What Are Bagels, Anyway? Let’s Ask the New York Times Archives!
A fairly thorough examination of how the Gray Lady has covered those “small, hard Jewish rolls with holes in the center.”
Bagel photo by Flickr user Carl Lender.
First, an admission: I don’t really care about bagels. They’re fine, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing. Bagels, schmagels. (Now, bialys, on the other hand…)
What I find way more interesting than bagels qua bagels is New Yorkers’ utter obsession with them: where to get the best ones, why today’s bagels aren’t as good as those of yesteryear, and why it’s impossible to find a decent one outside the five boroughs. That, in fact, is the subject (once again) of Why Is It So Hard to Get a Great Bagel in California?, a particularly exhaustive New York Times investigation that’s been making the rounds the last day or so:
The New York bagel, as everybody knows, is an institution. No bagel definition will satisfy all, but for starters, let’s just say: A good one requires a chewy interior with blisters, called fisheyes, on a shiny, crispy crust. Making a bagel requires several steps: Hand-roll enriched dough; let it rise, or proof; retard the rising in a refrigerator; boil briefly in malted water; then bake.
Reading that description, I began to wonder about the bagel, its history, and — most of all — its representation in the media of its hometown. (Sorry, Poland. It’s ours now.) So, I delved into the Times archives to see how the paper had defined the bagel over the decades — and how its cultural role had shifted with its widespread acceptance. The coverage generally hews to a set of common themes: explaining this ethnic specialty to an unworldly audience; measuring the bagel’s penetration of mainstream America; disappointment that decent bagels are not to be had outside the city, with mild condescension toward those who even attempt to make them; disappointment that decent bagels are no longer to be had inside the city, when once upon a time they were so, so good and much smaller; fascination with non-Jews (at least in New York City) who are capable of boiling and baking high-quality bagels.
Let’s begin in 1946:
“small, hard Jewish rolls with holes in the center”
— Bronx Cheers, Incognito, Protest New Bread Price, May 31, 1946
“round bun-like bread”
— News of Food; Author of ‘Jewish Cookery’ Says Recipes Show Borrowings From Many Countries, June 27, 1950
“resemble doughnuts only in that both have no center”
— Bagel Famine Threatens in City; Labor Dispute Puts Hole in Supply, December 17, 1951
“That sturdy bread of Broadway, which has been described as the dougnut with rigor mortis”
— News of Food; Bagels in Vacuum Tins Are Said to Keep Fresh for Year, June 30, 1954
“as standard for breakfast as doughnuts in New England”
— News of Food: ’54 Additions; Products Introduced in Year Are Convenient and Good Eating Instant Dry Skim Milk, Fish and Meat Sticks Have Won Favor, December 29, 1954
“regarded as a necessity in some homes — especially on Sunday mornings”
— BAGEL STRIKE THREATOFF; 250 Bakers in City Get a $6 Rise, and Their Helpers, $5, February 4, 1956
“Two well-groomed women approached Mr. Gordon with the astounding information that his doughnuts were old, hard and unsugared.
“The director sprang into action. His investigation revealed that the ‘doughnuts’ were the pumpernickel begel, good only when served as hard as a rock.”
— Churchwomen in Miami Probe Mystery Of Gefilte Fish, Bagels and Borscht, October 13, 1958
“The bagel, which has the form of a doughnut, is made of raised dough and has a hard crust. In New York it usually is eaten with smoked salmon (lox) and/or cream cheese. It takes good teeth to chew a bagel. Its devotees maintain that there is no adequate substitute for the delicacy.”
— Polish Bagels Go Underground After City Officials Forbid Them, March 28, 1960
“Bagels, because they have a hole in the middle, are of often compared with doughnuts, although in terms that are no exactly complimentary. Sometimes bagels are called varnished doughnuts. They also are known as doughnuts with rigor mortis.”
— Food News: Never Boil The Bagels, May 4, 1960
“A true bagel (called in the trade a water bagel) is made only of white wheat gluten flour, and is perfectly plain.”
— About: Bagels; Some 250,000 of the tooth-cracking breakfast goodies are produced in New York each day, May 22, 1960
“difficult to remove from the slots of electric toasters, with resulting fragmentation of the biscuits and distasteful odors of burning.”
— Patent Awarded for Propeller-Driven Train; System Would Use Plane Engines For Power VARIETY OF IDEAS IN NEW PATENTS, November 11, 1961
“In plentiful supply are egg bagels, a softer variety of the roll, which are produced by members of other bakery union locals.”
