The Cohen Breakfast

I’ve been a huge The O.C. fan for as long as the show has been on, and it keeps colonizing my habits in small ways. The Cohen family treats bagels as a daily breakfast ritual—practically a religious obligation—and eventually that got to me. Becca and I went out to track some down, found them at a shop called Norma stocking the Mr. Bagels brand: plain, sesame, and raisin. Now I’m sitting here eating my way through two of them—one half loaded with grainy cream cheese, the other with Géramont and salami. Both are good in a way that feels slightly disproportionate to what they actually are. There was a new episode that afternoon—the bagels were basically research.