courage bagels
courage bagels
is a bagel really worth a 45 minute queue?
when i was in la last summer, i saw the long line for courage bagels from the backseat of our uber (leaving sqirl, of course) and i couldn’t understand why anyone would stand in that long of a line for a simple bagel, cream cheese, some smoked salmon slivers, a few springs of dill and a couple capers. like, why? i remember the uber driver shaking his head and clicking his tongue against his teeth as we drove past. he didn’t understand it either and my confusion felt validated. bagels are something that i enjoy but i don’t think of them as something that can be revolutionary or really mind-blowing. maybe it’s because i was born and raised in california where bagels are enjoyed and loved by some but not with the fervor of new yorkers or montrealers. my idea of a good bagel growing up was getting a plain toasted bagel with chive cream cheese from posh bagel which now, i understand is very low on the rankings of a good bagel.
courage bagels slipped my mind after coming back to the bay but my interest was piqued whenever i’d see la mutuals post their weekend open-faced bagel from courage on a beautifully sunny la day. it was less about the bagel itself but more like, how do their tomatoes look so good when it’s not even tomato season? why do their sliced persian cucumbers look like that? mine certainly don’t. why does their dill look so perky and lush, different than the kind i get at monterey market?? and although the instagram stories did show the bagel toppings to be very classic: cream cheese, smoked salmon or salmon roe, capers and dill layered on top of each other in a purposeful artistic messiness, something about it looked especially enticing and intriguing. what was it, though? admittedly, i don’t even like smoked salmon that much so why was i salivating anytime someone posted a photo of their open faced spread?
when we got dinner this past week with chloe and andy at étra, we got onto the topic of courage bagels which they claimed was a very, very, very good bagel. i trusted them immediately which is on brand for me but jeremy feigned skepticism. but the line! i am rarely down for waiting in a long line, especially when it’s in the sun and there is no shade to stand under. maybe it’s my adhd but i get very impatient and i often end up feeling like the wait time is hardly worth what i was waiting for. i guess in my eyes, a really long line is difficult for me to justify. i’m not sure there are many places in berkeley where people choose to wait in long lines, especially for food so i’m usually out of ‘practice’. i wonder if this lack of waiting-in-line-practice is because there just aren’t many places actually worth waiting in a long queue for in the east bay or the bay area, in general. two places i can think of in the east bay where i have waited in a long line for was lovely’s when they first opened and rotha’s. was it worth it at lovely’s? i’m not sure, maybe at the time it was but now that the novelty has worn off? no. and rotha? eh, i did it once, never did it again and i don’t plan to.
for me, it’s like, yes these two places are great but the drag of waiting in such a long and slow line (sometimes 50 minutes just to order a cheeseburger at lovely’s) makes it taste less good.
