Food innovators have to take some risks, and they’re not always going to pay off. Let me tell you, I thought I was onto something when I combined hamburgers and burritos for the “burgerito” — until I tasted it. Friends, the risk did not pay off.
But that’s actual combining of ingredients, not merely presentation. Who knew folks would get so out of sorts over just how you slice a bagel? Well, the internet sure has strong feelings about bagels.
Here’s what started it all: a tweet from a man introducing his office to the “St. Louis” way of slicing up bagels like loaves of bread.
Apparently, “St. Louis” style means slicing up bagels vertically rather than horizontally, so instead of having a nice, gooey cream cheese sandwich, you get, well, slices of bagel.
Apparently there’s some method to this bagel-slicing madness.
As Alek later explained , slicing bagels like that for his co-workers allowed them to try all kinds of different bagels with many different spreads. And if they go stale, the slices become bagel chips.
Still, people were not shy about sharing their thoughts on so-called St. Louis-style food.
And they did not think highly of what St. Louis had done to its bagels — if indeed St. Louis can be blamed for it.
Mind you, even other St. Louis residents took issue with the way those poor bagels were sliced.
Apparently it’s not the sort of thing that all of the city’s residents want to be associated with, and I’m not sure I can blame them.
At least one person saw the bread-sliced bagels not so much as blasphemy but as being cheap.
And sure, there might be something to that. But Alek did say that he encouraged his co-workers to eat plenty, saying that “if you don’t get a bagel’s worth of various types you’re crazy.”
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All the same, the bagel purists came out in force, with torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers.
If you want to see some prime examples of how dunking on a controversial idea can bring out the creativity in folks, you could do worse than Alek’s thread.
And the outrage wasn’t even limited to his thread. Folks teed off on this whole bread-sliced bagel concept.
Credit to this guy bringing a delightful Ghostbusters reference into the matter. Also, I feel like guac with peas has to be a more significant culinary violation than bread-sliced bagels.
In the end, Panera Bread, which is where Alek got his bagels from, did chime in.
And they made no secret of the fact that they’re pro bread-sliced bagels. But then, what else would you expect? However you slice it, they still sell a bagel!
What do you think? Is slicing bagels like bread clever or sacreligious?
