on the front door (not even yet formally on the menu) was the Everything Bagel reinvention I never knew I needed. The Everything But the Bagel Naan may sound like the ultimate stoner food, but I can assure you that any induced high comes from eating this dish, not from any illicit substances. The Everything Naan is, in a single dish, emblematic of the restaurant’s culinary manifesto, blending the food cultures of Chef Josan’s parents with her own New York upbringing. Indian naan, stuffed with creamy cheese much like an arepa or quesadilla, is sprinkled with New York’s Everything Bagel seasoning, baked, and comes out of the tandoor as a piping hot lovechild of all three cultures. This is not just another cheese naan, but an epicurean love letter to food and family.
The plain naan at Taco Mahal is pillowy soft. If you were to black out from euphoria after eating the Everything Naan, placing the regular naan under your falling body might save your life by softening the blow. To make the Everything Naan, regular naan is stuffed with red onion-studded cream cheese, slathered with ghee, Everything Bagel seasoning, and cilantro, and baked in a traditional tandoor. I was so entranced by the smell of warm ghee and the ephemeral warmth of the freshly baked bread that I didn’t even realize the molten cream cheese was burning my fingers and the inside of my mouth. Even after realizing I was being scalded, I went back for more, as if being burned was of secondary importance
The triumph of the Everything Naan is not solely based on its flavors. These flavors are now everywhere. Its success comes from preserving that textural and temperature difference that gives the original Everything Bagel with cream cheese its iconic status. By swapping the cool cream cheese for piping hot cream cheese, the pillowy bread and crunchy toppings find a partner as complementary and contrasting as the traditional marriage of warm toasted bagel and refrigerated cream cheese. This is why something as simple as crab rangoon can be so good, despite being almost unrecognizable as Chinese food.
With so many home cooks looking to level up their meals with pre-blended shakers of seasoning, we seem to have missed the mark with Everything Bagel seasoning. It’s not simply the blend of sesame seeds, salt, garlic, onion, and poppy seeds that makes an Everything Bagel iconic—it’s much, much more. The Everything Bagel’s flavors and textures complement each other in their contrasts, and no matter how hard we try to replicate the original, some of the magic comes from the bagel store itself, from the immediacy of unwrapping and eating the bagel, and from the fleeting balance of contrasting temperatures. As much as we try to make Everything Bagel seasoning work on everything, not everything can become an Everything Bagel.