Donuts, definitely. I was aware of bagels at least by junior high (late 70s), because my mostly white-bread private school had a couple of Jewish students who brought them in their lunches. They were strictly an ethnic food then. Certainly they were too exotic for my family table, where “Chinese food” meant that canned stuff from Chun King (anybody else remember Chun King?) and pizza was considered “spicy food”. I can’t remember when I first ate a bagel; college, maybe.
I remember the first time I ate a jelly donut, though I can’t quite remember how old I was (probably 12 or so). It was in the cafeteria at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Jelly donuts (the powdered-sugar-coated kind) are still my favorite.
Five years older, also grew up in Arkansas, and never saw a bagel before the Hendrix College campus center snack bar started offering warmed-over Lender’s frozen bagels at breakfast, during my college years (probably freshman year). I’m sure there wasn’t a bagel shop anywhere in Arkansas, even Little Rock or Fayetteville, in those days. The conversation KRM reported from Oklahoma City could just as easily have taken place there.
Donuts were part of my world as long as I could remember – even in the smallest burgs in the middle of nowhere in eastern Arkansas there were places to get donuts. In fact, when I was a senior in high school, in a town of 2,000 people in northeast Arkansas, the only restaurant worth mentioning in town was Butch’s Steak and Donuts; their specialty was fried chicken, but they also had a seafood buffet on Friday nights. And donuts every morning. Unfortunately, I never really cared that much for them.
Now I’m as big a bagel snob as anyone. There’s just a short handful of bagel shops in Atlanta I’ll go to willingly – everyone else is off my list.
Indeed, I do. Chun King and La Choy go way back in my memory. I don’t remember not knowing about them, and I can’t decide which came first. It was almost unthinkable to have some of that canned goop, with lots of bean sprouts no matter what the can said, without those little fried noodles. At least not at our house. For me, the next packaged “Chinese” (read that Asian or Oriental or whatever is PC today) food was either the ramen noodles or frozen Benihana dishes. But both of those were two or three decades later (say 70’s or 80’s at the earliest). I believe Chun King is still around, and maybe La Choy, too, but nowadays if I want Chinese we’ll order in from a nearby restaurant, and as often as not it will be Thai instead of Chinese.
One of the amazing things about moving to the States was the discovery that “donut” is the actual name of that particular pastry, not just the brand which sells them in Spain. And there’s more kinds than “plain” and “chocolate”!
I didn’t discover bagels until much later. Haven’t ever had one, actually, just seen them.
I’ve always known the delights of both bagels and doughnuts. Alas, I cannot get either in this crazy country. (Except in Sofia, there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts there! There might be a place to get bagels there somewhere too. Dunno.) I would kill for a garlic bagel.
You know where else bagels are kinda hard to get? Israel. At least when I was there, a zillion years ago. There were these things called bageles that were widely available, which were a sort of cross between bagels and pretzels, but to get actual bagels in Jerusalem, you had to go to Bonker’s Bagels, which has a couple locations downtown (this reminds me that one was really close to a Dunkin’ Donuts) and is inevitably filled with homesick Americans.
If there are others of you like me, who haven’t been curious enough to look for articles on the histories of these two delicacies, here’s one on Bagels and here’s one on Donuts that let you decide for yourself which of them really came first in history.
However, as the thread title says, it’s mostly a matter of earliest for you that’s at issue. My uncounted take is that donuts win by a substantial margin, which relieves me a little since I had thought my being Southern was why I had been so late coming to bagels. I detect my being non-Jewish is as big a factor, but that it’s really pretty much a geographical/cultural thing all over.
Do you have a different sense of where this thread’s responses have trended?
Same time. I grew up on bagels for breakfast, eating them as soon as I had teeth. Doughnuts (never donuts in my house) were a treat less often, but still as long as I can remember.
Um, I’m 28 and grew up in the heart of the midwest.
Donuts, probably, because you couldn’t get good bagel when I was growing up. But bagels were always a special treat: they had to be purchased in NYC and brought out to us. We did get Entemann’s chocolate donuts.
Note that many people really have never actually had a bagel*: they just have eaten bagel-shaped round bread that were mislabeled “bagel.”
When I was young my Mom and I would run to the bank every Saturday morning and then go to the Camden Bakery for doughnuts. Yummy, yeasty, raised rings of deliciousness covered in just the right amount of chocolate. drool If I was lucky I got a doughnut with a bubble - a bit of crispiness.
This was in the 70’s in Minneapolis.
I still prefer doughnuts from a real bakery over bagels. There are only a few around here that make them “right” - and that does NOT include Krispy Kreme.
Up at the cabin Saturday lunch is always what we call “Polish Doughnuts” - we make doughnut batter and just drop it in clumps into hot oil. Serve with butter and cinnamon sugar. Yum.
I discovered bagels in high school (mid 80’s). Would have one every once in a while. But when the Kid was teething (mid 90’s) I started buying bagels regularly. Frozen bagels ROCK for teething kids. I still almost always have a package of bagels in the fridge, but I have to be in the mood for one.
Definitely donuts. I probably ate them in my high chair. My Grandma makes the best homemade donuts. I’m a donut/fried roll lover and will eat just about any variety except the ones with coconut on top. The best donuts are from small bakeries, in my experience. When Krispy Kreme first came to this area I just had to try them to see what the fuss was all about. It’s all about nothing as far as I’m concerned. I thought they were terrible.
I didn’t know what a bagel was until I was a teenager. And, according to this thread, I’ve probably never had a real bagel. Oh, well.