Bagels of New York

Sunday, March 2. 2008

Really, there is no more quinessetially New York food than the bagel. And New York is the place to eat bagels; you have to be really unlucky to get a bad one. Even the bagels sold by the corner pastry cart near the hotel are pretty good. This is in contrast to my home, San Francisco, where the average "bagel" is bread with a hole in the center (blame it on Noah's). In fact, the only decent bagels to be found in the city are from House of Bagels on Geary.

My first New York bagel was a rye bagel from H&H on the West Side. It was eaten cold, and was several hours to a day old, so I don't think I could judge it properly. All the same, though, it was a bit bready; I don't think H&H will be my first choice of bagels on future visits.

To ease my disappoinment, we went to Barney Greengrass ("the Sturgeon King") on the Upper West Side for the full bagel experience. This is not a snack, it's a meal, and a tasty one too.

Dave was with us and we got the full "Jewish Deli" service experience, including kibitzing, jokes in questionable taste, and arguments that we should eat more. Even at 2pm on a Sunday, Barney's was extremely busy. Definitely a New York experience.

My final bagel experience in NYC was actually breakfast, so I was too groggy to bring a camera. Oops. So I'll link a photo off Yelp instead. I got a takeout bagel & whitefish salad sandwich from there; once again, in San Francisco this would have them lining up down the block but in NY Ess-a-Bagel was only one bagelry of many.

Posted by The Fuzzy Chef in Food Tourism at 11:16 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: bagel, food tourism, jewish food, manhattan, new york, sturgeon, whitefish

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You have to buy the bagel where it is made, or at least have it picked it up there. I don't think it is the water as I can get good bagels where I live and unlike Westchester across the river we don't get New York water, ours is local.

#1 ntsc (Homepage) on 2008-03-12 01:43 (Reply)

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