The best bagels? In a city where a good bagel can be had on just about every block? Yup. We’re throwing down the proverbial gauntlet and declaring that the places listed below serve the very best bagels in New York City.
Bagel Pub
287 Ninth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11215
(718) 499-4402
https://www.facebook.com/BagelPub
Bagel Pub specializes in “old-fashioned, hand-rolled, kettle-cooked bagels” made on site at its Park Slope location. These bagels tend to be bigger than some others on this list. They’ve got a nice sweetness, with a supple chew. You can get your bagel smeared with over 20 different flavors of cream cheese, stuffed with bacon, cheese, and egg, or draped in lox. Whatever you order, don’t forget to chuckle at the riddle that adorns the space: Why did the bagel go the pub? To get toasted!
Black Seed
170 Elizabeth Street
New York, NY 10012
(212) 730-1950
United by a love of the carb, two friends—one from New York and one from Montreal, both already successful restaurateurs—got together to create the platonic ideal of the bagel. Each and every bagel gets baked in a wood-fired oven, heightening the bagel’s delicious heft and increasing its crispiness. Then each bagel is cooled in a marble shoot. Sound complicated? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But the end result is OMG good. So so so good. Three locations and counting!
Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Company
286 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
(212) 924-2824
Here’s what you need to know about Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Company: not a one of the restaurant’s four locations is in Brooklyn (they’re in Chelsea and Queens). Every single bagel is made fresh daily, hand rolled and water boiled on site. The flour is unbleached and unbromated (read: healthier). And the spelt bagel is out-of-this-world delicious. As are the egg, the pumpernickel, the everything, the whole wheat, the multigrain, the salt, whole wheat everything, and the garlic. And, yes, we really have tried all those flavors, and more.
Dyker Park Bagels
713 86th Street
Brooklyn, NY 10028
(718) 836-6336
Because any (and every) bagel store can give you a sesame or a marble, Dyker Park Bagels offer some terrific specialty bagels. Among the unique options are blueberry and French toast. Bonus:the Brooklyn location is open 24 hours a day! Another bonus: tons of flavors of cream cheese, including olive pimento and bacon cheddar. The hungry hordes (and the internet) also swear by the restaurant’s Chicken Ridiculous sandwich (fried chicken, bacon, lettuce, oil and vinegar, tomato, salt and pepper, and fresh mozzarella).
Ess-a-Bagel
831 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
(212) 980-1010
An oldie, but a goodie. A very, very, very good goodie. The line’s almost always out the door at this restaurant in Midtown, a veritable bagel-making institution. The owners come from a family of bakers back in Austria, so carby goodness is, you might say, baked into their DNA. At any rate, the bagels are dense and toothsome. If you opt for cream cheese, prepare to be amazed by the inch-or-so-thick slab that appears between the bagel’s halves. Our favorite combos include jalapeno cream cheese on whole wheat and Oreo cream cheese on plain.
You must be logged in to post a comment.