The future of dining out is lining up

JUNE 30, 2024

It is hardly the only bagel line in Los Angeles, but people I trust say Courage Bagels is worth the wait.

I take a place in line on an otherwise quiet block in Virgil Village, an East Hollywood neighborhood where little independent restaurants seek reasonable rents and longtime residents worry their low rents won’t stay that way. When I find myself between two groups of regulars, I do what any newbie would do: I eavesdrop. They debate their sandwich orders the way a fashion editor might assemble an outfit, seeking a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. I revise my order with every overheard comment.

I consider bolting after 20 minutes. Then again at the 40-minute mark — but the only thing sillier than standing here, I realize, would be to leave empty-handed.

This is brunch in 2024. Chefs on a budget and young customers trying to stretch their dining dollars or discover the next big thing are embracing the line-and-dine option because no one wants to give up on fun, regardless of the time it might require. Customers settle for less to get more, at times sacrificing anything resembling ambience for the opportunity to eat well. Yes, there’s a $24 wild Alaskan salmon roe sandwich, but there’s also a $6 bagel and schmear.

The modern era of line culture began in 2006, to my mind, at the original Shake Shack in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park. All of a sudden waiting was fun, complete with the Shake Shack Cam to record the scene. Now a line runs from Los Angeles’s citywide bagel subculture to Seattle’s Doce Donut to Chicago’s Michelin-starred Kasama, which offers a sit-down tasting menu at dinner but draws a crowd for its daytime bakery and breakfast menus.

For most of our history, standing in a food line has conveyed abject want — bread lines during the Depression and food banks to this day. Today, waiting is a two-tier system, indicating tough times on some blocks, where people still line up based on need, and free time on others, where people line up by choice.

A cursory glance around the Courage Bagels line confirms that most of the waiting crowd seems to skew young, members of a generation that has been forced to redefine the economics of being a grown-up. Some make less money and work more jobs than their parents did. They might still live with their folks, and for many of them, homeownership is an unattainable fantasy. And all of us, their generation and mine, are looking to leave home, wherever it is, because it’s often our workplace, as well.

Standing in line provides a nice little one-hour ego boost because it confirms our judgment. We are waiting for the very best bagels. We are in the know. We are even a bit savvier than the people stuck in line behind us. Being here makes us feel special when so much on social media makes us feel worse. The line is an imposed chance to catch our breath, and the closer we get to that order window, the better we feel.

Another plus, since I am a generation older than the rest of the line: During this interlude, we are comrades in waiting, not prisoners of chronology. While I wait, I talk to a woman with a cinnamon-colored dog, two Courage employees and a man from Spain who wishes his wife and young daughter would agree to go somewhere else. The demographic divide that is so calcified in daily life is more permeable here, thanks to our shared experience.

Gaining affirmation from what we buy is not new, but right now food is at the forefront of invented desire because of the double punch of the pandemic and inflation, which made young diners impatient to get out — only to find that their dollars buy less than they used to. As I inch toward the order window, I can’t help but wonder if a second, express line for loose bagels might reduce wait time, or if Courage should hire more bakers or find a bigger venue. But then I stop myself. All those things cost money, at a time when every aspect of running a restaurant costs more than it used to.

The Courage co-owner Chris Moss said, in fact, that he and his partner Arielle Skye are in the process of expanding into an adjacent space to make room for more ovens, though it’s taken almost four years to get there. “Slow growth is healthy growth, and it keeps you strong,” said Mr. Moss. They have no outside investors and plan to keep it that way.

Besides, the line can help build business. On some level I am a human billboard, doing my bit to support an independent food business at a time when survival is anything but a given. Long live the scrappy culinary newcomer. We stand in line and, in doing so, change and expand the very definition of dining out.