— BAGEL STRIKE GOES ON; No Meetings Set in Dispute on Vacations and Holidays, February 13, 1962
“A Rockefeller eating blintzes and bagels is no longer a novelty.”
— What’s Wagner Up To?; Strategy Seems to Be to Smash Image Of Rockefeller as Political Independent News Analysis Independents Hold Balance Variety of Purposes, April 16, 1962
“Bagels cannot be simply stamped into rings like doughnuts, it is explained, because the dough is stiff.”
“The crusty bagel, which made good in New York after a perilous journey from Russia and Poland around the turn of the century, has gone places again.”
— Bagel Bakeries See the Light And Retail Business Blossoms; Neon Signs Put Up No More Coke Ovens, October 3, 1963
“produced especially for the occasion”
— Even Bagels Turn Green For St. Pat, March 17, 1965
“[Murray Lender] foresees the bagel’s attaining the national status of pizza within four years.”
— A Campaign to Roll Out the Bagel, November 4, 1965
Pastrami Makes It to Hong Kong; Bagels Also Arrive for Modern Deli Opening Today, July 18, 1966
Tokyo Deli Insists It Opened the East To Bagels and Lox, August 03, 1966
“Eating pizza and bagels is of course a traditional feature in New York’s electoral folklore.”
— Review Board Is a Central Issue As Candidates Court Minorities; Negroes and Puerto Ricans Favor Plan, Jews Are Divided, and Italians and Irish Oppose It, Survey Shows, November 06, 1966
“crusty, ring-shaped rolls”
— The Bagel — Automated and Frozen — Is Gaining New Friends, April 14, 1969
“frozen bagels, which were 29 cents at the beginning of the year, are now 43 cents”
— CONSUMER PRICES UP SHARPLY HERE; Soaring Cost of Meat Helps Raise June Index 0.6%, July 24, 1969
“Speech writing is not nearly as lucrative as hip bagels,” he said, “and the hours are longer.”
— The Unsung, Ectoplasmic Eminences Behind Politicians; Ectoplasmic Men Behind Politicians, May 29, 1970
“D.O.B. regulars refer to the new group as “The Bagels” because the dissidents spent much of the first meeting arguing about who would bring the bagels for the next get-together.”
— The Disciples Of Sappho, Updated; The disciples of Sappho, March 28, 1971
“Karyn and Mike tell about one orgy that was so crowded they were given numbers to get into one of the bedrooms. Like waiting to get your bagels at the bakery.”
“Yesterday, Mr. Fischer delayed the early rounds until his favorite meal — bagels and lox and milk — could be sent for.”
— Fischer Munches a Bagel and Finds 11 Chess Rivals a Piece of Cake, August 9, 1971
“A bagel is to eat with lox, or with cream cheese, or both. At Zabar’s, the epicurean heaven at Broadway and 80th Street that draws sturgeon and lox fanciers from all over the city, a bagel is also to wear.”
— Bagel on T-Shirt? Snoopy on Pillow?, August 25, 1971
“Gloria Steinem is as foreign to the white Protestant natives as a breakfast of bagels and lox.”
— In Small Town, U.S.A., Women’s Liberation Is Either a Joke or a Bore, March 22, 1972
“Also, the bagel has achieved universality as a food. It has become a favored weekend food item at nearly all tables, regardless of ethnic origin, despite the fact that Forest Hills is predominently Jewish.”
— New Bagel Shaper Takes a Page From Rube Goldberg, January 14, 1973
“Amid an ocean of bagels and pizza, up bobbed Raja Vatti yesterday, selling deep-fried Indian wheat pancakes called poori to his neighbors in Co-op City in the north Bronx.”
— Ethnic Fairs Offer Food, Music — And El Al Panty Hose; Fete in Brooklyn, June 10, 1974
“Finally, the bagels are shellacked, aired again, tagged (“Don’t Eat Me”) and shipped off to the department stores and boutiques, where they sell from $3 (for the minibagel necklaces) to $20 (for the superbagel Christmas wreaths).”
— Lowly Bagel Transformed By an Artist, November 4, 1974
“A year’s supply of bagels, a Mercedes-Benz sedan, a finger painting by two Bronx Zoo gorillas and a rare Picasso plate are among the goods viewers may need or crave after New York’s first televised auction commences Friday at 8 P.M.”
— Cast of Thousands Is Set for Auction on Channel 13, May 31, 1975
“Bagels” were suitably dignified in French as “patisserie.”
