Bagel | featured news

Although taxes are one of life’s certainties, they can still surprise you. Consider the iconic New York bagel: decide to have yours toasted, and it’ll come with a tax. The rationale is that sliced bagels are usually consumed on a café or store’s premises—and restaurant meals are taxed, whereas groceries (like a dozen unsliced bagels) are not.

In a high-tech kitchen laboratory in Seattle, Nathan Myhrvold is putting the finishing touches on Modernist Cuisine, his obsessive 2,438-page cookbook documenting the future of food. I recently visited for a futuristic breakfast.