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Bagel FelonyFlat Earth Baked Crisps and Bagel-fulsWhat's new? What's great? What's weird? Our columnist samples offerings from supermarket aisles and fast-food menus. |
By: Frito-Lay North America
I Paid: $2.99 for a 6-ounce bag (prices may vary by region)
Flat Earth Baked Veggie Crisps and Fruit Crisps, with their blue sky/fluffy white cloud/fresh farm produce/realistic-looking flying-pig packaging, appear for all the world like some little boutique brand that has burst upon the national scene. The look promises an attention to flavor and texture that many big chip manufacturers ignore in favor of maxed-out oily/salty/artificial cheesy crunch.
The crisps don’t disappoint. The rice/potato ingredients make for bite-size morsels that are flavorful but not greasy, crunchy and light but not insubstantial—certainly strong enough for dipping. In short, they’re eminently snackable, but you won’t feel disgusting after pounding a dozen or two.
In fact, each ounce offers a half serving of either fruit or vegetables, depending upon the flavor. (The nutritional impact is debatable. More important, the crisps just taste good.) The Tangy Tomato Ranch flavor serves up an almost sour-cream-and-onion kind of punch, with an actual tangy tomato finish. There’s no unpleasant aftertaste, that powdery, fake note that defines a lot of flavored mass-market chips.
And the Garlic & Herb Field variety is equally decent: surprisingly mild without being meek, and well-balanced. It doesn’t scream garlic; it says it with confidence. And an entertaining note of pumpkin also pipes up unexpectedly.
Wild Berry Patch falls into that weird sweet/savory twilight zone that engulfs almost any fruit crisp, but you gotta give it to Flat Earth: The dried apple and berry tastes are sincere and front-and-center.
By: Kraft Foods
I Paid: $2.29 for four 2.5-ounce filled “bagels” (prices may vary by region)
Person A: What’s for breakfast?
Person B: How about an Olive Garden–style breadstick filled with Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese?
Person A: How about we just eat some bagels instead?
Person B: But Kraft says that Bagel-fuls offer “a wholesome, warm breakfast [that] can be ready in less than two minutes—with no plates, mess, or effort.”
Why are people trying to push ersatz bagel products in a world where the real thing is increasingly available? And is it really that difficult to smear cream cheese on an actual bagel? Oh, that’s right: Wherever there’s an easily defined economic niche, a company will exploit it.
Full disclosure: I am descended from a family that included a Jewish bagel-maker, I’ve lived in New York and sought out the best bagel in the boroughs (my vote is for Terrace), and I’ve made bagels at home. That makes me fussy to the extreme. So take this write-up with a jumbo-size homemade salt bagel.
Where was I? Oh, yes: Bagel-fuls and their crushing shortcomings. As usual with mass-marketed bagel products, these cheese-stuffed-breadsticks-
masquerading-as-bagels are soft and fluffy, with a skin more like bread crust than the chewy, boiled-then-baked exterior of the real thing. The density is wrong, and while the flavor is, in its defense, a salute to how an authentic bagel tastes, it could certainly be more robust.
The cream cheese pumped into the core is on a par with the standard Philly-type stuff.
For the love of God and all that is gastronomically good: Patronize your friendly local bagel bakery, or make your own.
As someone living just a few minutes' north of our famous Montréal bagel shops on St-Viateur and Fairmount in the Mile-End district, I suppose I should be deeply shocked by those "bagel" horrors. But I guess the inventiveness of the creators of crap corporate foodstuffs really knows no bounds.
Flat Earth Baked Crisps tasted much like a sweeten ice cream cones to my kids they gave it a thumps up for the beach cooler but the ingredient label on Bagel-fuls alone prevents me from buying them.
Bagel-fuls....more proof that people are to darn lazy.
I liked it better when only Jews ate bagels on Sunday morning! The bagel has become so bastardized that anyone baking any kind of round bread can claim it's a bagel. Now this crap comes along and while it might be very tasty, IT'S NOT A BAGEL, dammit! Plus the fact that the good folks at Kraft think we're all to lazy to dip a knife in cream cheese. What's next, lox-flavored Bagel-fuls???
They were passing out samples of Bagel-fuls at an art fair here in Chicago and my friend tried the cinnamon variety and spit it back into the cup. I don't like cream cheese, so I didn't try one.
Glad to hear your report on bagel-fuls thought they were as bad as we did. Even frozen bagels are closer to being a bagel than these are. Not only is the flavor not right but as you noted the texture is terribly wrong. There's no texture comparably to a freshly toasted bagel
I just wish we could purchase could New York bagels here in Louisville Kentucky! Anything we can get here at the present time just isn't the same.
Well, in a world where frozen pb& j "Uncrustables" are sold, anything is possible.
Bagel-fuls sound hideous.