TOASTING A GOOD BAGEL IS BASTARDIZING A BEAUTIFUL THING

Bill de Blasio likes toasted bagels — his latest NYC food snafu

By Julia Marsh

New York Post
January 15, 2020

Is there any New York City food Bill de Blasio DOES know how to eat?

The Big Apple mayor — who was reviled for digging into a slice of pizza with a knife and fork — stepped into another culinary catastrophe Wednesday when he decided to weigh in on National Bagel Day.

In honor of New York’s hometown carb of choice, Hizzoner posted on Twitter his preference as, “Whole wheat. Toasted. Extra cream cheese.”

The Twitterverse quickly descended, roasting the mayor for toasting his bagel, an absolute no-no among bagel purists.

“In the 20 years I lived across the street from EssABagel, they never had a toaster and would scoff if you asked. The best bagels on earth don’t need no toastin’,” @SpikeMcManus tweeted in response to the mayor’s faux pas.

De Blasio quickly deleted the controversial tweet and reposted it without the word “toasted.”

Adding to the bagel hole he found himself in, the mayor identified “Bagel Hole in Park Slope” as the city’s best purveyor of the boiled and baked dough — but that Seventh Avenue shop refuses to toast its always-fresh bagels.

“We bake them here and they’re already hot,” Bagel Hole’s assistant manager Raul Perez told The Post.

“It’s the old-fashioned way,” he said.

Hizzoner was last at Bagel Hole a couple of weeks ago when he ordered two whole wheat bagels with cream cheese, Perez said.

Thankfully, he didn’t ask for them toasted.

When another traditionalist, Murray’s Bagels in Chelsea, reversed its no-toasting policy in 2015, gourmands gagged.

“Toasting a good bagel is bastardizing a beautiful thing,” food writer Arthur Bovino explained in the wake of the Murray’s betrayal.

“If you’re toasting a good bagel, you’re toasting something that’s already warm and crusty– that’s redundant,” Bovino wrote.

The mayor’s press secretary, Freddi Goldstein, replied with a tongue in cheek, “This is a schmear campaign against the mayor’s preferences.”

She said de Blasio told the team to tweet about Bagel Hole. “When he’s at a place that toasts, he gets toasted, but for Bagel Hole he’s happy to forgo the toasting,” she said.

Still, de Blasio has a long history of unsavory eating habits.

Besides the knife and fork pizza debacle in 2014, Hizzoner chowed down on a microwaved gas station burrito in Iowa last year instead of enjoying the Hawkeye State’s award-winning barbecue or succulent steaks.

And he caused a top aide to cringe when he asked for a double espresso with four sugars in 2015.

Then de Blasio drew outrage on New Years Eve by ripping Domino’s for selling $30 pies to penned-in Times Square revelers.