— Age of Reason the Rage of Season As Enlightenment Enlivens Old Eli, July 17, 1975
“A bagel is not a bialy, just in case some of you thought that. Bagels are round, have holes, are slightly shiny and are not easily digestible except with lox.”
— A Bastion of Bialys, August 6, 1976
“although the specialty shops haven’t moved in yet, the dry cleaners take four days to do shirts, the stationery store closes by early evening, the drugstore is seldom open when people need it, and the delicatessen doesn’t carry bagels.”
— A Not-So-Fond Farewell to Roosevelt Island, February 22, 1978
While lox and bagels are now fairly common items at Aunt Maude’s, which describes itself as “a restaurant of funky charm,” they are a minor part of the kitchen’s repertory.
— Restaurant Revolution In Midwest, March 15, 1978
“Although the soft, white, puffy, specimens this company usually puts out hardly classify as true bagels, the Lender’s products, when toasted, can compete with breakfast rolls or muffins.”
— Tidbits From A Food Convention, May 10, 1978
“It began when Jacqueline Onassis collided with a woman carrying a shopping bag on the Upper East Side. The woman’s bag burst, sending a cascade of bagels onto the sidewalk, and, with her customary charm, Mrs. Onassis bent over to retrieve them.”
— The Bagel Summit, July 31, 1979
“Today, Floridians still live high during the tourist season. The rest of the year they dine on bagels and hash browns.”
— Much-Changed Florida Has Something for Everyone, March 09, 1980
“Periodically coffee and sandwiches were brought in, and two big bags of bagels arrived about 4 A.M.”
— NEW YORK REACHES PACT WITH 25 UNIONS COSTING $1.2 BILLION; 2 RAISES OF 8% EACH, June 20, 1980
“There are many foods that are wholly ignored, including, would you believe, lox and bagels.”
— ATTEMPTING A DEFINITIVE FOOD ENCYCLOPEDIA, January 21, 1981
‘’The trick is to take the same recipe for Chinese steamed bread — flour, water, yeast and salt — shape it into bagels, coat them with sesame seeds, steam them and then toast them on both sides,’’ [Sidney Shapiro] explained. He has taught his family housekeeper the technique and she now makes them.
— IN PEKING, BAGELS WITH A FLATBUSH FLAVOR, March 4, 1981
“What used to be a fairly small, dense, gray, cool and chewy delight that gave jaw muscles a Sunday morning workout had become snowy white, soft, puffy and huge and is now even served hot, or, worse yet, toasted. Stylistically, today’s bagel is closer to a brioche or an English muffin than it is to the yeasty, boiled and baked Eastern European original.”
— WHEN’S A BAGEL NOT A BAGEL?, March 28, 1981
“Creative assistants tend to be ill paid, however, and often spend more time fetching bagels from the local delicatessen than at the drawing board.”
— A YOUNG DESIGNER’S RISE, July 02, 1981
Yet, while some New Yorkers seldom set foot in the subway, other New Yorkers live there, moving from station to station, whining for money and eating yesterday’s bagels and sleeping on benches. The police in New York call such people ‘’skells’’ and are seldom harsh with them.
— SUBWAY ODYSSEY, January 31, 1982
“There are stories of sending a Midwestern farm girl to the store for bagels and having her ask, ‘’What’s a bagel?’’”
— TIME FOR GIRLS OF SUMMER, June 29, 1982
“Despite Texas’s proximity to Louisiana, crawfish traditionally have been about as common in the Lone Star State as fresh bagels and good sturgeon.”
— DOWN IN TEXAS, FARMERS RAISE CRAWFISH, August 04, 1982
“Can you find a good pastrami sandwich in the capital? Do Georgetowners eat bagels? Those are among the first questions that New Yorkers who move to this city ask.”
— A WASHINGTON-NEW YORK APPRAISAL, March 15, 1984
“Most bagels today are neither small nor cementlike. Instead they are soft and enormous, and practically devoid of the chewiness for which they were known and loved. They hardly ever give you heartburn anymore.”
— AH, FOR THE BAGEL OF YESTERYEAR, March 17, 1984
“The potential decline of bagelism, and the danger to the Democrats, comes from a creeping croissantization. Making a square bagel without a hole and filling it with cinnamon and raisins is as offensive as slicing a croissant lengthwise and filling it with lox and cream cheese. If, in compromising to seek the widest appeal, you become all products to all consumers, you lose your market.”
— ON BAGELS AND CROISSANTS, April 30, 1984
“In New York, you are supposed to like bagels and quiche and limousines and expensively fast vehicles in which to sit in potholes and traffic jams.”
