Emily Gordon writes:
What do you get for the man who has everything? Why, the everything bagel, of course, whose varicolored, multiflavored origin story Michael Schulman investigated in this week’s New Yorker. Founding father David Gussin, whom Schulman interviewed, was also just on the radio, talking to NPR about the triumph of miscellany and the inevitable controversy: Seth Godin remembers seeing the seedy-oniony rings of starch B.E., or Before Everything, which date Gussin sets at 1980.
I called Jerry, who’s been working at the uptown H&H since 1985, when he was a teenager with a summer job. When did everything begin? “I should know this, because I kinda helped it. Let me see–it was invented before we made it. I was a cashier, and customers kept requesting it. It took about a year to put it together. This was back in 1985, 1986, 1987…” I told him the date has been set at 1980. “That makes sense, because when I was working on the weekends in high school, I kept hearing about it, but I never had one. I kept getting requests–it has a very strong aroma–but people would say, ‘It’ll never sell. It’s a gimmick.’ It’s one of our best sellers.”
Want to play bagel God? Make some yourself, and have the satisfaction of saying, “You are my Everything.”