Yes, There Are Potato Chips in Your Very Crunchy Bagel Sandwich
This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to our very opinionated editors’ favorite things to eat, drink, and buy.
At Benchwarmers in Raleigh, NC, they take their bagels seriously. They use fresh-milled Red Turkey wheat and Einkorn. The dough goes through a three-day fermentation process. They bake everything in a 10,000-pound, ripping hot wood-fired oven. And then they stuff their No. 5 bagel sandwich with Lay’s Kettle Cooked potato chips. Because, thankfully, they don’t take themselves too seriously.
The sandwich has a creamy smoked fish spread (done in-house, in that same wood-fired oven), trout roe, house-made pickles, and a handful of Lay’s chips. The result is a study in the number of different textures you can physically fit between two pieces of chewy bagel: There’s the creaminess of the fish spread, the crunch of the chip, the pop of the roe, plus the snap from the pickle. Together, it’s chef’s kiss.
You can find this mix of seriousness and playfulness, high and low, all across the menu. It’s there in the peanut butter, banana, and roasted mallow sandwich, and in the fried bologna, yellow mustard, and egg combo. Could they have made their own potato chips for the No. 5? Of course they could. But where’s the fun in that?