— THAT PORSCHE MYSTIQUE, June 08, 1986
Of the bagel’s appeal, Mr. Fox said he finds that ‘’Japanese associate it with New York, and they associate New York with fashion. A lot of our customers are these young women who consider the bagel as sort of another accessory.’’
— STYLISH SNACK: JAPANESE TOAST THE BAGEL, July 30, 1986
As with most ethnic foods, bagels are prepared differently from city to city, community to community. But the special appeal of Montreal bagels draws even those accustomed to the New York variety. How else to explain the countless New York and New Jersey visitors who make their way back home, down Interstate 87, with their cars packed with Montreal poppy- and sesame-seed bagels? There’s even a bagel booth at Dorval International Airport, right beside the duty-free shop.
— IN MONTREAL, BAGELS LIKE NONE OTHER, May 13, 1987
Alas, the urge to reduce differences has made the bagel fail as a second language. It is no longer a Jewish artifact. Now it is sometimes made rectangular, around a baked-in frankfurter, or laced with carrots and raisins or dotted with caraway or poppy seeds. Its ancient surly dough softened to a sour marshmallow, it has become mere kitchen franglais subject to ostracism by a court of ethnic purity.
— The Editorial Notebook; The Bagel as Second Language, September 18, 1987
Although you don’t have to be Jewish to like bagels, Mrs. Dukakis, who is Jewish, was offered a bagel smeared with cream cheese on her husband’s campaign charter flight out of here the other day. Mrs. Dukakis bit into the bagel. She frowned.
— Campaign Trail; A Bagel Fails to Rise To the Occasion, November 01, 1988
Poppy seeds contain traces of morphine, though experts say they produce no effects on behavior. Eating three poppyseed bagels, for example, can produce enough morphine in the body to result in a positive test for the drug.
— Four Million More Subjects; Drug-Testing Technology Speeds Up, November 20, 1988
The new-found versatility of bagels as a bread product has contributed to another change: the shrinking of the bagel hole. Customers want an unbroken schmear surface. If they order a pizza bagel they do not want the tomato sauce dripping through the hole onto their laps. Restaurants and food service outlets are requesting bagels with little holes or no holes at all.
— The Bagel’s New York Accent Is Fading, September 06, 1989
What Mr. Phongtankuel eventually mastered, he said with a toothy grin, was “bagel chemistry.” And he likened the fact that he now makes a tidy living by baking bagels — and employs six friends from Thailand — to a fortuitous turn on what Buddhists call the wheel of life. “Never dream I open a bagel store,” he said. “It’s like you play Lotto — $1 on a dream.”
— Forest Hills Journal; Buddha’s Watchful Eye Guards Bagels to Die For, February 21, 1991
Great bagels “may be the only reason” an advertiser would want to go to New York, says a soon-to-be-released advertisement from the Philadelphia Council of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
— Philadelphia Council Appreciates Bagels, December 10, 1991
The demise of the traditional-bagel way of life has been furthered by additional ingredients that make the counters of slick, new bagel shops resemble those of Ben & Jerry’s. Spot Bagel in Seattle offers blueberry swirls. The Bagel and Bagel shops in the Kansas City area cannot bake enough whole-wheat honey bagels. Raisin and cinnamon bagels, egg bagels. Even cheddar cheese bagels are becoming common.
— Bagels Are Now Fast Food, And Purists Do a Slow Boil, April 25, 1993
Today Mr. Toro hears one question again and again: How did a Puerto Rican become a bagel maven? His answer: “I was born with a certain feel for the bagel.”
— The Bagel Maven . . . From Puerto Rico, October 10, 1993
All together, bagel sales have grown by a factor of five in just three years, according to the American Bagel Association, whose formation last year is just one more indication of the ground that the bagel is gaining on cereal, bacon and eggs and other traditional breakfasts.
— Ethnic Lines Are Crossed as Bagels Become a Breakfast Mainstay, December 26, 1996
Here’s the epitome of Jewish food, right up there with knishes and latkes, right? Yet until not very long ago the closest thing to one in the Jewish state was either a rock-hard biscuit ring called a ‘’beygl’’ (the original Yiddish name), or a large, soft and sweet Arabic loaf. Visitors from New York were expected to pack a few dozen of the real thing, along with Pampers and other essentials that were not yet available here.
