The Best Bagel ?

[Cruentus]

For breakfast: Cream Cheese. or Bacon/sausage, egg and cheese. Those are it.
For snack: pizza sauce and cheese makes two round pizzas.
For sandwiches: anything that goes on a sandwich works on a bagel (except maybe sloppy joes).

I prefer plain bagels, but will do sourdough, marbled, or rye if necessary.

 

[gnarlygninja]

I'm partial to a lightly toated onion bagel with either a green onion or jalapeno schmear

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Being in Montreal, which has the best bagels, I always lean towards an Everything Bagel or some Garlic ones.

Regarding the Montreal rivalry. Both are good, but I lean more Fairmount than St.Viateur.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Well obviously you put lox and cream cheese on a bagel. You can do lots of other stuff but that is the quintessential bagel.

In terms of what should be baked into or on a bagel, I've never really encountered a common variation I didn't at least kind of like, with the caveat that it is frustrating when I want to have a savory bagel sandwich and the only bagel left is cinnamon raisin, or when I want to put jam on one and the only bagel left is jalapeño cheese.

Incidentally once while baking bagels I discovered that even though I don't particularly love the dried onion they put on bagels, putting dried onions on one or two in the batch makes all the other bagels smell much more authentically like they came from a bagel shop.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of my go-to orders in a bagel shop is an everything bagel, sliced & toasted, with salmon cream cheese spread on the top half, and a sweet cream cheese spread* on the bottom half, served open faced. (That last part is crucial.)

It’s a savory main course with a sweet counterpoint. Very satisfying.



* most places will have something like a honey cream cheese or honey-almond spread. But if they don’t have either, they’ll probably have something like a blueberry spread.

 

[Umbran]

Being in Montreal, which has the best bagels...

Setting aside the fact that the best bagel is one you get to eat...

There is a correct answer to "Where are the best bagels from?" And the answer is not "Montreal". It is "Ess-a-bagel in NYC".

My wife is a purist, and finds some approaches to bagels (like pizza bagels) to be anathema. And she has grave concerns about putting dried fruit in bagels. I, however, am no purist.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Everything bagel. Cream cheese, tons of lox, a little red onion and tomato, a few capers, fresh dill. My breakfast almost every day for 10 years. I have high blood pressure.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

There is a correct answer to "Where are the best bagels from?" And the answer is not "Montreal". It is "Ess-a-bagel in NYC".

NY bagels are good. Better than the average bagel for sure. But they're very different and Montreal bagels are still superior.

My wife is a purist, and finds some approaches to bagels (like pizza bagels) to be anathema. And she has grave concerns about putting dried fruit in bagels. I, however, am no purist.

I like all of them from time to time. But it's hard to best a simple sesame seed one!

 

[CleverNickName]

The best bagel in Portland, OR is at Bernstein's Bagels, on NE Russell Street. If you go there, tell them you would like a "Mama Lil's on toasted sesame and a large coffee." This will complete the summoning ritual and I will most likely appear behind you.

 

[Mannahnin]

I have decided, with Solomon-like wisdom, that Montreal Bagels and NYC Bagels are both the best. They're different flavor and texture profiles, not directly in competition. Putting them against one another is like saying an Arabian racing horse is better than a Percheron warhorse. They're both the best.

Montreal bagels - thinner and sweeter than the usual NY ones, boiled in honey water before baking - are very nice but do go stale very quickly in my experience. Cream cheese and smoked salmon for me.

This is a regrettable issue with the Montreal ones- how quickly they go stale. You can revive them with a good toasting, but slicing them a day later is a task.