These Bagels Are So Hot Right Now
It’s 2024, and we can see first hand how online trends are popping up with greater frequency in the real world. Now, the hallmarks of Washington Square Park are its commemorative arch, its fountain, and a young couple posing for pictures with a brown paper bag from PopUp Bagels.
Filming the rising steam from a piping hot bagel may seem bizarre for the social media uninitiated, but the brown bag and its steamy contents have become the urban equivalent of a hunter’s grip-n-grin photo with the animal he murdered. These bagel photos, however, are not personal mementos; they are content for public consumption. They are proof-of-life videos to prove a life well lived. One can no longer scroll through social media without seeing steam from a PopUp Bagel nearly fogging up one’s screen from the inside, intended to waft jealousy directly onto you, as if it was a shower scene in a movie that plays directly into your fantasies about joining in.
The line outside PopUp Bagels on Thompson Street is always long, so it is appropriate to treat the bag of bagels as a reward for spending so much time waiting. Discoveries online now lead to long waits in line. Everything good is Instagrammed, and everything Instagrammed now involves at least a 45-minute wait. But we would all be lying if we tried to pretend this was something new. Almost 30 years ago, I waited for what seemed like an eternity on 55th Street just to have The Soup Nazi serve me turkey chili (with bread and a giant orange — which I assumed meant The Soup Nazi liked me, as opposed to my friend, who’s bruised apple must have signified that he did something wrong while ordering). We saw it on Seinfeld when Seinfeld was the 1990s trendsetter in the cultural zeitgeist. We had to have it. Now that we see it on Instagram, we have to have it. The proof-of-life bagel content is meant as proof of living a life you are expected to want, and the line is made up of people who strive to meet those expectations.
One day, while walking our dog through Washington Square Park, my wife and I spontaneously decided to check the length of the line at PopUp Bagels after seeing the regular collection of people eating them in the park. We were planning to eat salads for lunch, but opportunity had other plans for us. There was no line. 2 minutes later, we walked out with a brown bag of piping hot sesame, poppy, and everything bagels with a tub of scallion cream cheese.
I will end the suspense right here. The bagels were absolutely delicious, to the point where I felt ashamed to be seen moaning while chewing, and even more shame at my newfound desire to take a picture of them and share it. The steam, in fact, did rise from the bagel. The crust had that chewy and crunchy bark, as promised by social media. The bagels at PopUp Bagels are a textural experience, bordering on sensual. The steam, the aroma, the pillowy stretch of the interior seem to suggest that these bagels were made by a scientist who really understands the chemistry involved in good baking. As with most bagels, the luscious cream cheese is a perfect foil for the malty and salty dough, but in this case, the experience was heightened, perhaps by the heat of the bagel, which softened the cream cheese as it was dragged through. This bagel scientist is clearly a romantic.
But these bagels are not a vehicle for early morning sustenance, or breakfast on the go. The bagels at PopUp Bagels demand your time; they demand patience in line, care to prevent burning your fingers when you rip them open, and a two-handed operation to dunk the ripped piece of bagel in the tub of cream cheese the way one dips cookies in milk. These bagels require a chair, and they require your immediate attention. They are simply not the same once they have cooled off.
PopUp Bagels are Connecticut bagels, which is where owner Adam Goldberg conceived of them. They are not New York bagels; They are not in a rush. These bagels are meant for people with time to kill and space to spread out. The PopUp Bagels experience is a boutique experience. A treat. But these are not the type of bagels we New Yorkers live off of as staples of our diet. It’s hard to see PopUp Bagels becoming a cornerstone of a native New Yorker’s diet. We simply don’t have the time to wait in line, or for the bagel to cool off. We are not used to long lines when it comes to functional foods like bagels; we are used to being amazed at thinking we have overloaded the brain of the guy behind the counter with several highly specific bagel orders, only to watch him to remember them all and have them packaged up and ready in minutes, keeping the line moving.
But every once in a while, when the stars align and the line dies down, and you have the time to really savor the moment, PopUp Bagels is exactly the sort of carnal experience that makes you understand all the amateur food porn online that it inspired.