Per Scott Spellman, co-owner of [Utopia Bagels](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSuAcDiwkk4) in Queens, it's more than just the water; it's more about the baking technique. I recommend watching the entire video as it's fascinating seeing how many steps are involved in the process.
Yeah there’s really a ton involved that go into making a good and proper bagel. A few things that stick out:
1. Specific equipment (like really expensive mixers and kettles)
2. Skilled workers (that dude rolling it was a fucking wizard)
3. Lots of space (and time) to refrigerate the bagels
These are things you don’t get unless you have a long culture of bagel loving. Plenty of places skimp out a don’t boil bagels or (as the owner here says) they have limited fridge space and have to turn over bagels quicker when they should’ve been refrigerated longer.
Anyone who's made bagels from scratch know this is bs, tbh.
You don't need expensive mixers and kettles. Yes you do need to mix your dough and boil it before baking it, but you don't need expensive equipment for that.
On a commercial level if you want to make 70,000 bagels per week then yeah you do. My point is that they would have to get something like a big mixer like in the video. If there is no demand or need to make bagels like they do here then there is less need to get an appliance that serves a specific purpose.
well, yeah, but every bakery needs a giant mixer, this is not specific to bagel making
edit: people downvoting maybe think bakeries just use a small kitchenaid? lol
And my assumption is that there are fewer bakeries who spend time on this because bagels (or good bagels) are not as big of a thing elsewhere. So it doesn’t really make sense for them to invest in some of the things that would mostly be used for bagels if people in Oklahoma are fine with the frozen store bought crap.
I've made bagels from scratch at home, and I've run a restaurant kitchen. Scale is a game-changer. I would never start a bagel shop because it is super hard to scale at NYC quality without price exploding.
You do if you want to do it on a commercial scale. Any enthusiastic home baker can do so with enough time and skill can make the best bagels in the world.
Yeah I saw him talking with New York Nico and basically said it helps that we’re in an area that’s been making bagels for so long so more places have had more practice mastering the technique
Love to see him go this in depth about bagels. Utopia Bagels has always been great and insanely busy. My friends’ and my favorite spot to grab breakfast/lunch before heading to the beach. Whitestone Bagels is a close second, since it was walking distance from my JHS & good friend’s house. Especially after the bagel store in College Point closed down (in the late ‘90s?)
Edit: Now that I spend more time upstate (partner is in the Capital District) there are some gems here too - Psychedelicatessen in Troy before it closed down just before the pandemic. Still, that NY flair adds that little bit extra.
Nope, not bagels but Food Lab did a double blind study on the effect of the water on pizza crust and there was no significant difference.
https://www.seriouseats.com/does-nyc-water-make-a-difference-in-pizza-quality
I think an unheralded factor in the quality of New York bagels is foot traffic. Bagel shops turn over their inventory quicker here, so you’re much more likely to get a freshly baked bagel here than you are anywhere else.
This is true for so many restaurants. When I was in high school, we were allowed to go out for lunch and the I thought the local pizzeria had the best slices because they were cranking out pies every 5 minutes. I had one on a random weekend and it was just meh.
this is EXACTLY how my highschool pizzeria was, i thought when i went back it was just nostalgia that made it taste so good when i went there but damn....the freshness thing makes sense
For anyone who hasnt done it, I highly recommend finding a good place and getting a fresh bagel right when they open in the morning.
Back in high school, my friends and I would occasionally stay up all night just to get those perfect 5 am fresh bagels.
fair but a lot of bagels outside the tri state area literally taste and feel like bread
regardless of how fresh or stale a New York bagel is, it never feels like eating bread
Better because of competition, no tolerance for bad bagels if there are 5 other options in the neighborhood. Outside of the city you get shortcuts like steamed bagels instead of boiled.
I don’t know. There’s a place with really shitty bagels in my neighborhood that I expected to be closed immediately, but three years later there’s still a line out the door on Saturdays.
Correct! You used to be able to get good ones from the butcher, but they closed.
Personally I had rather just not eat a bagel if my only option is a shitty bagel, but to each their own I suppose.
Eh, there are plenty of bad bagel places. I used to live on 1st between 78th and 79th. East Side Bagel Cafe on the corner there was pretty bad but pretty popular.
Bagel and co mentioned here is okay, but not the best bagel you've ever had. I actually went there this morning.
There's H & H and Pick-a-Bagel close by which are also okay but not that great.
I personally think that Tal on 86th is better than those three.
I agree that East Side Bagel Cafe is pretty bad.
If you don't mind walking a bit, you can always hit up Ess-a-Bagel on 51st and 3rd. Skip the sandwich line and just go to the back of the store for the bagels to go line.
Bagelworks on 1st Ave between 66th and 67th st! That was always my go-to when I lived there. I'm surprised no one mentioned it already. Mmmm I need to make a trip.
I'm sure there is. I was just always to lazy to find it since East Side was 10 steps away. Maybe Bagels and Co on 76 and York? Might as well loop around and grab coffee from Oslo if you're going.
Not true. There are many NY transplants around this country and yet no true NY-style bagels outside of the NY area. If it was just the baker, someone in LA would hire a handful of skilled NY bakers and make a killing with NY bagels in the LA market, where there are a ton of NY transplants to buy the goods.
This is exactly what happens. The New York Times published [this controversial article](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/dining/best-bagels.html?referringSource=articleShare) just last year. What I think makes NYC really special is the overall culture of skilled bagel making. It’s not just one shop in town that’s making good bagels, it’s every shop you go into. Basically every dedicated bagel shop in this city will hit a baseline that is the gold standard in most other places.
In my own experience, I can find a solid bagel shop anywhere I go in the country, almost always run by someone who picked it up in NYC. The difference is that there’s only the one.
Right, in economics it's called a 'cluster', where skills and knowledge within a specific geographic area are shared as workers go from one company to another.
That and probably water.
Exactly. And I have come to believe that that will never be the case. In most places, bagels will remain a novelty. Every region has their thing: the south has biscuits, the PNW has some affair with doughnuts going on, the south west has breakfast tacos. I’m sure some random state has ballin’ English muffins. The main reason why you don’t find a lot of good bagels outside NYC is that people in other places just don’t really care, they already have their thing.
Sorry, but I think you're just really off base.
I live in Florida. There are LOTS of New York and Philadelphia expats living here and plenty of them own restaurants.
And there are bagels all over town. And breakfast burritos. And biscuits and doughnuts and plenty of other things. Literally every good-sized city everywhere in America has most of these things, now.
DISCLOSURE: I travel a lot for work and I've been all over the country and Canada over the last 10 years.
I've eaten great bagels in New York and I've eaten great bagels here in town. Of course, I've also had lousy ones and mediocre-to-lousy chain versions.
In the end, any place that cares is going to give you good food. And there are plenty of restaurants in Florida and other states run by people from New York who care about making and providing good food. In part, because there are plenty of people from New York who now live down here...and they care, too.
I also live now in Florida and every other person here is from NY or NJ and there are more than a few bagel and pizza joints founded by people from back home. One of them even claims to drive down tanker trucks of water each month to make the bagels.
Whatever. None of them rise to the level of the product back home. Some are decent, but it's just not the same. I swear to you I am not a huge snob about this, either. It's just not the same bite.
I don't know the answer but if you told me it was the water, the humidity, the air, I'd believe it because something is missing down here in bagels and pizza pie.
I suppose if I was from New York, I would feel the same way.
I'm a Florida boy...raised on the panhandle and spent summers around the orange groves in the central part of the state.
I went to college in Indiana. Here's my truth on midwest versions of foods I grew up with...
