I tried the Mt. Bagel pizza bagel kit
Talk about a pizza-topped blast from the past...
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As a product of suburban New Jersey in the 1980s and 1990s, pizza-topped foods are among the cornerstones of my childhood memories.
There was, of course, pizza itself. The number of slices I’ve consumed in my life is incalculable. I’ve put several pizzamakers’ kids through college.
The diner is, however, the culinary centerpiece of suburban New Jersey. One of the most confusing aspects of moving away from the Garden State was learning that every American highway wasn’t lined with a seemingly never-ending supply of greasy spoons. I took it for granted that these 24-hour eateries existed, providing you with every conceivable cuisine option at every hour of the day. Need a three-egg Denver omelet with two floppy pieces of toast and a cold slab of butter so hard you couldn’t cut it with a chainsaw at 2:00 a.m.? Your local New Jersey diner has you covered.
The only rule I remember being imparted to me was that, whatever you do, for the love of everything holy, do NOT order seafood. Everything else was fair game.
While your options might have been limitless, everyone had a go-to at the diner. No matter the time of day or your mood, there was usually one dish you were bound to order. Whether you were sitting in the (dearly departed) Bridgeway Diner, Manalapan Diner, Omega Diner, or Marlboro Diner, this meal was your happy place.
For me, it was the pizzaburger.
It’s exactly what it sounds like—a hamburger topped with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese.
“Sean, that sounds disgusting,” you might say. I understand. I can’t even argue with you. And if given the option now, I would never order that (I actually had a hard time finding a NJ diner that still had one on their menu). But there was simply no telling 16-year-old me that life could be any better than getting the Pizza Burger Deluxe (a pizza burger with fries) at 1:00 a.m. while Bon Jovi played on the tableside jukebox.
Mind you, I’m also coming of age at the exact moment that pizza bagels are having their moment in the sun.
As is always the case, there are varying accounts of how the pizza bagel was invented. Anthony DeMauro claims to have invented it in 1957 at Amster's Bagel Bakery in a Cleveland suburb. Richard Katz of Katz Bagel Bakery in Chelsea, MA, claims his father invented it in the early 1970s. Bruce Treitman, a financial advisor in Los Angeles, says he invented it as a high schooler while messing around at Western Bagel in Woodland Hills, CA, in 1974.
I think we can all admit that the pizza-bagel idea isn’t that unique. So, it stands to reason many people put the pizza and bagel together sometime between the 1950s and 1970s. Cool? Cool.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that the pizza bagel really took off. Bob Mosher and Stanley Garkzynski took things to the next level in 1985 when they invented the frozen pizza bagel product Bagel Bites. They sold the frozen treats in 1987 to John Labatt Co., a portion of which was purchased by Heinz in 1991. They turned Bagel Bites into a Saturday morning commercial staple. The rest was history, at least for me.
As I grew older, I put away childish things, chief among them pizza-topped food items. However, when I saw that Mt. Bagel was offering pizza bagel kits, the nostalgia smacked me in the face like a zesty tomato sauce. I couldn’t tell you the last time I ate a pizza bagel, but I just knew I had to try this out.
Although Mt. Bagel's residential shop is not normally open on Sundays (shanda?), I swung by, grabbed my pre-ordered pizza bagel kit, and got moving. One of the great things about walking to and from Mt. Bagel is that the hills are so steep that you burn all the calories you’re about to ingest, making the entire experience a wash, at least in theory.
Once home, I laid out all of the items in my kit. I don’t know where they sourced everything, but all the ingredients looked and felt fresh. The basil was especially pungent, the sauce was vibrant, and the cheese was light and fragrant. The bagels were quintessential Mt. Bagel: golden brown, bulbous, blistery, and soft.
The kit came with a handy recipe guide, complete with Mt. Bagel’s playful visual aesthetic. I got to work slicing the bagel, which revealed a very light and fluffy interior. The inside also featured a lovely classic bagel smell.
From there, it was time to “dress” my bagel. I tried to find the right balance of sauce and cheese. Too little or too much could throw off the classic flavor mix. In retrospect, I probably could have done a tiny bit more of both, but I was happy with the mix. I also added a couple of basil leaves to each; something 12-year-old me never would have bothered with. It’s called maturity.
From there, it was off to the oven. I needed a little more time than the instructions called for, though that might have been a temperature issue. I also hit the broil setting for a minute to get some nice golden brown cheesiness.
There was still one more step. The kit came with packets of parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper. There was no way I wasn’t going to do a little dab of both on my bagel.
We had arrived at the moment of truth, and it didn’t disappoint. The bagel’s exterior crisped slightly without losing its soft interior. The pizza sauce and cheese made for a potent flavor mix. The basil added some much-needed freshness. The red pepper gave it that classic kick. The whole thing was a delight to eat.
It’s probably not the kind of thing I’d get all the time, but the pizza bagel kit gets two big thumbs up from me. It was fun to make, and eating it hit all the right nostalgic notes. At $34 plus tax, it’s an investment, for sure. But you get eight pizza bagels out of it if you manage your ingredients well (The worst that happens is you use up the pizza ingredients, and you’re left with really good bagels). And whether you’ve got kids or want to let the kid inside out for a little bit, it’s as much about the experience as it is the meal.
You can pre-order the kit on Mt. Bagel’s website.
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