Bagelgate Schmielgate

New Yorkers just don’t get us.

Hey New York if it makes it here it’ll make it anywhere. St. Louis is the city of discriminating taste. And proud of it.

We don’t need the rest of the country to tell us how to eat our bagels. Like my mom used to say, it all goes down to the same place. Who cares what it looks like when you’re eating it?

I can’t believe those snobby New Yorkers who get insulted because we have the nerve to like our bagels sliced like bread. Nobody’s holding a gun to their head. Oh wait let’s not say gun. How about a bagel slicer.

At least New York knows where St. Louis is. We used to be flyover country. We may still be stuck in the middle but we’re having a good time, right here in the ‘Lou. If you’ve never been here you’re missing out, too bad!

We actually have nice people in the Gateway City who are not quite so opinionated. Present company excluded.

I guess New Yorkers like to wolf their bagels down and get fat. Their problem. They’re not smart enough to know when you have your bagel sliced like bread you can munch on it all day, enjoying a little bit at a time. It’s much more satisfying and you can spread out the calories and carbs throughout the afternoon.

Most women I know watch their carbs. When we have a gathering we get a few bread-sliced bagels and put them out in a basket. Everybody takes a different variety or two. I guess you have to have a

St. Louis mind to appreciate the common sense of that.

Now let’s get to pizza. Who wants to eat that thick sliced sloppy concoction? The dough is only half cooked, maybe.

The thick pizza is so messy you have to eat it over the sink to catch all of the slop. It’s going to fall down anyway before you even get to the good part. And, by the time you get all that crust in your mouth, you can’t even taste the bacon or the veggies or whatever topping you chose. The topping usually falls off anyway so you’re stuck eating globby crust.

A few years ago a dietitian told me I could have three slices of thin crusted Imo’s pizza. You know “the square beyond compare”. That would be within my calorie count. You could even consider it healthy.

I wouldn’t even know how to translate that into the thick stuff. I don’t think there’s anything healthy about that.

When I was a kid growing up we ate pizza almost every weekend. Back then every restaurant in St. Louis had thin crust pizza and it was yummy. I don’t even think we heard of the thick stuff. We would not have  liked it anyway.

My kids are more flexible about their taste in pizza. They do eat the thick stuff. But between you and me I think they like the thin crust better.

In the last decade or so I noticed a lot of the pizza places in St. Louis have caved in to making a thicker crust. Many don’t want to miss a dollar. Too many New York and Chicago people planted here who don’t have St. Louis savvy.

I think I’ll have to do a survey to see how the thick stuff sells here now. I’ll get back to you on that.