That's a bummer of a bagel

One thing I always enjoyed about Vermont was the plethora of good bagel shops around town. The Burlington area was small as far as cities are concerned, but there were places all around town where one could order bagel and cream cheese delights. Even at the cafeteria where I used to work, they had a fabulous self-serve bagel bar with quite the assortment of flavored cream cheese (6-8!).

Fort Collins ... not so much. After driving around for more than a month, I had not stumbled across a single shop. Not even a Dunkin Donuts that might have bagels. The cafeteria where I work has bagels, but they remind me of the pre-sliced freezer selection variety, and no cream cheese bar - just 50 cents for a single serving packet of plain Phily Cream Cheese for that is too scant to properly cover a bagel. No thanks.

In desperation, I turned to the internet. I found Gib's NY Bagels and Deli. Looking on their website, I started getting really excited. They talk a good talk, and most bagel shops I had been to back east were good, so why would I think that a bagel shop that bragged about how good & authentic they were would be anything but exceptional?

The next morning, I woke up and went straight to the shop. I was too excited to take the time to read the menu, so I ordered by favorite: onion bagel, toasted, with scallion cream cheese.

Authentic bagel person: "We don't have scallion cream cheese"

Deb: "Really .... but, that's such a basic flavor"

Authentic bagel person: "We have lox"

Deb: "Thanks, but lox is fish, I'm looking for a vegetable"

So, I had to read their menu after all, and settled on the onion bagel, toasted, with spinach & artichoke LITE substance that is supposed to mimic cream cheese.

That's right, folks ... every single flavor of "cream cheese" that they had in the shop was lite. The only real full-fat cream cheese options they had in the shop were plain and lox spread. So, the choice was this: runny cream cheese-like substance that had flavors thrown in an attempt to mask the fact that the cream cheese-like substance lacked flavor of its own, or real cream cheese that didn't have any fancy flavors (or had lox mixed in).

To be fair, the actual bagel was tasty - I'd even say delicious. But, can I really enjoy a bagel to its fullest if it is accompanied by lite cream cheese? I always thought of the bagel as a vector for ingesting yummy flavored cream cheese.

*Sigh* ... maybe I should look into living/working out of the Longmont office. It's near Boulder, and rumor has it, they have good bagels.

I'd better check it out before buying property, though ...