Photo: du Barry bagel; 2008. Bagel, cauliflower, cheese; mixed media. From author’s private collection.
“Pizza!” so begins a song beloved by millions, “pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at supper time. When pizza’s on a bagel, you can have pizza anytime.” That timeless anthem conveys a fundamental truth: pizza bagels are a kind of sublime food, except if you’re lactose intolerant, hate tomatoes, or have Celiac disease.
So it may come as a shock that the rarest of all PB breeds, the Haute Pizza Bagel, has been sighted on the menu at the St. Regis hotel, at Alain "bag of Michelin stars" Ducasse’s fancy restaurant Adour. The menu description is Exhibit A: “Delicate Cauliflower Velouté, DuBarry Bagel, Comté Cheese; $17.”
Is it possible? We've not yet been able to obtain photographic evidence of the pizza bagel in question. Neither Ducasse nor chef de cuisine Tony Esnault was available for comment. But Adam Platt’s review of Adour, is exhibit B: “It was followed by […] a brownish, slightly overpeppered cauliflower velouté served with what disbelieving guests at my table identified as a small toasted bagel.” Exhibit C is pure taxonomy: The menu item in question has got bread (the bagel in question), Comté cheese, and sauce—the du Barry, “Velouté” quotient, a mother sauce variant named for a mistress of Louis XV featuring some cooked down cauliflower.
This Haute Pizza Bagel should be considered dangerous until deemed otherwise. At $17, this is no $81 hamburger; it’s an entirely new kind of animal. Reports, additional sightings (such as bagel waving from the Empire State Building observation deck) are much appreciated.
