A bagel is typically boiled before baking. This is why a traditional bagel has two distinct textures, the soft and chewy inside, with the slightly harder “outer shell” type part around it. Panera bagels are allegedly not boiled at all, but rather steamed, making them by definition not a traditional bagel and arguably just flavored bread with a hole in it. This is a common gripe for northerners like myself living in the south or from those few southerners with a discerning bagel palette. Historically in RVA, many places either trucked in real bagels from somewhere else, or made/procured non-traditional “bagels” leaving crummy options all around. As someone born in NY and a bit of a bagel-nazi, I’ve found Nate’s to be tolerable but not particularly good, Cupertino’s to be standard but not reliable (like they fell off the back of a truck in Bushwick), and Chewy’s to be my favorite so far.

Have you lived in pa/ny/nj? Nate’s is a real bagel and there is no real pizza in Richmond imo