Every time I’ve ordered a bagel from my local bagel shop in New York, I’ve gotten the same thing since I was 8 years old: a toasted sourdough bagel, double schmear, double lox. To me, it’s perfect — the slight tang of the bread, the crunch of the warm exterior, the fluffy layer of schmear and the perfect saltiness of the lox. I’ve never deviated from that order.

Until now.

Courage Bagels, to me, is Los Angeles — meant both derogatorily and as a compliment — in bagel form: extra, glammed up but embarrassingly enjoyable.

Courage’s bagels are Montreal-style, meaning they’re thinner and crisper than traditional American bagels and blistered in a wood-fired oven.

Courage itself is hard to miss. On any given morning, there’s a line wrapped down Virgil Avenue with more than 20 people waiting — sometimes for over 30 minutes. There are a few small tables on the side with people eating, but even more people standing up waiting for their order, quietly committing to the idea that this wait will be worth it. And, somehow, it always is.

The operation is oddly charming in its chaos. The menu, taped to the window and handwritten in permanent marker, is mostly blocked by the crowd. They even have umbrellas stacked in a bucket by the door for rainy days: an acknowledgment of how far people — and by people, I mean me — are willing to go for a bagel. Because I have, in fact, stood in the rain with friends, waiting 40 minutes for Courage without shame.

To speed things up, someone occasionally weaves through the line, taking orders on small pieces of paper that you keep until you finally make it to the cashier. One thing I’ve noticed over the many, many times I’ve been: They always compliment you — or at least they always compliment me. Maybe it’s genuine, maybe it’s strategic — but for many it works. It’s the most L.A. form of manipulation — sugar-coated kindness in exchange for a tip.

I’ve been to Courage enough times to know what’s actually good. And this time, alongside a friend, we settled on the Hand Sliced Smoked Salmon and the Run It Thru The Garden, both on burnt everything bagels, as well as two orange juices.

After ordering, you wait again — another 10 to 15 minutes, enough time to hover near an open table and quietly question your purchase. But once the bagels finally arrive, boxed with your name scribbled on top, the regret fades fast.

The bagels are impossible not to admire. Courage’s bagels are beautiful. The colors are layers like a painting: the pink of the salmon, the green of the dill, the bright, deep red of the tomato, the glimmer of olive oil.

It’s not beauty for beauty’s sake. Every topping is there for a reason. Every flavor is balanced. It’s the kind of attention to detail that makes you forgive the price, the line and even the performative compliments.

The smoked salmon bagel — costing a steep $21.50 for a whole bagel — is deliberately made from the bottom up. The burnt everything bagel adds crunch and bitterness, the kind you only get from a good char. The cream cheese isn’t a thick slab, but a thin layer that keeps everything balanced. Then comes the salmon — perfectly salty — topped with capers, dill, olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

The Run It Thru The Garden at a shocking $18.75 is perfectly balanced and dressed with olive oil and salt. The tomato slices are thick and sweet, the cucumber is cold, and the dill is perfectly everywhere.

It’s rare that a simple orange juice actually earns its price, but the orange juice ties it all together — pulpy and tart to reset your palate after every bite — as it doesn’t wash down the bagel but cleanses it.

Courage doesn’t sell you convenience — it sells you fresh ingredients and an Instagram-worthy meal alongside bagels that are unlike any other. Every bagel tastes like someone actually paid attention and cares about aesthetics as much as they care about taste: You’re paying for the crunch of the charred edge, the acidity of the lemon, the drizzle of olive oil that somehow justified its cost.

Back home, my order will always be the same. But here, in this city of excess and reinvention, Courage makes sense. It’s the kind of place that proves some things don’t need to stay traditional to stay good.

Sometimes, reinventing the wheel works, especially when it’s covered in lox and dill.

Deon Botshekan is a senior writing about special-occasion dining and restaurants worth the splurge in his column, “Silver Spoon,” which runs every other Wednesday.