Oh Adam, I had a cinnamon raisin bagel with lox cream cheese and Absolute Bagels last sunday and it was delicious. I first discovered this combination at Zabars which used to sell raisin walnut bread with lox cream cheese. Hey if it was good enough for the Zabars!
I simply won't do it. I won't exalt bread because it has an apparent glorious hole in the middle that sets it apart from every other kind of bread. I'm not impressed! Bagels are forgiving and tractable 'cause they can allow for lots of stuff and different variations....but huh? What's with all the foofaraw?
(Yeah I've had "GREAT" bagels)
In high school I had "early bird" gym class because my schedule was so busy and the only way I could make it to the 7:30 class was to stop at Upper Crust (Deerfield, IL) and pick up a bagel and lox spread. To this day it's my slow-morning pick-me-up!
And grubnoise - I don't think you can even compare Montreal bagels to the classic NY bagel. Equally as satisfying, but in a totally different way.
I do not like Murray's due to their refusal to toast. Grrr.
If you like chewy bagels, when I was a kid, my parents and I loved House of Bagels, in San Francisco. Then Noah's came and took over everything, and we got accustomed to the soft bagels.
I grew up on the Upper West Side, eating Absolute bagels, and I still go there every time I visit my parents. Their bagels are fantastic, and their tuna salad is possibly my favourite thing in the world. I don't know what's in it, but it transcends 'tuna salad' to become its own food category. I should also mention that my mother loves their chicken salad so much that she was once driving along, trying to eat a chicken salad bagel (ok, not traditional), and was so distracted by its deliciousness that she had a minor car crash. This is the kind of extreme to which a food obsession can drive one.
Now I live next to the Brick Lane Beigel Bake, which is a kind of legendary London bagel place. Londoners wax poetic about them, but they are NOT the same. They're a bit like H&H, but they're too chewy - almost soggy. I, too, prefer a bagel with a bit more oomph.
@Adam I was picturing you as Jean Valjean trying to get a decent bagel and instead being arrested by the Dunkin Donuts guy, "time to make the bagels?"
I invite you to re-read (as previously posted in http://www.seriouseats.com/talk/2007/02/what-to-put-on-which-kind-of-b.html) my tale of cinnamon sugar bagel with nova.
Try not to cringe too much. I grew up in South Jersey we had great bagels. My father would go out Saturday morning and come back with a bag of steaming hot bagels. Memories for italians are food related. Hot bagels mean love.
I shall digress for one small second; Adam says;" pasta and dressing" (Wikipedia moment; dressing:Salad dressing, a type of sauce which is generally poured on a salad, or spread on the bread of a sandwich
Stuffing, a mixture of various ingredients used to fill a cavity in another food item) Could one say, bagel with dressing? Would you cringe? Hello!
I
You are lucky as NY does have the greatest bagels. I'm thinking H&H must be the place on the upper west side kind of near Zabar's? We went in there and were kind of disappointed with the PLACE, but ordered bagels to go and they were tasty.
Also: Sesame bagels MUST be toasted to bring out the seedy flavor.
We are lucky enough to have two from-scratch bagel places in our town that are not too terrible, but nothing like NYC. My favorite combo is: Toasted Everything Bagel (savory) with chive cream cheese and a slice of cheddar that starts to get soft because of the warmth of the toasty bagel. Yum.
Sandro, the same person who orders a Diet Coke with their Super Value Meal at McDonald's.
Arrgh. Cinnamon raisin bagels are NOT and NEVER WILL BE real bagels. Same with choc chip or latte mochinco half caf bagels or some other such nonsense.
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