January 12, 2008 – 9:50 pm
I was in the neighborhood coffee joint this morning for my caffeine and calories. After I’d served myself a cup of the black…
I : Actually, can I get a bagel and cream cheese as well?
He: Uh, yeah. Just a minute.
I : No problem, bro.
I paid for the roll. I went out on the patio, plugged in my laptop and set about the morning correspondence. I waited for the bagel.
He : (obviously frustrated, slapping the plate on the food window to the patio) Hey, here’s your bagel, dude.
As I picked up the plate, he was on his heels and gone in a poof. I looked down at the two halves of bagel, lacquered with a transparent, vaguely luminescent film of cream cheese. The piss froze inside me. One of my greatest frustrations in all the universe is a bagel with cream cheese that has practically no cream cheese on it, especially when I’ve forked over $2 USD for a dime’s worth of food. I’ve actually considered carrying my own cheese in an ice pack for instances in which a coffeeshop’s Give is vastly disproportionate to their Get, because asking for more cream cheese is sometimes akin to asking for the barista’s liver, roasted on a skewer. They look at me funny everywhere, not just in Portland. I’m not a fat ass. If I was a 400-pound man asking for a gallon of Coca Cola, I’d expect some resistance.
“Sir, you really shouldn’t.”
But it should be obvious to all that I consume cream cheese responsibly. I can handle it.
I’ve fairly recently returned to the US from a part of the world where breakfast is a shot of brandy, a demitasse of espresso and maybe a sweet roll or a lump of cheese. But Portland is a breakfast town. People want breakfast all the damn time here, and scores of eateries serve classic American morning fare throughout the day and eve. Perhaps it’s the cloudy, wet weather that makes the entire day feel as if you’ve just woken up, like an eternal morning. I don’t know. I still haven’t figured out what it is with these mild northwestern people and their breakfast, but I don’t typically do a big, hearty eating ritual on everyday mornings. Or afternoons. Or evenings. I’ll pound a few hundred calories in convenient pastry, bar or smoothie format in the misty morgen and get mine ass skipping along down the mossy lane.
Now, don’t get me all wrong. A big breakfast can be the poodle’s noodles, but it’s a distinctive occasion for me. It’s preferably a shared occasion, reserved for days when I have the luxury of lollygagging around the house in my underpants and bunny slippers, digesting my frittata, ganache-filled buckwheat crepes, grilled sardines and lamb sausages, toast, yogurt cheese, blueberry lavender jam, polenta and peach kefir. But I don’t want a large meal on Go mornings. It’s a gastrointestinal traffic jam, a general bringdown on my physical fluidity and mental poise. It constitutes an albatross. I’m wicked stupid after a big breakfast - food-stoned, you might say - and if I’m going to experience that stupidity, I want to enjoy that stupidity. Don’t ask or expect me to do jack shizzle for several hours, because I will flatly refuse and summon the hounds to dispatch you. Serious eating is a long, laborious process and it requires serious relaxation. Period. Them’s the rules.
So yes, my sweet babies, a bagel and cream cheese and coffee or green tea is typically adequate breakfastizing for me if I’ll need to be cutting and weaving through the great unwashed masses on the day in question. That means, however, that when I am in a local coffeehouse establishment for my morning repast, I WANT MORE THAN A GRAM OF CREAM CHEESE ON MY BAGEL, YOU LANKY HIPSTER IDIOT.
Tags: bagels, breakfast, coffeeshops, cream cheese, food, pdx, Portland, portland food, Restaurants