Take a moment to imagine a mom and pop breakfast dinner. There are regulars all around, a bar in the front, and the smell of eggs and bacon fills the room. The whole place has this sense of comfort and warmth. You know no one there but for some reason, it feels like you do. Now imagine a grandmother’s room. One that was very fashionable in their day and loves the aesthetic of Film Noir. The room has a few of those lamps with the lampshades that have tassels all along the rim. There are mirrors everywhere as if to make this tiny home seem two times bigger, and those pretty fake statues of people laying down fairly dramatically only to be covered with a single draped cloth. With those two very drastically different scenes in mind, now try combining the two. That was what the aesthetic of Bagel Etc was, and somehow it all seemed to work. There was still that lingering feeling of warm the comfort when you entered the shop, and the staff was nothing but friendly. The food wasn’t the best I have ever had, but by god, my mood changed entirely when entering this place.
Breakfast joints have always meant a lot to me growing up, and to this day if I am having a bad day I find myself seeking a nice breakfast joint to cool down and rethink the next day. As a kid, my parents would take me out to various different breakfast dinners when I was having a bad time. I have struggled with depression for most of my life and it became very apparent in middle school. There was a little breakfast dinner located in a tiny airport on the way to school that my mom would take me to when my depression was acting up. Nothing made me restart the morning like those days. There was nothing to worry about, nothing to beat myself up for. Just breakfast with my mom. Breakfast foods never need to be the best food you have ever had, they just need to be decent and have a friendly staff. Finding this breakfast joint with such a big personality just took me back to those days. I felt like a kid in a candy shop and it changed my mood for the better for the entire day. Everything was a gift from that point forward.
What made it even better was this amazingly tacky personality that went with this shop. It reminded me of a neighbor that used to live on my street. She seemed to always have some sort of fur coat or fur scarf that would compliment her outfit and entering her house was like entering a whole new time period. Bagel Etc seemed to have all that and more. There were tiny plaques with names on every single booth, there were statues and lamps with tassels, there were old coolers that had glass coke bottles in them, there was even a tacky carpet that rested in the front of the store! Yet, they also had a stereotypical breakfast dinner bar with fairly stereotypical booths. I have never experienced a place like this in my entire life. Yet, strangely enough, it made me miss home.
Maybe it was the two chefs having a fairly loud conversation about their family that could be heard anywhere in the restaurant or the way the staff interacted with you as if you were a regular even though it was your first time there. Maybe it was the familiar smell of eggs and bacon, or the ever lingering sense of a childlike wonder that brought me to think of home. This place made me homesick, and I loved every second of it.
It’s midway through the thick of winter and nothing fights winter sadness like memories from home. Now I can’t wait to head back home for the holidays and pull my parents aside and ask “Let’s go back to that dinner, just one more time.”