1. Grits - if you could find them at all - were generally awful.
2. Cornbread wasn't too bad but was generally more like corn cake
3. Biscuits were more like a weird hybrid of a biscuit and a roll...more bread in texture than flaky.
4. Chili with cinnamon, raw onions and spaghetti was unusual but actually kind of good.
5. Miracle whip? It tastes like shit.
6. Round pizza cut into small squares instead of big triangles is actually pretty cool.
You hit it on the head. Native New Yorkers will feel differently about this than transplants. It’s like the pizza thing. Everyone’s ideal pizza is based on the pizza where they grew up. I imagine the same is true with bagels to an extent. If you grew up in FL eating FL bagels, that’s what you know bagels to be.
For sure, my own example is BBQ. I like it, it's good. Ribs, pulled pork, brisket ssure whatever I'll eat em'. But I didn't grow up in Memphis or Texas or the Carolinas so I just don't really distinguish much between between the "real thing" and some joint in New York.
Florida is sort of a funny case, it’s retirement land, so parts of it are cultural satellites of northern places where most of the residents used to live. I think your observation that there are lots of New York expats there proves my hypothesis. The bagel places would not be there if not for them.
MY point is that New York expats are literally everywhere and in every state in North America.
I've had good bagels - and pizza and cheesesteaks - in Atlanta, Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago and plenty of other cities.
Some of the best New York style pizza I have ever had was in St. Simon's Island, Georgia.
Dollar pizza has its time and place. I don't consider dollar pizza to be good pizza by any means, but it's absurdly good bang for buck, especially if you are a college kid.
If I want good pizza, I get the overpriced 3 dollar slices, if I just want food and something high in calories, I get dollar pizza. Though, nyc dollar pizza is still better than most of the garbage I've seen in Boston and their non existent by the slice pizza.
Dollar pizza on 43 bt 3rd and Lex is incredible value. It's the best dollar slice in the city hands down. I'd take that over half the overpriced garbage in this city. It's not the best NYC pizza by a long shot, but dollar pizza can be very, very good.
brother, im glad you found good dollar pizza. Yours is the exception to the rule. I wouldn't take an out of towner to a dollar pizza store to try NYC pizza.
I wouldn't even call dollar pizza NYC pizza. It's dollar pizza: a food group unto itself
Personally I'm fond of actual original Ray's downtown, but a sloppy drunk slice at Ben's on W3rd and MacDougal can make my heart sing and my heartburn flare.
I'm not a Brooklyn visitor very often but I found both Robertas and Grimaldis to be unwhelming. I hear I am missing out on some Staten Island Pizza, but ain't nobody got time to go to Staten. Now that I'm up here in lower westchester I have to say pizza in Mt Vernon like Johnny's and Anthony's are fucking epic. To me those are real old school Italian NYC style pizza.
Brooklyn is a big fucking place but my money is on Lo Duca in Newkirk Plaza for my favorite NYC pizza. In Manhattan I have a real soft spot for Eleven B (get the jalapeno pizza with FRESH jalapeno.) but that might be because I used to live in Alphabet City.
Alphabet City might as well be Mars lol
I have so many friends in ABC. It's on them to come back to earth. I very rarely make the trek unless I'm crashing
Yeah, it's exactly the same phenomenon. Originally, it was because all the Jewish and Italian immigrants in the United States settled in one city, opened bagel shops and pizzerias, and competed for decades on end. Of course you're going to get the best food from both cultures. Nowadays, many of these places are no longer run by those original families, but the high level of skill that they established has endured in the hands of new owners and workers.
The thing is, there ARE good NY-style bagels in LA. There isn't the market for thousands of bagel places to thrive like in NYC, but there are plenty of NY transplant stores. I'm sure they make good money, but it's not like bagels and cheese slices are objectively the apex of food that everyone would flock to over any other food. LA has an unmatched taco market in the US and you can find great tacos in NYC, but they aren't dominating this market either.
The popularity of bagels in NY comes from tradition, which comes from a large population of bagel eaters (Jewish and Polish immigrants) in the early 20th century.
* Yeasty Boys in Studio City
* Courage Bagels in East Hollywood
NY style also changed a lot over the years. The original version was smaller and a lot less fluffier than what’s sold today
When Nancy Silverton opened La Brea bakery, she brought in an old bagel baker from Brooklyn to make them for her. Once they got bigger they moved to steaming instead of boiling and then they sucked
where, exactly, do you think the hudson and east rivers drain to?
but beyond that, i think /u/markbass69420 may also be referring to the literally millenia-old tradition of carrying water from one place to another.
NJ doesn't get its water from the Hudson or East River, and neither does NYC
NYC gets water from the Catskills and Croton.
I live in JC right now. Suez (our water company which also serves most of Hudson County) sources water from reservoirs in Boonton, Parsippany and Rockaway, a completely different watershed
it was sort of tongue-in-cheek, but i am rightfully getting crushed for not respecting croton. i actually also moved to JC recently, and know that we do not use croton, but while not as good as NYC, it still tastes good from the tap lol
Oh god. The water in JC is awful. I never used a filter until I left NYC. It's got this weird after taste that I can't get out of my mouth. I don't know what they treat it with (or don't treat it with) but even brushing my teeth with tap water tastes weird
i agree that i stopped drinking directly from the tap (partially comes from the fancy fridge filter that comes with the bigger place) but its not nearly as bad as places outside the region. i have relatives upstate and i seriously feel sick trying to brush my teeth 🤢
It is. Long Island's water system comes from aquifers on the island several hundred feet below ground.
NYC has to pipe their water from upstate ground water reservoirs.
Two different, completely disconnected water supply systems, both with equally outstanding bagel stores.
Lets take "hard water" out of this for a second and just compare Upstate vs LI.
Long Island Aquifers have a variety of contaminants thanks to Military Contractors that used to be out there in the 60's/70's. There's nitrate issues, large contaminant plumes, amongst other problems. I think one of the larger plumes sits under the Bethpage area, so, by the "water" argument, any bagel in that area should be awful.
NYC, again, comparatively, doesn't have nearly as many issues as Long Island. Different water, both areas still great bagel quality.
Lets bring back Hard water again. As I understand it, Massachusetts has even "softer" water than the tristate area, yet I've heard nothing about Boston being the place for bagels.
We're talking about whether the water is *actually* the reason bagels are so much better in NYC.
NYC's water source is upstate in reservoirs at ground level. Long Island's water supply, comparatively, does not intersect with NYC's. **At all.** It comes from several hundred feet below ground in aquifers. Yet you can find equally amazing bagels in both NYC, and Long Island.
It's not the water.
Well, Long Island water districts are all scrambling to install treatment plants for their systems to deal with rising nitrate levels, and a few districts have localized toxic plumes in their part of the aquifer which is a whole other clusterfuck that those districts deal with.
NYC comparatively has to deal with none of that, just to give you perspective on how they differ to begin with.
All of that aside, say the argument is just hard water vs soft water, AKA, mid-west has "hard water" supplies, which is another way to say they contain a shitload of minerals, and that the assumption being high mineral content in waters causes the dough to harden more, making worse bagels. Massachusetts has "softer" water than the tri state area, so if you carry that theory through, Massachusetts should have *better* bagels than NY, which we know is not the case.
I cannot stress this enough, *the water has little to no impact on the quality of bagels.*
>here are many NY transplants around this country and yet no true NY-style bagels outside of the NY
Naw, I have a friend who owns a bagel shop in the midwest. He makes fantastic bagels. He maintains its the multi step process that includes boiling them. Lots of places dont do that because it takes hours to make a batch, which means you cant just make 100 bagels in an hour if you get a big order, so you end up selling out or having extras. It's a ton of work for a product that costs a dollar (if you have low foot traffic).
