Rule number 1. If it’s not boiled, it’s not a bagel.
A good, fresh bagel doesn’t have to be toasted, but it is useful for mediocre ones and to improve slightly stale ones.
My favorite is a Breugger’s everything bagel with veggie cream cheese, hot from the oven at the store.
Toasted bagels can present a logistical problem. The local bagel joint is not stingy with the cream cheese, nor is it that wimpy whipped stuff. So if you get your bagel toasted, when the cream cheese is appled, a layer of right next to the bun melts, creating, for all intents and purposes, a frictionless superfluid.
You bite into the bagel and splort, you have a lump of lukewarm cream cheese in your lap.
So, no toasty for me, and just a thin layer of cream cheese, in any case.
Oh sweet Og, I just ate lunch but this thread has me watering at the mouth.
I like a toasted salt bagel, with olive and pimento cream cheese spread on it. Used to get them all the time at Bruegger’s.
For a real treat; lox, thinly sliced fresh onion, capers, and cream cheese on a toasted poppyseed or onion bagel. Mmhmhmhmhmhmhmmmmm.
Daniel Pinkwater once said that a bagel is something you can slip in your pocket for a snack later, and, in a pinch can be a defensive weapon.
A bagel with a schmear is swell, but it gets in the way of the bagel’s own beauty. An Einstein’s pumpernickel bagel, toasted, with the merest hint of butter means… Well, it means that you don’t have to worry for the rest of the day about whether something wonderful will happen to you.
Come on, Bill. I never even tasted a bagel until I was an adult. They don’t actually grow in the prairies. 
A lightly toasted, buttered bagel with cottage cheese on top (and some fruit on the side is nice.)
I’ll probably get a few raised eyebrows for that one, but it’s really good!
A fresh onion bagel, untoasted, with plain cream cheese (and none of that “lite” crap). Simple, but :D.
And, of course, I’d already planned to go to the grocery store on my way home from work today … mmm, bagels…
Count me in with the everything bagels, toasted, and a shmeer of cream cheese. A simple yet excellent breakfast.
Ooh. I love those asiago bagels. Everything else is poppy seed with a bit of cream cheese and lots of high quality lox.
My husband and I were somewhere between amused and disgusted this past March at the sight of green dyed bagels. With just a little bit of food coloring they mocked his ethnicity and my culture.
My Sunday morning breakfast: spinach bagels with lox cream cheese. I have to share the cream cheese with several whining cats and a small begging dog.
Everything bagel, lightly toasted and lightly buttered, with pork roll, egg, and cheese in the middle.
mmmmmmm
Every Sunday: everything bagel lightly toasted, mom’s homemade veggie spread, cream cheese and nova. HEAVEN!
Lightly toasted onion bagel with garlic & chive cream cheese and either ham, bacon or pepperoni on top.
StG
Toasted onion bagel with garlic cream cheese and a sprinkle of salt.
Best is the honey wheat bagel, lightly toasted, with a thin layer of vegemite then garlic & chive cream cheese.
Today though I had a plain, lightly toasted, spread with maple butter.
All time favorite:
Toasted poppy seed bagel
cream cheese
dry-smoked salmon
crumbled bacon
thin sliced red onion
thinly sliced tomato
dill
First of all, it is morally wrong to put pork on a bagel. I don’t care if you’re Christian. Pork on a bagel just isn’t done.
Second, sweet bagels are good. There’s nothing quite like a cinnamon-raisin or chocolate-chip bagel, toasted, with butter (real butter; margarine is verboten at Chez Doors) or plain cream cheese. Panera has a honey-walnut cream cheese that is edible, too. They also have other good sweet bagels like French toast.
I’m not a fan of salty foods, so I limit my non-sweet bagels to plain, pumpernickel, onion, garlic, asiago cheese, or egg. Any of these are good toasted with cream cheese or untoasted with plain cream cheese, lox, tomato and red onion. No capers for me, thanks; those who like them can have my portion.
Robin
Onion, everything, asiago cheese, plain or sesame bagel toasted with herb and garlic or plain cream cheese or buttered and sprinkled with parmesan.
Or any of the above with tuna salad and lettuce.
One thing that always struck me as wrong was cinnamon raisin, toasted and spread with herb and garlic. Yes, I saw that one fairly often.
I like my plain bagel lightly toasted, and then I put quite a bit of cream cheese on it. Sometimes I’ll put ham on it, too, for breakfast or a light lunch. Since I’m an atheist, I don’t have to worry about religious connotations. Sometimes I’ll eat a bagel just plain, as the starch component of my meal, just like I’d have a dinner roll.
Toasted, with neufchatel cheese and homemade pepper jam. Yum.