There Is One Truly Great McDonald's Breakfast Bagel

There seems to be some confusion as to where one can find McDonald's bagel breakfast sandwiches.

McD's legendary breakfast menu, like so many fast food menus, got a bit smaller during COVID as breakfast bagels and wraps were both reportedly taken off the menu in 2020. Many customers were outraged by the loss of this beloved menu item, but in recent months, the bagels have come roaring back—depending on where you live.

Angela L Pagán wrote about this back in June:

Since discontinuing its bagel offerings, McDonald's has only reintroduced bagels regionally. A representative for the company confirmed to The Takeout that bagel sandwiches, as well as the sought-after sauce that dresses them, are available in participating restaurants in the area of Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington D.C.

The implied regional availability here caused some confusion among Takeout readers, many of whom reported having access to the bagels in Michigan, New Jersey, and Orlando. And if I may add to this chorus of bagel attainability, ugh, my dad seemingly runs on a diet of McDonald's breakfast bagels in Western Pennsylvania. Other outlets have noted that the bagels are in Columbus, New York City, and parts of New England, too.

The breakfast bagels do seem to be unavailable further west, however. The Facebook group Where's my McDonald's Bagel? is dedicated to locating the whereabouts of these coveted sandwiches and has come up with bupkis in Texas and Kansas City.

Given all these data points, I think it's safe to say that the bagels are reliably available in parts of the Midwest, Northeast, and parts of the Southeast. But, again, the situation seems to be fluid.

If you live in those markets, great, because the breakfast bagels are somewhat legendary. Customer demand has been building for these soft and squishy sandwiches since their swift axing a few years back. As a proudly pronounced McDonald's breakfast guy who happens to be in a place where the bagels are available, I headed down to the local McD's to give all three bagels a try. Are they really worth the hype? Or has the withholding of these bagels just created a false sense of nostalgia?

First, I'd like to address Breakfast Sauce, which should appear on every breakfast bagel.

McDonald's Breakfast Sauce is a bit of a hodgepodge. It's a low-rent hollandaise of sorts featuring egg yolks, soybean oil, and vinegar (there's your hollandaise), but also buttermilk powder, corn syrup solids, and dehydrated cheddar cheese.

At my local McDonald's in New Castle, Pennsylvania, I asked for breakfast sauce on all three sandwiches just to be sure. The person taking my order assured me that the sauce already comes on every breakfast bagel. However, I found there to be very little breakfast sauce on each. It was so lacking that I had to inspect each bagel to make sure it was even there. I don't know if this is a nationwide McDonald's problem or not, but each bagel would have been improved by more sauce. So, as a tip, it couldn't hurt to ask for more of the stuff. It definitely adds richness, and these bagels are all about indulgence.

The Steak, Egg & Cheese Bagel is a butter-brushed bagel behemoth. It features a salty steak patty, grilled onions, folded egg, and melted American cheese. It's deliciously soft and squishy and evenly proportioned, all the signature attributes of a good McDonald's breakfast sandwich. It mirrors the Egg McMuffin in that way.

I really don't think it's any coincidence that this is my dad's favorite sandwich. He's a retired train engineer who's been eating the Steak, Egg & Cheese Bagel for 20 years. It definitely has Boomer qualities to it, a real steak-and-eggs kind of vibe. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it's perfectly good the way it's served. But there are ways in which customers can improve it, if they choose. More on that in a moment.

The Sausage Egg and Cheese Bagel is great, but it's definitely worse than the Sausage McMuffin with Egg or Sausage Biscuit. With an Egg McMuffin, each ingredient melds into the next; here, the bagel is just too much bread. If you really, really like mass-produced, frozen-then-thawed bagels, then you might not gripe, but to me, since the bagel is nothing special, I just wish there were less of it. It's like a good burger bun: You just kind of want to forget that it's there. This bagel doesn't "disappear" the way a fast food English muffin does, and that's a shame, because all that bread means you taste less of the McDonald's sausage patty, which, while salty and highly processed, is fatty and delicious, too.

The Bacon, Egg, & Cheese Bagel features the same problems as the sausage. It's a lot of frozen bagel, fluffy eggs made off-site from liquid concentrate, and an insufficient amount of sauce. As you can see in the picture above, the bacon is barely visible. It's mostly bread and folded egg, which aren't enough to make a great breakfast sandwich on their own.

As many commenters have noted, there are always modifications to be made to your order. Adding extra Breakfast Sauce is one way to make the bagel feel less bogged down by bread. Asking for a freshly cracked "round egg" will add some extra flavor. And if I were ordering the the Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bagel, I would definitely ask for extra bacon.

Of course, everybody has their own preferences, but when weighing thse breakfast bagels against McDonald's other legendary breakfast sandwiches, the Steak, Egg & Cheese Bagel is the clear frontrunner. It needs almost no modifications (save for extra sauce), it's deliciously filling and decadent, and its squishy, well-rounded construction embodies the ethos of the McDonald's breakfast menu. A staple since 2002, this COVID casualty seems to be making its slow comeback—and that's great news, because it's the one bagel at McDonald's that's worth keeping around.