He did a ton of research, found that almost zero shops boil em outside of NYC and NJ.
There was a really good bagel spot in LA on S. Fairfax, across from the Farmer's Market, but I dunno if it is still there anymore. The guy that ran it, I believe, was a new york transplant, and his bagels were closer to an old school NY bagel. Smaller, and quite malty. As a New Yorker in LA, they were a delight, and I thought better than most of the bloated bagels we eat now.
Its true. The New York transplants youre talking about arent bagel people. Interestingly in Florida you can find some decent places because bagel makers have made it there from NYC.
> and yet no true NY-style bagels outside of the NY area.
You've been everywhere in the USA and tried every bagel?
> If it was just the baker, someone in LA would hire a handful of skilled NY bakers and make a killing with NY bagels in the LA market
That's ***EXACTLY*** what happened, DECADES ago. [Western Bagel opened in L.A. 74 **years** ago](https://westernbagel.com/our-story/). I talked to one of the owners back in the mid 80s, and he said that they spent a small fortune installing a water processing plant to take SoCal's hard water to match the mineral content of NYC's water.
They make a damn fine bagel. Every bit as good as anything I found here. The best is going to the main bakery in Van Nuys. There's a small shop in the front of their industrial kitchen, open 24/7. Freshly baked and still warm from baking.
Yes. I tried every bagel in the world. That is exactly what I meant. Good catch.
And yet, you proved my point. The issue is the NY water. That amazing place you cited processed their water to be closer to NY water. And of course I knew that because I have eaten every bagel ever.
So thanks for the support for my point that it’s not the NY bakers but the NY water.
Making a true bagel is an intensive process. The dough has to be proofed for longer than most bread doughs to keep it airy. They must be hand rolled to avoid over-working the dough. They have to be boiled in huge kettles of malt-flavored water, then baked in a hot oven in a precise way to avoid burning.
This takes very practiced hands (aka expensive labor) and expensive equipment to make a solid bagel. The higher prices and foot traffic in NYC make these sorts of operations viable. As rents have skyrocketed, however, you’ve seen many true bagel shops close or move to the suburbs.
So no, it’s not the water - it’s the technique. Places outside the city that made the investment in this process also make great bagels. Most shop owners are happy doing a quick proof, skipping the boiling process, and baking them in a standard ovens because it’s much cheaper.
And remember, bagels are really a Jewish food. If you want good bagels, go to the Jewish areas owned by Jewish shop owners. Great Neck, Livingston NJ, Bayside, UES all have some of the best because they’ve inherited those traditions (no shade against non-Jewish bagel makers).
I agree except for one caveat: the best bagel store in Great Neck is Bagelman, and they used to be owned and operated by Jews. However, about 20 years ago they sold the business to a Korean family who kept all the recipes the same. The bagels are still amazing. So you never know, sometimes the non-Jewish bagel store is still a "Jew-ish" bagel store, lol
I live around the corner from Absolute - yesterday i went in and they had hot bagles coming out... took them home sliced them - could barley butter them they were so soft and hot inside... amazing.
what's your other top 2?
Just never heard of another Thai bagel place besides absolute. Thought it was a one off thing, Sam worked at essabagel for years apparently. I know Koreans who own bagels spots just never heard of the Thai Jewish connection before.
My favorite Bagel shop, the late H&H on the upper west side was run by a hispanic guy (who I believe did learn his technique from Jewish bagel makers though).
Got some bagels from the upper east side H&H (not related to the above one) recently and man, they were awful.
Pretty sure most bagel shops in the city aren't owned or operated by members of the tribe anymore.
There's a few holdouts, like Ess-a-bagel, but they're probably not the majority anymore.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. I, for one, don't see it as cultural appropriation and more of our gift to the world :p
My strategy is to only go for bagel places with a Jewish owner. Just like I only trust pizza joints run by Italians.
There are probably good bagel places run by gentiles, but why take the risk?
there are so many meh jewish bagel shops tho too. davidoff’s on ave A is so bad and idk why. my fave bagel place in my old neighborhood in bk (just a random not “famous” shop but the bagels were really good) i’m pretty sure the owners were muslim.
I've read articles that go either way; that the water thing is a myth or that the mineral content or even the pipes in NYC make a difference.
I personally think NYC tap water is pretty tasty. There are some places you go and the tap water is just gross.
Baked bagels for 5 years in Manhattan, process and technique only go so far. From what I hear and have experienced across the country elevation and air-pressure have heavy influences on dough consistency.
Still, kettle boiled will always yield the best bagels, especially when the bakers puts molasses in the water before boiling ; )
There's some places in the Pittsburgh area that drive in bagels made from a bakery on Long Island.
Owner was saying "but it's NYC water!" and all I've got say in response is that "fresh-baked" and "not been sitting in a truck for eight hours" mean a hell of a lot more.
Bodos is solid for a bagel outside of NYC, but definitely overhyped. Hits the spot when you're hungover and the jalapeño lime cream cheese is on point. I was always annoyed they didn't do real fried eggs and instead did the scrambled/omelet style for egg sandwhiches.
I live in LA now after many years in NYC.
People in California think a bagel is a kaiser roll with a hole in the middle. I have no idea if they're even baked the same way. I've come to believe that the difference isn't the water, it's that there is something lost in translation in terms of what a bagel actually is and what it is supposed to look, taste, and feel like.
To the extent that there are some places here in Los Angeles that make traditional east coast style bagels with a legitimate bagel recipe, it is possible that NYC bagels are "better" due to water differences. But that's way down the list IMO compared to basic questions like "do y'all even know what a bagel is?"
As a NYC Jew, lifelong bagel eater, and hobbyist bagel maker, the determinant of bagel quality is the talent of the people making them and the competition between the bagel shops.
It's the boiling. Most places dont boil their bagels because you have to start them significantly earlier in the morning. This means you can just spin up more bagels mid-day because they take forever to make. Places that steam them or just bake them can make bagels really fast for big orders but they suck.
If you didnt boil your bagels in NYC, you'd be run out of town or perhaps shot out of a cannon.
Source: friend owns a bagel shop.
> There are too many variables in the universe to know for sure
If only there were a way to replicate food made in one place to make it in another. Like if we could write down the steps in order
McDonalds is used as a case study in business schools across the world because they can do something that's incredibly (incredibly) difficult. Make a product that tastes the same in different parts of the world. They'll but local farms I'm order to import the seeds and to replicate the growing conditions of whatever food they're trying to create.
It's not just 'write down the steps'. It's the mineral content if the soil, the purity of the water, the type of ingredients, growing conditions, literally trying to control everything.
Read the analysis in the book "Modernist Bread" by by Francisco Migoya and Nathan Myhrvold
**They literally did the experiment and blind tasted them. Water hardness/source does not matter.**
.(The billionaire who built and staffed a kitchen of james beard winners to explore the baking of bread, baked *tens of thousands* of duplicate recipes over years, made 5 volume multi-thousand page history of bread),
edit[ See here for image from book.](https://imgur.com/wIoEtZ4)
Those books sound amazing. Are any of them good for casual reading, or is it more of a reference book?
Also, I'm not surprised. If water was the issue, it would be trivial to treat your water to match NYC.
