Sometimes a sandwich can taste great and still be frustrating. This is what I encountered during my latest foray into the wonder of bagel sandwiches.

The bagels in this case were the slim pickings of a mid-afternoon supermarket bakery. My first attempt at a simple bacon sandwich was on a toasted cheese bagel, and it was exactly what I hoped it would be. Delicious bacon and mixed greens blended well with spicy mustard and combined well with the greasy cheese bagel. It was a great sandwich. And yet…

The slight toasting of the bagel had fried the cheese on all sides of the bagel to a crisp. Eat bite and each squeeze sent shards of cheese and bagel flying everywhere. It was a messy and annoying enterprise. Although the sandwich was tasty and satisfying, I was left strangely morose by the experience.

I repeated the same ingredients on an untoasted wheat bagel a short time later.

This second sandwich, although very nearly identical in all ways to the first, was endlessly more enjoyable. Sometimes the full enjoyment of a sandwich is a very precarious thing. Everything can be in place, everything can taste great, but one tiny little thing can ruin your sandwich experience. What a delicate life we lead.