I was already familiar with Upshot Coffee's game from a visit to their Clayton location a few weeks ago. I tried the breakfast burrito, and it honestly changed my life. I was able to get off drugs and reconnect with my family as the result of eating a burrito.
You can imagine my excitement, then, when it was announced that a group I run with was meeting at this Tower Grove South location. I wasn't crazy about getting up early the day after America's 250th birthday, and there was the slight possibility that I'd barf during my run around Tower Grove Park (people might think I was back on drugs), but I was willing to risk it for the, erm, burrito.
Actually, it occurred to me that I might try something else, for the sake of citizen food journalism. Then my decision was made for me when I saw that they carry a bagel with lox. I've eaten literally a million bagels with lox, going back to the 1980s, but only either at home or at places that aren't very good, like Einstein Bros. Alas, I was informed that the bagel with lox was currently unavailable, because they were out of lox. Which struck me as odd, given that lox is not served fresh. It's not like they had to go pull it out of the water that morning or have it flown in from Alaska, packed in ice. Was there a run on the lox due to a nearby media-industry convention? Did they accidentally leave it sitting out overnight? I imagine that would smell crazy.
I went with the Everything, which may have been the better choice anyway. Named after the famous bagel seasoning, it's essentially a bacon, egg and cheese on a bagel with cream cheese and a tomato. But describing it that way doesn't really do it justice. You have to attempt to wrap your lips around it in order to truly appreciate it. No Diddy. It's the bagel-sandwich equivalent of their legendary burrito, and it might be just as good. The bacon and egg are perfectly cooked, with the egg just slightly underdone and the bacon nice and crisp but still with a little bit of chew. The helping of cream cheese is weirdly generous, to the point where just the cream cheese on a bagel would be a fairly substantial sandwich. The tomato, which was a little bit tart, made for a nice accent.
It comes wrapped in one of those diapers they used to use on some of the bigger burgers at Hardee's, to keep it from falling apart the moment you try to bite into it. You'd still eat all the individual elements using your fingers, because you're a savage and because they're that good, but it wouldn't be the same. It's a testament to the thoughtfulness and the ingenuity of the kitchen staff at Upshot that they thought to do that. read more