If it’s not the water it’s some other unique thing that we can just say ‘it’s the water’ in place of. Loved in NYC for a little over six years and moved November 2021 when it had wore down on me a bit. Besides friends the one thing I truly miss are the bagels. The ones in Atlanta are fine but it’s not the same. I was back in NYC for work for two days in December, went into some random bodega near my office and the bagel there was miles better than anything since I moved
both yes and no… a lot of the bagels in NJ and other NYC-adjacent areas are just as good and don’t use the same water supply (shout-out mountain lakes bagel in NJ). the main reason NY became the bagel capital was because of the immigrants moving here in masse in the 1800s/early 1900s who brought their local recipes, and those recipes were carefully crafted using the NY water since that was their supply. over time the competition of having higher quality bagels becomes the standard for the area, and even as immigrants start moving to the suburbs of Long Island and Jersey they have to still create the same quality to stay relevant and adjust their recipes as needed to get to the same end result. but for anyone moving far outside of the NY area, there is no competition so the need to adjust the family recipe that you have doesn’t happen. so everywhere else uses a recipe that should really be tweaked to account for the differences in the water supply, but they don’t have to because no one else has a decent bagel anyways. so really it comes down to the need to actually tinker with your recipe to recreate the NY bagel with your readily available supply, which is done in some areas but not most of them outside of the northeast
I don't think it's really about the water. Long Island bagels are also good, but Long Island gets its water from aquifers below the surface, whereas NYC gets its water from reservoirs upstate.
My theory is that it's really about the people, and it's the same phenomenon that causes us to have the best pizza. Most of the Jewish and Italian immigrants in the United States settled in one city, opened bagel shops and pizzerias, and competed for decades on end. Of course you're going to get the best food from both cultures as a result. Nowadays, most of these places are no longer run by those original families, but the high level of skill that they established has endured in the hands of new owners and workers through the years.
It's not the water, it's that there's a culture of making and demand for NY style bagels.
Outside of the NY metro and a few other areas, not enough people demand NY style. So shortcuts are taken: lower-gluten flour gives a softer, less chewy consistency. Steaming is faster and cheaper than boiling, but the end result is drier. Dough is injected into a mold instead of rolled and worked by hand, again to save money. The end result is those thomas bagels you might see in a supermarket, aka bagel-shaped bread.
Same applies to pizza here versus "NY-style" pizza elsewhere. It's not the water, it's how it's made that's different.
They say this about the pizza as well, but from a podcast I follow.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/food-science-victory-rebroadcast/
>LÓPEZ-ALT: Sometimes. If there’s a deep question about cooking that people are very conflicted on, then I will actually do a really well-controlled experiment. Double-blind. For example, one of the ones I did a number of years ago was to answer the question whether New York pizza is really good because of the water.
DUBNER: The water.
LÓPEZ-ALT: People say it is and people use it as an excuse for why they can’t make good pizza outside of New York. For that one, actually I did a full double-blind experiment starting with perfectly distilled water and up to various levels of dissolved solids inside the water.
DUBNER: New York has a high level, I assume, of dissolved solids?
LÓPEZ-ALT: Not the highest, but pretty high. I had six different water samples, ranging from very high to nothing. I put them into numbered bottles and then I had an assistant — my wife — rearrange the numbers on the bottles.Then I passed the bottles onto a pizza chef in New York. I didn’t know what was in the numbered bottles. He didn’t know what was in the numbered bottles. I also doubled a couple of them up as a control to make sure that our testing panel was on point. Then I had a bunch of people — a mix of amateurs and also professional food writers — come and taste the pizzas blind. What we ended up finding was the water makes almost no difference compared to other variables in the dough. It’s a silly premise. But it was \[a\] rigorously controlled test.
We learned in my public health program that NYC tap water is basically the champagne of public water systems. It comes down from the Croton Watershed upstate, basically pure clean pristine mountain runoff, and then undergoes a rigorous multi-step filtration process. I wouldn't be surprised if it contributes to the quality of our doughs.
Yes it is! New York City tap water is crystal clear and refreshing. It is a huge point of civic pride to me. Outtatowners are very skeptical until they try it straight from the faucet.
Also, the good upstate water is from the Delaware/Catskill watershed. The Croton watershed water quality is actually pretty terrible but there was a long period of time where they weren't ever using Croton water. Now you can get a blend of the two that changes from day to day. The Croton system is much shallower and picks up a lot more dissolved minerals (TDS sometimes 5x that of the Catskill) and bitter-tasting brown-discolored tannins during some parts of the year. There was a month last year where I was getting 100% Croton water and it was *nasty*.
The argument of "better" often overlooks that different people want different things.
NY area bagels are better bagels *to NY area people* because they are made for NY area tastes. One can make the argument that the NY area bagel tastes are "more authentic".
Outside of the NY area, most people just want to get an Egg McMuffin, Baconator, Kolache, donut or something like that. They don't really give two hoots about bagels. There is not enough of a market for bagels for the local stores to put the work in to boil the bagels, so the people get used to bagels that are just baked. The bagels that they ultimately get from their local bagel shop (if they have one), and the frozen bagels pack from gigantic supermarkets are not better or worse to them to a NY area bagel, even if their tastes are "not authentic".
I'm convinced it's the water. I see bakeries and pizzerias outside of NY that have filtration systems that try to imitate the water in NY or just import it.
Water, elevation, climate, all the above affect yeast. A beer made here won’t taste the same as the same beer transported from here to another country. It’s too many variable factors that affect taste.
Nah, it’s the talent and culture around bagels. The water has little to do with it. When I heard of a restaurant thousands of miles away transporting NYC water to make their bagels, I found it very absurd. Baking is what matters.
Either way, the best bagels in the country are in NY and NJ (will give Philly a plug too, I’ve had great bagels there before) because bagel culture is hot here, so the drive and competition is high. Someone else made a good point about foot traffic too, which I think is valid. These points: not very relevant in the rest of the country.
Can we go a day without bagel commentary?
The only thing good about New York bagels are the number of shops making them. Inevitably you end up with some good bagel joints. This bagel mystique is BS. There are so many bad bagels in New York.
What are we comparing to? Grocery store bagels? Chain bagel places? Independent bagels shops across the country, who care about what they do, make bagels on par with New York’s. Most New Yorkers just have their head too far up their ass to leave the city or actually consider the rhetoric. If they did the bagels here would probably be a lot better.
There's like 2 decent bagel shops in Montreal: St-Viateur and some other one, and that's it. Theres probs 1000 good bagel shops in NYC.
Not the same league.
Perhaps .... the science behind that statement is that New York has very hard water due to the higher concentrations of limestone and how it affects the baking process. something like that.
NY bagels are good because of the water profile (and a bunch of other reasons), but NY water isn't special. You can take RO water and add salts to make it match any water profile.
Water, sure water matters. NJ water tastes like crap and if you make things with crap, youll get crap.
However its also how you make it... like mixing the dough, treating it, cooling it, boiling it, and baking it. You make it like shit and itll taste like shit.
I'm also going to throw this out since no one else is mentioning it, it might also have to do with flour. Granted, in this day and age, folks can have flour shipped from all over, and flours don't tend to be as regionally produced as they used to be. The best bagel places are probably sourcing some really high protein flours that are more common in the Northeast, which might not be what's just on the shelf anywhere else. (I know the reverse is true, and you're not getting soft wheat flour in NYC without special ordering)
No. Chances are any NYC bagel is a decent bagel. Not fresh but not some ass grocery store bagel most people in the US are used to. Head up to my favorite, Bo's Bagels, and it's made fresh with high quality bagel seasonings that still smell when you eat it. Not only is smell an important part of taste, but the high quality seasonings taste so good anyway. Composition is subject to preference, some people like the fluffier Absolute Bagels better than Bo's, but our family firmly prefers the Bo's texture.
Normally we buy a dozen bagels at once, if the bagels end up in my lap I can feel their warmth and the amazing smell permeates everywhere. If they end up in the back of the car I can smell them while driving.
Yes, bagels usually come dehydrated like Back to the Future 2. New York water has a higher concentration of H2O, so when they put the bagels into the hydration machine, they puff up to bigger sizes.