— American Fast Food In Israel: The Bagel, March 09, 1997
It is this loss of the community canon that troubles many. New Yorkers once prided themselves for being on the right side of the Lender’s Line, an informal border separating the land of fresh bagels from the frontier of the frozen assembly-line product made by Lender’s Bagels. Now they recoil from outlandish interpretations like blueberry or sun-dried-tomato bagels.
— Is a Bagel Still a Bagel in Maui?, March 16, 1997
To Ed Levine, author of ‘’New York Eats (More),’’ a guidebook for noshers, neither of the H & H bagel companies is worth the bickering. The two West Side H & H’s, he said, ‘’aren’t very good, too sweet; almost cakey, with absolutely no crunch.’’
— Never the Bagels Shall Meet; East and West Side Bakeries Lay Claim to a Name, December 15, 1998
Not so fast, says Mr. Zabar, dissecting a McDonald’s steak, egg and cheese bagel in Eli’s, his market on the Upper East Side. A true bagel, he asserts, must be boiled, then baked to achieve authenticity. ‘’This one,’’ he says regretfully, ‘’has been steamed, not boiled.’’
He notes the telltale signs, the wimpy crust and the soft inside that pulls apart without a fight. ‘’It’s like Wonder bread in a circle,’’ he says. ‘’A New York bagel fights with you. It’s tough on the outside, and chewy on the inside, and you struggle with it.’’
— Um, Did Somebody Say McBagels?; Dough With a Hole in the Middle, but Will New Yorkers Bite?, April 24, 1999
Today’s doughnut knows what it is and defiantly asserts its fattening identity. But today’s phony bagel vacillates between a confection and a tunafish-salad holder. Call it a “doughgel’’ or a “banut’’ — this middling moderate, this triangulated toroidal, this product of a foggy focus group is neither here nor there.
— Bagels vs. Doughnuts, October 25, 1999
Nearly a buck for a bagel! A bagel! You could understand it, maybe, if you were able to read your fortune in the poppy seeds. But what is humbler than an unadorned, untoasted, unshmeared bagel? Ninety-five cents?
— Humble Bagel, Highly Priced But Worth It, December 30, 2000
The Pillsbury company’s ‘’filled bagels’’ — described in the advertising copy as “‘’”highly evolved’’ — are more like Pop-Tarts than bagels. Each 3- by 4-inch rectangle of ‘’tasty bagel crust’’ is filled with cream cheese and, of all things, strawberry jelly. Although sweetness is antithetical to true bagel connoisseurship, the jelly and the cheese suggest the red-and-white color combination (visible through three slashes on the top crust) of cream cheese and smoked salmon. Real fish, of course, would not work, being too perishable for both freezer and toaster. The greatest attribute of these ‘’filled bagels,’’ promises the ad copy, is: ‘’No gloppy mess. Next breakfast, it’s freezer, toaster, done.’’
— Let the Circle Be Unbroken, May 15, 2001
But I also had bagels so despicably bad the people responsible for baking them should be incarcerated. New York may be the nation’s bagel capital, but street vendors selling rubbery steamed bagels abound, not to mention local McDonald’s franchises selling bagels topped with egg, cheese and bacon. Even such Midwestern depredations as blueberry bagels have gained a stronghold in certain precincts of New York City. The bagel as concept is ubiquitous in New York. But not all bagels are the same. Some are to be derided.
— Was Life Better When Bagels Were Smaller?, December 31, 2003
Today the typical New York City bagel is no different from the ones served in malls nationwide. The traditional bagel, born of Eastern European shtetls, was made of yeast, malt, flour, water and salt. It was rolled by hand, first boiled and then baked. Today’s version is made from yeast and sugar, flour, water and salt, extruded through machines and baked. The result is a big, fat, soft pillow suitable only for naps.
— In New York, Try and Find A Genuine New York Bagel, August 29, 2004
‘’What we found with going online over the Internet is people outside New York are craving New York bagels,’’ said Andrew Hazen, chief executive officer of Prime Visibility, an Internet marketing company based in Bethpage that has been contracted to manage the bagelboss.com account. He expects Bagel Boss business to quadruple. Last year, Mr. Rosner said, sales at the Roslyn Heights store were close to $2 million.
— A Taste of Home, a Click and a Flight Away, January 23, 2005
Neri’s is the second-largest bagel bakery in the country and the largest bagel wholesaler in Westchester. You may never have heard of Neri’s — it has only a small retail outlet — but you’ve probably eaten its bagels. Among others it supplies the nation’s largest bagel retailer, a company that television advertising jingles long ago turned into a household name.
