Isaac Stein ’12
Staff Writer

In a town that takes pride in being an extension of New York culture, it seems only fitting that the local food supply should be up to par.

In a town that doesn’t care whether or not it has a movie theater, a bowling alley, or an independent bookstore—which many other, less wealthy towns have­—it seems only fitting that the populace would have the most discriminating of taste when it comes to food.

Or not.

Judging by the restaurants that serve up bagels in Westport and how much business they get, I’m convinced that our citizenry care even less than I previously thought.

Take Village Bagels, for example, which is located at 1874 Post Road East.

It probably receives more foot traffic than any other bakery in the area, but for what?

My experience with this place is one filled with mediocre food and long lines.

To be fair, it is crucial to define what a good bagel actually is.

It must meet four basic criteria:

1.  It must have a slight crunch as you bite into it.

2. It must progressively get doughier as you keep chewing.

3. The flavor must be full-bodied and not excessively salty.

4. The bagel must be warm. There is nothing worse than a cold bagel.

Heat, the fourth factor in a good bagel, is more crucial than any of the others because if a bagel isn’t warm you tend to not notice—or care—what it tastes like.­

Back to Village. When I would go there every other Sunday, I put up with the mediocre-at-best everything just so I could get a bagel.

But a trend began to repeat itself as I kept coming back. I would ask if the [insert bagel flavor] was hot out of the oven, and the reply would always be “no.”

At seven in the morning, I can’t get a hot bagel. Where am I, Antarctica?

As a side-note, the price of flour increased dramatically in early 2008, so many bakeries and pizzerias jacked up their prices in order to keep profits in line.

Recently, however, the price of flour has bottomed out.

But it seems to me that Village wanted to add insult to injury by raising prices during the bubble and not lowering them afterwards.

The main competitor to Village Bagels, Bagel Maven (538 Post Road East) is no better. Their bagels are cold and salty to me. At least they don’t blatantly try to rip me off.

What is really baffling is why so many people go to these bagel joints.

It is obviously not for high food quality, so what is it?

The only answer points go to the laziness of the Westport consumer.

People just don’t care what they are eating because they are too obsessed with their work, social networking sites, or cell-phone conversations.

As long as people are willing to shop at places that overcharge them for mediocre-at-best food, the cycle of bad restaurant after bad restaurant will continue.

In the end it is the responsibility of the consumer, not the business, to force the business to provide a good product.

It isn’t just bagels. People in this town are overcharged on almost everything, and until they do something about it, it won’t end.

Maybe Westport isn’t suited to provide good bagels.

Or, perhaps it might be in a future where Village and Maven go out of business because we stop shopping there.

Since we’re willing to outsource movies to Norwalk, we may as well do the same with bagels.

If you can’t get one here, there’s always Stew Leonard’s.