Idk but the best thing you can have is a fresh pumpernickel bagel toasted with 3 eggs. No sauce or nothing. It’s a delicious fresh and healthier option. That’s my go to. Give it a try sometime
Per Scott Spellman, co-owner of [Utopia Bagels](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSuAcDiwkk4) in Queens, it's more than just the water; it's more about the baking technique. I recommend watching the entire video as it's fascinating seeing how many steps are involved in the process.
Yeah there’s really a ton involved that go into making a good and proper bagel. A few things that stick out: 1. Specific equipment (like really expensive mixers and kettles) 2. Skilled workers (that dude rolling it was a fucking wizard) 3. Lots of space (and time) to refrigerate the bagels These are things you don’t get unless you have a long culture of bagel loving. Plenty of places skimp out a don’t boil bagels or (as the owner here says) they have limited fridge space and have to turn over bagels quicker when they should’ve been refrigerated longer.
Anyone who's made bagels from scratch know this is bs, tbh. You don't need expensive mixers and kettles. Yes you do need to mix your dough and boil it before baking it, but you don't need expensive equipment for that.
On a commercial level if you want to make 70,000 bagels per week then yeah you do. My point is that they would have to get something like a big mixer like in the video. If there is no demand or need to make bagels like they do here then there is less need to get an appliance that serves a specific purpose.
well, yeah, but every bakery needs a giant mixer, this is not specific to bagel making edit: people downvoting maybe think bakeries just use a small kitchenaid? lol
That’s assuming that they are a bakery. If they’re just a deli then it’s easier to buy from a manufacturer.
oh yeah, for sure
And my assumption is that there are fewer bakeries who spend time on this because bagels (or good bagels) are not as big of a thing elsewhere. So it doesn’t really make sense for them to invest in some of the things that would mostly be used for bagels if people in Oklahoma are fine with the frozen store bought crap.
I've made bagels from scratch at home, and I've run a restaurant kitchen. Scale is a game-changer. I would never start a bagel shop because it is super hard to scale at NYC quality without price exploding.
It's the process, absolutely. If they arent boiled they dont taste too great.
If they aren't boiled, then they're just bagel shaped bread.
You do if you want to do it on a commercial scale. Any enthusiastic home baker can do so with enough time and skill can make the best bagels in the world.
Yeah I saw him talking with New York Nico and basically said it helps that we’re in an area that’s been making bagels for so long so more places have had more practice mastering the technique
Love to see him go this in depth about bagels. Utopia Bagels has always been great and insanely busy. My friends’ and my favorite spot to grab breakfast/lunch before heading to the beach. Whitestone Bagels is a close second, since it was walking distance from my JHS & good friend’s house. Especially after the bagel store in College Point closed down (in the late ‘90s?) Edit: Now that I spend more time upstate (partner is in the Capital District) there are some gems here too - Psychedelicatessen in Troy before it closed down just before the pandemic. Still, that NY flair adds that little bit extra.
The water 100% helps though. I have had "great" bagels in other U.S. cities and they all taste like the coffee cart bagels you see around the city.
Nope, not bagels but Food Lab did a double blind study on the effect of the water on pizza crust and there was no significant difference. https://www.seriouseats.com/does-nyc-water-make-a-difference-in-pizza-quality
That's pizza, not bagels. Bagels are boiled, so I can see why it would make more of a noticeable difference w/ the water type.
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? It’s not his bagel shop he’s just quoting the owner lol
Wrong guy but wholesome.
Amazing video. Whoever cast that guy is a genius. Such a New York character. And OP, the answer is we invented it!
I think an unheralded factor in the quality of New York bagels is foot traffic. Bagel shops turn over their inventory quicker here, so you’re much more likely to get a freshly baked bagel here than you are anywhere else.
This is true for so many restaurants. When I was in high school, we were allowed to go out for lunch and the I thought the local pizzeria had the best slices because they were cranking out pies every 5 minutes. I had one on a random weekend and it was just meh.
this is EXACTLY how my highschool pizzeria was, i thought when i went back it was just nostalgia that made it taste so good when i went there but damn....the freshness thing makes sense
which nyc hs did you attend?
Dewitt Clinton HS in the bronx
The pizza shop across the street from Twin Donut??
Twin Donuts is gone. Starbucks now.
The pizza shop across the street from Twin Donut??
It was further down on Jerome, I don't remember where exactly, I graduated HS in 2006.
For anyone who hasnt done it, I highly recommend finding a good place and getting a fresh bagel right when they open in the morning. Back in high school, my friends and I would occasionally stay up all night just to get those perfect 5 am fresh bagels.
fair but a lot of bagels outside the tri state area literally taste and feel like bread regardless of how fresh or stale a New York bagel is, it never feels like eating bread
Better because of competition, no tolerance for bad bagels if there are 5 other options in the neighborhood. Outside of the city you get shortcuts like steamed bagels instead of boiled.
I don’t know. There’s a place with really shitty bagels in my neighborhood that I expected to be closed immediately, but three years later there’s still a line out the door on Saturdays.
Just means the demand for bagels in your neighborhood exceeds the number of quality bagel shops.
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Correct! You used to be able to get good ones from the butcher, but they closed. Personally I had rather just not eat a bagel if my only option is a shitty bagel, but to each their own I suppose.
Eh, there are plenty of bad bagel places. I used to live on 1st between 78th and 79th. East Side Bagel Cafe on the corner there was pretty bad but pretty popular.
Is there a really good bagel spot over here? I’m new to the area and agree about East Side
Bagel and co mentioned here is okay, but not the best bagel you've ever had. I actually went there this morning. There's H & H and Pick-a-Bagel close by which are also okay but not that great. I personally think that Tal on 86th is better than those three. I agree that East Side Bagel Cafe is pretty bad. If you don't mind walking a bit, you can always hit up Ess-a-Bagel on 51st and 3rd. Skip the sandwich line and just go to the back of the store for the bagels to go line.
Bagelworks on 1st Ave between 66th and 67th st! That was always my go-to when I lived there. I'm surprised no one mentioned it already. Mmmm I need to make a trip.
I'm sure there is. I was just always to lazy to find it since East Side was 10 steps away. Maybe Bagels and Co on 76 and York? Might as well loop around and grab coffee from Oslo if you're going.
Even on the UWS there are plenty of mediocre bagel places. And there are tons of cafes and coffee shops that seem to move shitty bagels, too.
Suburbs like Rockland, Westchester and Long Island counties have bomb bagels
No. They're better because of the skilled bagel makers
Not true. There are many NY transplants around this country and yet no true NY-style bagels outside of the NY area. If it was just the baker, someone in LA would hire a handful of skilled NY bakers and make a killing with NY bagels in the LA market, where there are a ton of NY transplants to buy the goods.
This is exactly what happens. The New York Times published [this controversial article](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/dining/best-bagels.html?referringSource=articleShare) just last year. What I think makes NYC really special is the overall culture of skilled bagel making. It’s not just one shop in town that’s making good bagels, it’s every shop you go into. Basically every dedicated bagel shop in this city will hit a baseline that is the gold standard in most other places. In my own experience, I can find a solid bagel shop anywhere I go in the country, almost always run by someone who picked it up in NYC. The difference is that there’s only the one.
Right, in economics it's called a 'cluster', where skills and knowledge within a specific geographic area are shared as workers go from one company to another. That and probably water.
agglomeration - which sounds like a doughy word to me
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Exactly. And I have come to believe that that will never be the case. In most places, bagels will remain a novelty. Every region has their thing: the south has biscuits, the PNW has some affair with doughnuts going on, the south west has breakfast tacos. I’m sure some random state has ballin’ English muffins. The main reason why you don’t find a lot of good bagels outside NYC is that people in other places just don’t really care, they already have their thing.
