adam bondurant

I started my search for the perfect bagel near Union Square at Cafe Encore. This little cafe is situated on Post Street at Mason Street, about a block away from my office. Its sign is small and is sandwiched between two other signs, so if you're coming from the East, you might miss it.

The cafe itself is small with a few places to sit, a juice fridge, ATM, and a menu with a healthy assortment of both breakfast and lunch options. The two women I've seen working there are very friendly and are willing to chat with the customers. There is a sign behind the register that advises, "No soup for you! (We're temporarily sold out, sorry)" and people seem to get a kick out of it.

Regarding the bagels, I should start by saying that I'm looking at four things with these reviews:

• Appearance
• Price
• Bagel bread
• Cream cheese

All bagels will be toasted, plain, with plain cream cheese. Now, onto the review for Cafe Encore.

• Appearance: The bagel doesn't really look good at all. It's smooshed, and reminds me of Lender's bagels. Even when toasted, I feel like it's just going to ooze cream cheese and not have that crunch I love so much when bitten into.
• Price: The bagel costs $2.50. I'm used to a $2.06 bagel, but I've come to accept that most everything costs more in Union Square, so I'm not too concerned. I will say that $2.50 is on the high end of what I expect to pay for my bagel, though, and anything more than that will just disappoint, unless it's God's gift to bagels.
• Bagel bread: The appearance says it all: the bread is squishy and lacks character. There's nothing like biting into a fresh, toasted piece of bread, but this comes nowhere close to perfection.

• Cream cheese: The coverage on the bagel is spotty at best. I pulled off one quarter of the bagel only to realize that 95% of the cream cheese came with it, leaving the other piece beneath it with very little. I'm not looking forward to eating a piece of bagel with almost no cream cheese.

  Another problem is that the cream cheese is really warm and gooey. I like a firm, cold cream cheese to contrast the toasted bagel, but this stuff doesn't hold up to the heat and threatens to turn into a drippy mess.

While I enjoy the cafe itself, I'm going to have to avoid Cafe Encore's bagels from now on. There are too many things wrong with them to keep going back.

I started a new job on January 2nd of this year. I'm now working for an incubator of Web applications at a PR firm in San Francisco. The job is going really well, but what I'm really concerned about is the lack of good breakfast food in my new location, Union Square. Granted, I could go to any number of restaurants in the area and get a nice sit-down meal for about $8.00, but I'm really just addicted to bagels.

When I was growing up, my dad used to get a salt-encrusted bagel as often as he could. When his cholesterol started getting too high, my mom made him make us a deal that any bagel he bought would count $5 towards the purchase of a new Super Nintendo game. I think he realized it was a win/win situation, having happy sons and an equally happy stomach, so the plan didn't work very well–at least, not for mom–my brothers and I got at least two games out of it.

There was only one good place to get bagels in Dublin: The Bagel Bakery. I'm glad my dad did the legwork to figure out the best place to buy bagels in my hometown. I think ultimately what made him stop getting so many was the change in ownership. My dad was a people person, and outward image counted a lot towards his coming back to a store. When the new owners were described as, "a little cranky," the bagels stopped coming.

While I understand the downsides of bagels, especially a bagel every morning, I just don't want to give them up. After a lot of searching around SOMA at my old job, I found Cafe Centro in South Park. They have, hands down, the best bagels in SOMA. The bagels themselves are crisp when lightly toasted. The real winner, though, is the cream cheese. A nice, firm cheese is key to a good bagel, and these guys understand that.

My goal in the next few weeks is to document my findings regarding bagels in my new area. I can only hope to find something comparable to The Bagel Bakery and Cafe Centro.