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Bagels are meeting with success in unlikely areas. In the busiest Burger King outlet in St. Louis, around 30% of the breakfast crowd chooses them. Celia Burton orders one there every Thursday morning, to nosh on as she studies her Bible portion for that night's meeting of the Jehovah's Witnesses. "I just love them," says Burton, who was converted to bagels four months ago. Another devotee is David Atwater, 19, a Burger King customer in Scottsdale, Ariz. Says he: "I can have a bagel and be full for the morning. I'd have to have two croissants to get the same feeling." Bagels are making inroads even in the South, bastion of the fluffy biscuit. "Is that one of those round things?" asked a customer as she and her husband decided to try bagels in Columbia, S.C. Though still loyal to biscuits, she was impressed with what she tasted.
Nevertheless, to this Brooklyn traditionalist, almost everything about bagels these days is irritating, including the obscene practice of eating them hot or, worse yet, toasted. Years ago, eating a bagel was not just a simple pleasure; it was a confrontation. To bite into one in the morning, freshly baked but cool, was to have the jaw muscles vibrate until dinnertime. Now neatness, of all things, is a requirement. Burger King's dough is modified so customers can bite cleanly into its sandwiches without squeezing the fillings out.
Big Apple's Kent says, "Hold an authentic New York bagel to your ear, and you can hear the traffic." Hold most of today's bagels up to your ear, and all you hear is a cash register ringing.