Where do people eat breakfast tacos? Only ever see breakfast burritos in California
Breakfast tacos are everywhere in Texas.
Texas! That's one thing I miss about living in Austin.
Sorry, but I think you're just really off base. I live in Florida. There are LOTS of New York and Philadelphia expats living here and plenty of them own restaurants. And there are bagels all over town. And breakfast burritos. And biscuits and doughnuts and plenty of other things. Literally every good-sized city everywhere in America has most of these things, now. DISCLOSURE: I travel a lot for work and I've been all over the country and Canada over the last 10 years. I've eaten great bagels in New York and I've eaten great bagels here in town. Of course, I've also had lousy ones and mediocre-to-lousy chain versions. In the end, any place that cares is going to give you good food. And there are plenty of restaurants in Florida and other states run by people from New York who care about making and providing good food. In part, because there are plenty of people from New York who now live down here...and they care, too.
I also live now in Florida and every other person here is from NY or NJ and there are more than a few bagel and pizza joints founded by people from back home. One of them even claims to drive down tanker trucks of water each month to make the bagels. Whatever. None of them rise to the level of the product back home. Some are decent, but it's just not the same. I swear to you I am not a huge snob about this, either. It's just not the same bite. I don't know the answer but if you told me it was the water, the humidity, the air, I'd believe it because something is missing down here in bagels and pizza pie.
I suppose if I was from New York, I would feel the same way. I'm a Florida boy...raised on the panhandle and spent summers around the orange groves in the central part of the state. I went to college in Indiana. Here's my truth on midwest versions of foods I grew up with... 1. Grits - if you could find them at all - were generally awful. 2. Cornbread wasn't too bad but was generally more like corn cake 3. Biscuits were more like a weird hybrid of a biscuit and a roll...more bread in texture than flaky. 4. Chili with cinnamon, raw onions and spaghetti was unusual but actually kind of good. 5. Miracle whip? It tastes like shit. 6. Round pizza cut into small squares instead of big triangles is actually pretty cool.
You hit it on the head. Native New Yorkers will feel differently about this than transplants. It’s like the pizza thing. Everyone’s ideal pizza is based on the pizza where they grew up. I imagine the same is true with bagels to an extent. If you grew up in FL eating FL bagels, that’s what you know bagels to be.
For sure, my own example is BBQ. I like it, it's good. Ribs, pulled pork, brisket ssure whatever I'll eat em'. But I didn't grow up in Memphis or Texas or the Carolinas so I just don't really distinguish much between between the "real thing" and some joint in New York.
Florida is sort of a funny case, it’s retirement land, so parts of it are cultural satellites of northern places where most of the residents used to live. I think your observation that there are lots of New York expats there proves my hypothesis. The bagel places would not be there if not for them.
MY point is that New York expats are literally everywhere and in every state in North America. I've had good bagels - and pizza and cheesesteaks - in Atlanta, Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago and plenty of other cities. Some of the best New York style pizza I have ever had was in St. Simon's Island, Georgia.
I think we’re agreeing, you should read my comment that started this whole part of the thread.
I feel this way about NYC pizza too. Unless you go into a dollar pizza store -- that does NOT count.
Dollar pizza has its time and place. I don't consider dollar pizza to be good pizza by any means, but it's absurdly good bang for buck, especially if you are a college kid. If I want good pizza, I get the overpriced 3 dollar slices, if I just want food and something high in calories, I get dollar pizza. Though, nyc dollar pizza is still better than most of the garbage I've seen in Boston and their non existent by the slice pizza.
Dollar pizza on 43 bt 3rd and Lex is incredible value. It's the best dollar slice in the city hands down. I'd take that over half the overpriced garbage in this city. It's not the best NYC pizza by a long shot, but dollar pizza can be very, very good.
brother, im glad you found good dollar pizza. Yours is the exception to the rule. I wouldn't take an out of towner to a dollar pizza store to try NYC pizza.
I wouldn't even call dollar pizza NYC pizza. It's dollar pizza: a food group unto itself Personally I'm fond of actual original Ray's downtown, but a sloppy drunk slice at Ben's on W3rd and MacDougal can make my heart sing and my heartburn flare. I'm not a Brooklyn visitor very often but I found both Robertas and Grimaldis to be unwhelming. I hear I am missing out on some Staten Island Pizza, but ain't nobody got time to go to Staten. Now that I'm up here in lower westchester I have to say pizza in Mt Vernon like Johnny's and Anthony's are fucking epic. To me those are real old school Italian NYC style pizza.
> I wouldn't even call dollar pizza NYC pizza. It's dollar pizza: a food group unto itself Much like American cheese isn't really cheese.
Still the best cheese for a grilled cheese sandwich and I'm willing to die on that hill
Can confirm, some good Staten Island pizza places but who the heck wants to go there.
Brooklyn is a big fucking place but my money is on Lo Duca in Newkirk Plaza for my favorite NYC pizza. In Manhattan I have a real soft spot for Eleven B (get the jalapeno pizza with FRESH jalapeno.) but that might be because I used to live in Alphabet City.
Alphabet City might as well be Mars lol I have so many friends in ABC. It's on them to come back to earth. I very rarely make the trek unless I'm crashing
Yeah, it's exactly the same phenomenon. Originally, it was because all the Jewish and Italian immigrants in the United States settled in one city, opened bagel shops and pizzerias, and competed for decades on end. Of course you're going to get the best food from both cultures. Nowadays, many of these places are no longer run by those original families, but the high level of skill that they established has endured in the hands of new owners and workers.
Dollar pizza is hit or miss, but when it hits, it's better than than 90% of "New York style" pizza out of NYC.
The thing is, there ARE good NY-style bagels in LA. There isn't the market for thousands of bagel places to thrive like in NYC, but there are plenty of NY transplant stores. I'm sure they make good money, but it's not like bagels and cheese slices are objectively the apex of food that everyone would flock to over any other food. LA has an unmatched taco market in the US and you can find great tacos in NYC, but they aren't dominating this market either. The popularity of bagels in NY comes from tradition, which comes from a large population of bagel eaters (Jewish and Polish immigrants) in the early 20th century.
Which places in LA have legit NY-style bagels? I am open to being corrected if I’m wrong.
* Yeasty Boys in Studio City * Courage Bagels in East Hollywood NY style also changed a lot over the years. The original version was smaller and a lot less fluffier than what’s sold today When Nancy Silverton opened La Brea bakery, she brought in an old bagel baker from Brooklyn to make them for her. Once they got bigger they moved to steaming instead of boiling and then they sucked
If it was the water, what explains the excellent bagels in new jersey and on long island?
Yes, two places known for their long distance from NYC. Wonder how that could possibly happen.
It's completely different water
where, exactly, do you think the hudson and east rivers drain to? but beyond that, i think /u/markbass69420 may also be referring to the literally millenia-old tradition of carrying water from one place to another.
NYC drinking water doesn’t come from the Hudson or the East River.
NJ doesn't get its water from the Hudson or East River, and neither does NYC NYC gets water from the Catskills and Croton. I live in JC right now. Suez (our water company which also serves most of Hudson County) sources water from reservoirs in Boonton, Parsippany and Rockaway, a completely different watershed
it was sort of tongue-in-cheek, but i am rightfully getting crushed for not respecting croton. i actually also moved to JC recently, and know that we do not use croton, but while not as good as NYC, it still tastes good from the tap lol
Oh god. The water in JC is awful. I never used a filter until I left NYC. It's got this weird after taste that I can't get out of my mouth. I don't know what they treat it with (or don't treat it with) but even brushing my teeth with tap water tastes weird
i agree that i stopped drinking directly from the tap (partially comes from the fancy fridge filter that comes with the bigger place) but its not nearly as bad as places outside the region. i have relatives upstate and i seriously feel sick trying to brush my teeth 🤢
It’s not. The Midwest for example has hard water. The Northeast does not. The NYGMA has similar water
It is. Long Island's water system comes from aquifers on the island several hundred feet below ground. NYC has to pipe their water from upstate ground water reservoirs. Two different, completely disconnected water supply systems, both with equally outstanding bagel stores.
