Is it the water1? Is it the technique2? NYC bagels are unique, and the quality in the city is as high as its pizza game. After trying different bagels in New York City for over a year, this small guide collates our best experiences.
How can we define the perfect bagel? We adhere to Kenji Lopez-Alt’s manifesto. They must be chewy and dense, but with a tender crumb. The crust must be crispy and well gelatinised. We like to see blisters in the crust as they are proof of an extended boil in alkaline water to gelatinise the exterior and achieve an appropriate level of crispiness. Finally, bagels must be freshly baked. They show best when still warm out of the oven.
Guide to always have fresh bagels at hand
- Don’t be scared of queues! Buy more than a dozen bagels to make the wait worth it.
- While in the queue, keep an eye on the counter. Always choose your bagels from the freshest batch.
- Buy several bagels and freeze them once you get home. To bring them back to life:
- Reheat them thirty seconds in the microwaves at maximum power.
- Wet your hand with water under the tap and brush with your fingers the crust of the bagel. This will help recovering that same original crisp3.
- Toast for three minutes (whole, without cutting them in half) in a toaster oven4. This can bring the bagel 95% back to their original state fresh out of the oven.
- Make them at home. Our recipe is coming out soon!
Top tier bagels
Absolute Bagels, Upper Manhattan
Absolute Bagels is the busiest shop in the Northwest end of Central Park. So much so, that on Saturdays it is normal to expect 30min or up to 1h long queues. Still, high volume of customers is good. It means that bagels flow fast out of the restaurant, increasing the odds of getting a warm bagel. And oh, they are so much better when warm! The crumb has that perfect balance of chewy and tender while the crust remains slightly crispy.
The everything bagel is perfect for sandwiches with its savoury allium notes, while the whole wheat bagel is perfect on its own or with butter. We are great advocates for the whole wheat bagel. Those nutty aromas of whole wheat give a nice complexity. At some places, rye or cocoa powder is added to obtain a more distinguishable colour for this type of bagel. Absolute Bagels keeps it pure, and the result shows.
David’s Bagels, Ukrainian Village
In the heart of the Ukrainian Village, David’s Bagels is less busy than Absolute Bagels, to the point that you can even eat inside on a Saturday morning. Combine it to a visit to La Cabra for your coffee fix (a 10min walk away) and this will be your perfect breakfast. The bagels are significantly crispier than Absolute Bagel, but they feature a less dense crumb.
Korshak Bagels, South Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia in a New York bagel post. Yes, you read well. The bagels are so good that it would be unfair not to include them. But what’s even more impressive is the passion and commitment of Philip Korshak, the mastermind behind this business. Philip has built a business with soul and a focus on community that is very commendable.
In our last visit, on a Saturday morning at 9am (opening time), the queue was 15m long. At 8:56am, Mr Korshak came out to give a short speech. Poetry, camaraderie and appreciation could be felt in the air. He then went straight to the end of the queue offering a few bites of his bagels to those who would be waiting there the longest. After fifteen minutes in the queue, we were invited in. The service is surprisingly personalised, with a very warm and close reception. It makes you feel part of the neighbourhood, and perhaps even part of a family. And believe us, you will be shown and explained all the bagel flavours with vivid passion.
It is worth noting that the bagel’s textures and flavours seem to carry inspiration from French bread making techniques. Thus, the bagels are slightly different to what one would find in NYC. To put it simply, they are just technically superior in almost every aspect. They are large and airy, with a tender crumb powered by a sourdough starter (likely the secret to achieve such good rise on a low hydration dough). Their crust is beautifully blistered with golden bubbles that make the bagels simultaneously crispy and chewy. Due to their size, the toppings are applied on both sides of the bagel to ensure every bite is even. The result is phenomenal, perfect with cream cheese and lox or just toasted with salted butter.
Unlike David’s Bagels or Absolute Bagels, where we recommend you purchase your coffee in a nearby café, we strongly recommend Korshak’s black coffee.
Special mentions
Shelsky’s Of Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY
Shelsky’s is the place to go for high quality smoked fish. From lox and nova to smoked mackerel.
The bagels are great, showing respect to a smaller and more traditional size that has been lost in the copious era in which we live. However, we have found the quality of the bagels to be fairly inconsistent.
Ess-a-Bagel, Manhattan, NY
With several locations, Ess-a-Bagel delivers consistent quality across the city. Their fillings are not to the same level as our top tier mentions.
Footnotes
- Not really, this is debunked.
- Yes, mostly, and quality ingredients.
- Kenji Lopez-Alt suggests running the bagel under tap water, we find this excessive.
- ±1min depending on your toaster oven. For those in Europe, where toaster ovens are less common, a regular oven at 180C with convection on for 5min can yield similar results.