PEC Genesis: Bagel Oven

Have you ever been bribed? I have.

Every Sunday, I would be dragged out of bed to go to CCD*, a place where I was asked to stand outside the classroom because "God spoke to my teacher and told her I would misbehave." 

Honestly, not a bad call by her.  But the only thing that kept me going back was the pact I made with my parents, one breakfast sandwich each Sunday.  I sat there for an hour every Sunday listening to the pigeon lady from Home Alone 2 talk about Jesus for one reason: Pork Roll. Egg. Cheese. It doesn't take too much to bribe me.  

Bagel Oven is one of the first things you see when you pull out of the Gold Street parking lot in Red Bank, at least it was for me.  An institution, it looked like it had been one of the first shops to ever open in the country and 20 years after the story above took place, it still looks exactly the same.  I thought It'd be appropriate for me to start from the beginning, the genesis of my life with Pork Roll, Egg, and Cheese. 

Bagel Oven, Red Bank, NJ

Before I get to judging something that's been around longer than I've been alive, I'm going to lay down my very scientific ground rules for grading.  I'll be judging the following categories before making a final overall rating: bread rating, pork roll rating, egg rating, cheese rating, and sandwich composition.  The first four are pretty self-explanatory but for sandwich composition, I'm looking at things like protein:carb ratio, condiment ratio (salt, pepper, ketchup on all PEC) and how well the sandwich stays together. OK, now that's out of the way, here's the verdict. 

Nostalgia is really what I thought about when eating this PEC, but overall I'd say, besides the bagel, the sandwich was disappointing.  The bagels at Bagel Oven are the real deal, obviously, but as you can see in the picture above, the eggs didn't make an appearance for some reason. In turn that caused the cheese to not completely melt.

Bread Rating: 9.4/10 (These bagels are perfectly toasted)

Pork Roll Rating: 6.8/10 (The pork roll is cooked on an ancient griddle that's probably been seasoned for 50+ years, unfortunately, it seems they griddled it for about 30 seconds.)

Egg Rating: 0/10 (Didn't show up)

Cheese Rating: 1.5/10 (cold, likely Kraft single) 

Sandwich Composition: 5.5/10 (I love the bagels from this place so that helped it a bunch but this was one of the saddest displays I've ever seen and not at all what I remember other than the bagel.)

Overall: 4.6/10 

Price: $4.25, cash only 


Bagel Oven is located at 72 Monmouth St. Red Bank, NJ

*CCD stands for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine for all you heathens out there.  So when I say I've never been in a frat, I'm lying.