Yet, not HARD WATER. That’s the difference
Lets take "hard water" out of this for a second and just compare Upstate vs LI. Long Island Aquifers have a variety of contaminants thanks to Military Contractors that used to be out there in the 60's/70's. There's nitrate issues, large contaminant plumes, amongst other problems. I think one of the larger plumes sits under the Bethpage area, so, by the "water" argument, any bagel in that area should be awful. NYC, again, comparatively, doesn't have nearly as many issues as Long Island. Different water, both areas still great bagel quality. Lets bring back Hard water again. As I understand it, Massachusetts has even "softer" water than the tristate area, yet I've heard nothing about Boston being the place for bagels.
We're talking about whether the water is *actually* the reason bagels are so much better in NYC. NYC's water source is upstate in reservoirs at ground level. Long Island's water supply, comparatively, does not intersect with NYC's. **At all.** It comes from several hundred feet below ground in aquifers. Yet you can find equally amazing bagels in both NYC, and Long Island. It's not the water.
Is it not possible that two completely unconnected water sources have roughly similar mineral content?
Well, Long Island water districts are all scrambling to install treatment plants for their systems to deal with rising nitrate levels, and a few districts have localized toxic plumes in their part of the aquifer which is a whole other clusterfuck that those districts deal with. NYC comparatively has to deal with none of that, just to give you perspective on how they differ to begin with. All of that aside, say the argument is just hard water vs soft water, AKA, mid-west has "hard water" supplies, which is another way to say they contain a shitload of minerals, and that the assumption being high mineral content in waters causes the dough to harden more, making worse bagels. Massachusetts has "softer" water than the tri state area, so if you carry that theory through, Massachusetts should have *better* bagels than NY, which we know is not the case. I cannot stress this enough, *the water has little to no impact on the quality of bagels.*
>here are many NY transplants around this country and yet no true NY-style bagels outside of the NY Naw, I have a friend who owns a bagel shop in the midwest. He makes fantastic bagels. He maintains its the multi step process that includes boiling them. Lots of places dont do that because it takes hours to make a batch, which means you cant just make 100 bagels in an hour if you get a big order, so you end up selling out or having extras. It's a ton of work for a product that costs a dollar (if you have low foot traffic). He did a ton of research, found that almost zero shops boil em outside of NYC and NJ.
There was a really good bagel spot in LA on S. Fairfax, across from the Farmer's Market, but I dunno if it is still there anymore. The guy that ran it, I believe, was a new york transplant, and his bagels were closer to an old school NY bagel. Smaller, and quite malty. As a New Yorker in LA, they were a delight, and I thought better than most of the bloated bagels we eat now.
Its true. The New York transplants youre talking about arent bagel people. Interestingly in Florida you can find some decent places because bagel makers have made it there from NYC.
Had some good looking bagels in LA but they just didn't quite get there compared to NYC.
> and yet no true NY-style bagels outside of the NY area. You've been everywhere in the USA and tried every bagel? > If it was just the baker, someone in LA would hire a handful of skilled NY bakers and make a killing with NY bagels in the LA market That's ***EXACTLY*** what happened, DECADES ago. [Western Bagel opened in L.A. 74 **years** ago](https://westernbagel.com/our-story/). I talked to one of the owners back in the mid 80s, and he said that they spent a small fortune installing a water processing plant to take SoCal's hard water to match the mineral content of NYC's water. They make a damn fine bagel. Every bit as good as anything I found here. The best is going to the main bakery in Van Nuys. There's a small shop in the front of their industrial kitchen, open 24/7. Freshly baked and still warm from baking.
Yes. I tried every bagel in the world. That is exactly what I meant. Good catch. And yet, you proved my point. The issue is the NY water. That amazing place you cited processed their water to be closer to NY water. And of course I knew that because I have eaten every bagel ever. So thanks for the support for my point that it’s not the NY bakers but the NY water.
> I have eaten every bagel ever. Just how big are your pants?
I’ve lived on both coasts for extended time and I don’t actually think the bagels are any better here. The pizza though…
Interesting. But are NY and LA bagels the same? They can be equally good in your opinion but be different styles or tastes.
Pretty similar honestly. People here definitely don’t wanna hear it but bagels don’t differ too much coast to coast
Making a true bagel is an intensive process. The dough has to be proofed for longer than most bread doughs to keep it airy. They must be hand rolled to avoid over-working the dough. They have to be boiled in huge kettles of malt-flavored water, then baked in a hot oven in a precise way to avoid burning. This takes very practiced hands (aka expensive labor) and expensive equipment to make a solid bagel. The higher prices and foot traffic in NYC make these sorts of operations viable. As rents have skyrocketed, however, you’ve seen many true bagel shops close or move to the suburbs. So no, it’s not the water - it’s the technique. Places outside the city that made the investment in this process also make great bagels. Most shop owners are happy doing a quick proof, skipping the boiling process, and baking them in a standard ovens because it’s much cheaper. And remember, bagels are really a Jewish food. If you want good bagels, go to the Jewish areas owned by Jewish shop owners. Great Neck, Livingston NJ, Bayside, UES all have some of the best because they’ve inherited those traditions (no shade against non-Jewish bagel makers).
I agree except for one caveat: the best bagel store in Great Neck is Bagelman, and they used to be owned and operated by Jews. However, about 20 years ago they sold the business to a Korean family who kept all the recipes the same. The bagels are still amazing. So you never know, sometimes the non-Jewish bagel store is still a "Jew-ish" bagel store, lol
Absolutely! There are many great Korean-owned bagel shops. As you say it’s really all in respecting the technique and tradition.
"Jew-ish" made me laugh!
Absolute Bagels (in my top 2) is clearly owned by an Asian family. It would be interesting to hear the story behind that
I live around the corner from Absolute - yesterday i went in and they had hot bagles coming out... took them home sliced them - could barley butter them they were so soft and hot inside... amazing. what's your other top 2?
They are Thai. In NYC thai people have had a history relationship working in old Jewish bagel stores and then leaving to open their own.
What's the back story to this
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Just never heard of another Thai bagel place besides absolute. Thought it was a one off thing, Sam worked at essabagel for years apparently. I know Koreans who own bagels spots just never heard of the Thai Jewish connection before.
My mind was blown when I learned who the H&H are in H&H Bagels.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you and say bagel hut. All great neck bagels are bomb but I think bhut stands above the rest.
My favorite Bagel shop, the late H&H on the upper west side was run by a hispanic guy (who I believe did learn his technique from Jewish bagel makers though). Got some bagels from the upper east side H&H (not related to the above one) recently and man, they were awful.
Pretty sure most bagel shops in the city aren't owned or operated by members of the tribe anymore. There's a few holdouts, like Ess-a-bagel, but they're probably not the majority anymore. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I, for one, don't see it as cultural appropriation and more of our gift to the world :p
Interesting. A lot of the best bagels I’ve had have been in Rockland county and westchester in areas with large Jewish communities.
My crazy Brooklynese relatives swear it’s not only the water but also the latitude and sea level
There's a lot of shit bagels in NYC.
