These are bagels for eating, not Instagram. One of Bagel Hole’s most enduring pleasures is how its wares, particularly when kept basic and ordered with a minimal spread of whitefish or cream cheese, underpromise but overdeliver. A bagel should never be thin-skinned, of course, and the misshapen, diminutive, and sometimes even skimpy aesthetic here is a sign of greatness. 13th St., Park Slope 71Ĭustomers waiting for orders at New York City’s most debated-over shop are treated to the high-pitched squeal of the workhorse stand mixer in back and a seemingly possessed ATM machine up front, plus the occasional squad of tourists from Kansas who read about the place on a listicle like this one, and who are nonetheless doing it wrong by complaining about the toughness and size of their turkey-and-Swiss sandwiches. “It’s about preservation, not innovation,” Strausman says.Ĥ00 Seventh Ave., nr. All available source material suggest that their size is akin to what you’d find on the Lower East Side 100 years ago, so the burnished-surface-area-to-crumb ratio makes for a bagel unlike any in town. The overachieving bagels boast an unmistakably dark, uniform bake. Old-guard Michelin discipline shows in his painstakingly made “Straussie’s,” available in plain, poppy, and everything flavors, Sundays only, and only in the refined, teacup-clinking department-store setting. It’s a little-known fact that Mark Strausman, the R&D-minded renegade behind the long-running department-store bagel program, once cooked for Frédy Girardet, the gifted and undersung nouvelle-cuisine power player. It’s telling that regulars persevere tour groups and snaking lines (80 minutes, ugh) for lox rippled with fat, plus bagels with a joyfully seedy, near-uniform crunch. These days, David Wilpon, nephew of co-founder Florence Wilpon, presides over the brand, to near-constant crowds. With its pressed ceilings and weirdo chandeliers, Ess-a-Bagel is a rare place that keeps chopped liver and lake sturgeon on offer. They look sweet and doughy, but aren’t either, so experts tend to let it slide. A standard-issue Ess-a-Bagel tends to be inflated to the point of obscuring the hole. The origins of one of Manhattan’s most venerated shops trace to 1976, after co-owner Aaron Wenzelberg lost the lease of his Brooklyn doughnut shop and regrouped on the East Side. It may have more in common with something like tong yod, a yolky Thai sweet, than a bagel, but it’s still a must-order.Ģ35 W. The egg variety is buoyant, even orblike. While other places imbue an assembly-line sameness to their repertoire, Thongkrieng’s bagels seem to have distinct personalities. In a nod to Thongkrieng’s heritage, they order Thai iced tea over coffee, and while some opt for the cream cheeses in goofy throwbacks like pimento-olive, most get the fat-dappled salmon or smoky whitefish. Regulars consider Absolute’s overhead ductwork and general grime as points of pride. Beneath the topcoat of seeds and salt on any given variety - mini-bagels shine here, too - there’s a blistery crust with old-school verisimilitude in spades, a given thanks to owner Sam Thongkrieng’s early work at Ess-a-Bagel. What more can be said about Absolute Bagels, beyond its succinct logline here as being a “filthy little store with sublime bagels” and the requisite mention that it’s nabbed just about every accolade of bagel-worthiness in its 27 years of business? For starters, standbys like sesame and chewy onion have dapper, almost pinwheeled crusts. Miniature versions are also available, and it’s worth getting a sampler of each kind. The result is smooth-mantled bagels with plenty of crackle that come in twisty wreaths, an undervalued metric for spotting the real thing in the wild. Workers at the 36-year-old Queens institution ply dough into loose, ropy circles, which get an extra-long rest and leisurely ferment before a kettle dip and a flip on the boards. Try the brown-and-yellow brindled egg-everything or the lopsided and nicely chewy plain or the fantastically roasted, tangy-surfaced salt flavor, which has a perfect ratio of buttery and astringent and is what a soft New York pretzel wishes it could be. Inside, purists may as well put on blinders in the presence of shaggy, coconut-festooned piña-colada bagels. 19-09 Utopia Pkwy., at 19th Ave., Whitestone 71įrom the outside, the mini–shopping center looks like a place to score discount Venetian blinds.
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