It’s going to be really, really hard to top KFC’s explosive doughnut chicken sandwich news, but Philadelphia cream cheese is making a bold effort with the announcement that it has created Bagel That, a hole puncher for food that can turn anything into a bagel so you can put cream cheese on it. They’ve even gone so far as to create a super annoying ad and an Amazon page that claims the Bagel That is sold out.
I was going to go into a whole rant here about how a bagel is more than a piece of bread with a whole in it and that the thing that makes a bagel a bagel and not a roll is that it is boiled and that this whole thing is clearly a ripoff of Will It Waffle?, but then I realized I would just be playing into Philly’s cream-cheese-covered hands.
So the only reason I am writing about it right now is because Mike Pomranz, who covered it for Food & Wine, asks this question: “So in the end, no, I don’t think most people will be that confused about what a bagel is—or at least unsure enough to make ‘Is it a bagel?’ the next ‘Is a hot dog a sandwich?’”
No, Mike, it is not the next “Is a hot dog a sandwich?”
“Is a hot dog a sandwich?” is a delicate, philosophical, existential question. Something is either a bagel or it is not.
But I fully support the more liberal use of cream cheese.