贝谷 (Bagels)

As much as I love Chinese food, I can only last so long before the cravings come for more standard western food. There's a certain point where Kung Pao chicken, Sweet and Sour ribs and everything else stir-fried all begin to taste the same. This is the point where I normally go out to eat high-priced foreign food.

Sometimes, though, a good steak just doesn't cut it--even when I do get to eat it with a knife and fork. Sometimes pasta isn't enough, and even a loaf of real bead doesn't bring back the right memories of home.

Sometimes it takes a bagel.

To be more specific, it takes an everything bagel with cream cheese and lox. A request so simple that it would never even seem to be a problem. It should be more of a Sunday morning event. Beijing, though, is somewhat lacking good Jewish bakeries.

In honor of Shabbat, and our Bagel craving, Cody and I set out early Saturday morning on a quest to schmear the perfect bagel. We longed to go to a bakery and drink coffee with our hole-y rolls, but we were dismayed to learn that Beijing's lone bagel bakery is almost at the airport--to far for a bike ride. Fortunately, they sell their bagels at a few select locations.

We made our way to Jenny Lou's--the foreign supermarket extraordinaire that provides all the comforts of home and factors in the cost of a plane ticket to China. The bagels, having been baked in Beijing, were not expensive, but Philadelphia cream cheese was another story. Salmon was also in the category of imported luxury. But we weren't worried about cost, we were worried about the authenticity of the experience. We also bought supplies to prepare Mexican feast, which somehow became a Mexican influenced bowl of fried rice, but that's another story...

When we got home, we had bagels. They were fantastic. It was almost like being home for the weekend. All that was missing were the comics and an iced coffee, but it's a long summer so there is time for improvement.