— Home of the Italian All-American Bagel, September 11, 2005
“You can’t use well water to make bagels,” he said. “You could, but they won’t come out right. What, exactly is in that water, I don’t know. I’m not a chemist, I’m just a bagel maker. All I can tell is the water in New York has always been good for bagels, Italian bread, pastries.”
— Fix the Water? Let’s Talk About It. And About Bagels., July 21, 2006
Breakfast, included with the room, is an affair of passable coffee and bready bagels eaten off paper plates while perched on preschool-like Ikea stools, but the vibe is cheerful.
— Affordable San Francisco, October 15, 2006
GEOGRAPHICALLY speaking, West 72nd Street isn’t quite the center of the Upper West Side. But any street where a person can buy kosher barbecue, kosher pizza and kosher sushi, not to mention brisket, latkes and matzo ball soup, would seem to have its Jewish culinary bases well covered.
That is, all but one. While the thoroughfare is crowded with popular businesses catering to both Jewish and foodie tastes — two groups that often overlap around here — many locals say there’s still something missing: a truly spectacular bagel.
— A Bagel-Shaped Hole on an Unexpected Strip, January 07, 2007
In the long run, like bagels, “you’re going to have arepas in every store,” predicted Mr. Miranda, whose innovations include a “toaster-friendly” version (square instead of round), and an experimental Web site that offers online sales nationwide.
— The New Immigrant Dream: Arepas as Common as Bagels, February 06, 2007
Turns out, hundreds of bagels are shipped daily (except Sunday) via FedEx to Park City by the New York State Governor’s Office for Motion Picture and Television Development. For the past five years, these bagels have been served at the New York Film Lounge here on Main Street with butter and cream cheese.
— Sundance Winner: There Will Be Bagels, January 22, 2008
The bagels — translated 贝谷 (beigu, or “precious wheat”) at Mrs. Shanen’s Bagels — are pretty decent. They are not simply rolls with holes that you find in some parts of the United States. These New York-style bagels, though slightly smaller, with a crisp crust and soft insides, are the product of a Brooklyn-bred Chinese-American entrepreneur, Lejen Chen, who wanted a taste of home when she moved to China. Ms. Chen has her share of fans. (Yes, bagels are Jewish, but they are more New York than they are Israeli or European. It was New Yorkers, after all, who brought bagels to Jerusalem.)
— Satisfying a Bagel Craving in Beijing, August 18, 2008
If the store were to shut for good, it would be “a tremendous loss to the fabric of the neighborhood and the culture of the Upper West Side,” said Anne Blackman, a retired benefits officer, who had arrived at the store to buy two dozen bagels to ship to her nephew, Lowell Kane, an anthropology student at Texas A&M University.
— Tax Authorities Shut Down H&H Bagels, May 29, 2009
City Room had to give it to the artisanal quality of the bagels being made at St-Viateur. They are hand-rolled and baked in wood-burning ovens, something that current New York City regulations would no longer allow. The process gives them a crisp and smoky crust on the outside. The bakers slip tidy lines of bagels in and out on long wooden slats, before flipping them into a bin. Their recipe was slightly different, using malt flour, and they are boiled in water with honey. And since they are skinnier, the hole is more pronounced.
— Montreal’s Bagels Square Off Against New York’s, December 01, 2009
Moreover, the correlation between good bagels and egg sandwiches in New York City is and will always remain low. Good bagels are for schmears. They are for whitefish and belly lox. They are not for making into some kind of goyische morning Dagwood to be eaten in a pickup truck on the way to the hardware store. That is what bad bagels are for.
— Egg and Cheese on a Bagel: The Quest for the Best, January 28, 2011
So, Ms. Sheraton, how would you describe the State of the Bagel in 2011 New York?
“In general, I think it’s deplorable,” she replied. “Primarily, it’s because of the enormous size.” Ideally, she said, a bagel shouldmeasure about 3.5 inches in diameter. Most bagels sold in New York these days are appreciably larger. That’s been true for years. (The diameter of the H & H bagel is 4.5 inches.)
— The State of the Bagel, June 23, 2011
IN Northern California, East Coast transplants are producing crunchy, chewy, dense bagels on either side of the bay. The water may not be New York’s, but some argue that the bagels are as good.
— In the Bay Area, Bagels as Good as Brooklyn’s, December 26, 2012
Bagels “are truly complicated,” so start with a plain bagel with cream cheese. “Advanced bagel eaters,” however, should add smoked salmon — “expensive but worth it.”
— YouTube Videos Teach Brazil About Bagels, Subway, October 20, 2014
