Few things at Murray’s Bagels were as emblematic as the 19-year maintenance of a strict no-toasting policy that ended this year, leaving behind orthodox bagelry in days of yore.
Set to affect the fate of all sandwiches, the newfound toasting option warranted deep investigation, discerning the policy’s proficiency, tested on the classic Gerry Red sandwich over a three-day period.
The restaurant entered the era of the toast, despite retaining their traditionalist, “bagel-ist” rhetoric, via a Twitter post.
Murray’s Bagels will now toast. Although we still firmly believe that a hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, fresh (cont) http://t.co/ra4t55gsXk
— Murray’s Bagels (@MurraysBagels) June 19, 2015
Though largely unknown to students, the decision was met with mixed feelings in both the New School community and common New Yorkers.
“If you toast a bagel, it’s sacrilegious. Unless it is hard,” said Wayne Perlciger, who works in Greenwich Village.
“This place isn’t great anymore,” he said.
Yet, while Perlciger may end his allegiance to Murray’s Bagels because of their new, crunching policy, many students are willing to re-open the door.
“I think I am more willing to go simply because I used to be so irritated that they wouldn’t toast their bagels, even if they did taste fresh,” said Katherine Tom, a junior at the Lang.
Lang sophomore Rachel Stewart agreed. “I don’t eat there often, however, when I do treat myself to Murray’s, I always wish they were able to just stick a bagel in a toaster,” Stewart said.
“Now that they are, I’m more excited about going next time,” she added.
There’s no question the toasting option takes Murray’s into an advanced dimension of bageldom, where the choices are already endless. But where the question lies is how it now affects their many classic specialties: take the Gerry Red for example.
On three consecutive days, I ventured into what felt like an ultramodern version of the Murray’s Bagel I once knew. I walked up to the counter and ordered the Gerry.
I requested cheddar in addition to the normal pepper jack, yearning for the melting, cheesy trail the two would harmoniously leave over all the superfluous wrapping.
“Toasted!” I yelled as the blond man turned his back to begin my order.
“No. We don’t do that here,” he said over his shoulder.
Dumbfounded, I didn’t fight. I pondered the reasoning; was this an inside insurrection by the bagel purists of Murray’s? Were we prodded by a fake Twitter post to believe that we would no longer be subjected to eating our bagels the way they desired us to? It felt like the end of the ‘90s all over again –– false hope bolstered by false notions of cultural revolution: “The Matrix,” Erykah Badu’s neo-Bohemanism, the presumed fall of the evil music industry at the hands of Napster, all shut down in an instant.
Chalking it up as an honest mistake, I enjoyed the Gerry Red as I always had, knowing that it may very well be the last time I ate it the way it was intended.
On day two, I went and ordered the second of three Gerrys.
I waited anxiously and paid, feeling the warmth of a sandwich from Murray’s for the first time. As I sat down to unpack it, I excavated the source of the heat: a toasted bagel with cold insides. The baked alaska of sandwiches.
Confused, I took a bite anyway. The sautéed onions were always cooked and hot, but the munch of the heated bagel simultaneously clashed with the contrasting sensation of cold roast beef and cheese, like flame on an iceberg.
This is neither what Murray’s frequenters expected when they heard about the “toasting” nor what they wanted.
“I most likely will not order a sandwich again there if all they are doing is toasting the bagel, but nothing to the inside,” said Tom Giardini, junior at Lang.
“Who understands the point of an egg sandwich that has unmelted cheese and cold bacon in it?”
Day three, I returned with questions about the toast and whether or not it could be implemented upon the whole sandwich.
“Just the bagel,” responded a mid-day worker at Murray’s who only gave her name as Chanel.
“All together it is just hard to toast, I guess”.
What I unwrapped was another level, still somewhere in bagel purgatory: bagel toasted, roast beef still cold, but cheese a lot more melted. Baby steps.
The three-day trial had ended. In the process, the focus shifted from the evolution of the Gerry Red itself, to Murray’s ability to toast. The jury is still out on that with patrons agreeing that Murray’s new policy still needs tweaking to keep their loyalty.
“I would rather go to a bagel store that values toasting just as much as they do the other vital essentials of a delicious bagel,” Stewart said.