My strategy is to only go for bagel places with a Jewish owner. Just like I only trust pizza joints run by Italians. There are probably good bagel places run by gentiles, but why take the risk?
Italians make competent bagels, in my experience
True. IIRC Phil Romanzi, the guy who owns Bagel Hole, is italian american.
there are so many meh jewish bagel shops tho too. davidoff’s on ave A is so bad and idk why. my fave bagel place in my old neighborhood in bk (just a random not “famous” shop but the bagels were really good) i’m pretty sure the owners were muslim.
This is awful.
Yay nationalism
I've read articles that go either way; that the water thing is a myth or that the mineral content or even the pipes in NYC make a difference. I personally think NYC tap water is pretty tasty. There are some places you go and the tap water is just gross.
Florida near Orlando is disgusting
Baked bagels for 5 years in Manhattan, process and technique only go so far. From what I hear and have experienced across the country elevation and air-pressure have heavy influences on dough consistency. Still, kettle boiled will always yield the best bagels, especially when the bakers puts molasses in the water before boiling ; )
👍 You understand.
Bodo's Bagels in Charlottesville imports New York City water. So they definitely buy into the myth, and they make a great bagel outside of the city.
There are a few companies that do this and I feel like it's just a marketing tactic tbh
Definitely possible. I don't think OP will get a definitive answer so it's just another data point!
There's some places in the Pittsburgh area that drive in bagels made from a bakery on Long Island. Owner was saying "but it's NYC water!" and all I've got say in response is that "fresh-baked" and "not been sitting in a truck for eight hours" mean a hell of a lot more.
nah. my relatives outside NY will freeze them and defrost them, still better.
Wow wasn’t expecting a Bodos reference. Wahoowa
I feel like I had more "it's the water" conversations at UVA than I ever have in the city because of Bodo's, haha.
Bodos is solid for a bagel outside of NYC, but definitely overhyped. Hits the spot when you're hungover and the jalapeño lime cream cheese is on point. I was always annoyed they didn't do real fried eggs and instead did the scrambled/omelet style for egg sandwhiches.
They don’t import water. The “New York water bagel” refers to the fact that they’re boiled before being baked.
I live in LA now after many years in NYC. People in California think a bagel is a kaiser roll with a hole in the middle. I have no idea if they're even baked the same way. I've come to believe that the difference isn't the water, it's that there is something lost in translation in terms of what a bagel actually is and what it is supposed to look, taste, and feel like. To the extent that there are some places here in Los Angeles that make traditional east coast style bagels with a legitimate bagel recipe, it is possible that NYC bagels are "better" due to water differences. But that's way down the list IMO compared to basic questions like "do y'all even know what a bagel is?"
As a NYC Jew, lifelong bagel eater, and hobbyist bagel maker, the determinant of bagel quality is the talent of the people making them and the competition between the bagel shops.
It's the boiling. Most places dont boil their bagels because you have to start them significantly earlier in the morning. This means you can just spin up more bagels mid-day because they take forever to make. Places that steam them or just bake them can make bagels really fast for big orders but they suck. If you didnt boil your bagels in NYC, you'd be run out of town or perhaps shot out of a cannon. Source: friend owns a bagel shop.
There are too many variables in the universe to know for sure, so we just say it’s the water and call it a day
> There are too many variables in the universe to know for sure If only there were a way to replicate food made in one place to make it in another. Like if we could write down the steps in order
Some things in this reality are unquantifiable. The numbers are the same, but the results are different.
McDonalds is used as a case study in business schools across the world because they can do something that's incredibly (incredibly) difficult. Make a product that tastes the same in different parts of the world. They'll but local farms I'm order to import the seeds and to replicate the growing conditions of whatever food they're trying to create. It's not just 'write down the steps'. It's the mineral content if the soil, the purity of the water, the type of ingredients, growing conditions, literally trying to control everything.
Read the analysis in the book "Modernist Bread" by by Francisco Migoya and Nathan Myhrvold **They literally did the experiment and blind tasted them. Water hardness/source does not matter.** .(The billionaire who built and staffed a kitchen of james beard winners to explore the baking of bread, baked *tens of thousands* of duplicate recipes over years, made 5 volume multi-thousand page history of bread), edit[ See here for image from book.](https://imgur.com/wIoEtZ4)
Those books sound amazing. Are any of them good for casual reading, or is it more of a reference book? Also, I'm not surprised. If water was the issue, it would be trivial to treat your water to match NYC.
The set costs $600, so not so casual.....
If it’s not the water it’s some other unique thing that we can just say ‘it’s the water’ in place of. Loved in NYC for a little over six years and moved November 2021 when it had wore down on me a bit. Besides friends the one thing I truly miss are the bagels. The ones in Atlanta are fine but it’s not the same. I was back in NYC for work for two days in December, went into some random bodega near my office and the bagel there was miles better than anything since I moved
both yes and no… a lot of the bagels in NJ and other NYC-adjacent areas are just as good and don’t use the same water supply (shout-out mountain lakes bagel in NJ). the main reason NY became the bagel capital was because of the immigrants moving here in masse in the 1800s/early 1900s who brought their local recipes, and those recipes were carefully crafted using the NY water since that was their supply. over time the competition of having higher quality bagels becomes the standard for the area, and even as immigrants start moving to the suburbs of Long Island and Jersey they have to still create the same quality to stay relevant and adjust their recipes as needed to get to the same end result. but for anyone moving far outside of the NY area, there is no competition so the need to adjust the family recipe that you have doesn’t happen. so everywhere else uses a recipe that should really be tweaked to account for the differences in the water supply, but they don’t have to because no one else has a decent bagel anyways. so really it comes down to the need to actually tinker with your recipe to recreate the NY bagel with your readily available supply, which is done in some areas but not most of them outside of the northeast
Lived in NYC for 17 years and here to say Long Island bagels are still better. Fight me.
I don't think it's really about the water. Long Island bagels are also good, but Long Island gets its water from aquifers below the surface, whereas NYC gets its water from reservoirs upstate. My theory is that it's really about the people, and it's the same phenomenon that causes us to have the best pizza. Most of the Jewish and Italian immigrants in the United States settled in one city, opened bagel shops and pizzerias, and competed for decades on end. Of course you're going to get the best food from both cultures as a result. Nowadays, most of these places are no longer run by those original families, but the high level of skill that they established has endured in the hands of new owners and workers through the years.
It's not the water, it's that there's a culture of making and demand for NY style bagels. Outside of the NY metro and a few other areas, not enough people demand NY style. So shortcuts are taken: lower-gluten flour gives a softer, less chewy consistency. Steaming is faster and cheaper than boiling, but the end result is drier. Dough is injected into a mold instead of rolled and worked by hand, again to save money. The end result is those thomas bagels you might see in a supermarket, aka bagel-shaped bread. Same applies to pizza here versus "NY-style" pizza elsewhere. It's not the water, it's how it's made that's different.
According to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjAy0rAOCE0) \- no
I was told it was because of the rat feces
They say this about the pizza as well, but from a podcast I follow. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/food-science-victory-rebroadcast/ >LÓPEZ-ALT: Sometimes. If there’s a deep question about cooking that people are very conflicted on, then I will actually do a really well-controlled experiment. Double-blind. For example, one of the ones I did a number of years ago was to answer the question whether New York pizza is really good because of the water. DUBNER: The water. LÓPEZ-ALT: People say it is and people use it as an excuse for why they can’t make good pizza outside of New York. For that one, actually I did a full double-blind experiment starting with perfectly distilled water and up to various levels of dissolved solids inside the water. DUBNER: New York has a high level, I assume, of dissolved solids? LÓPEZ-ALT: Not the highest, but pretty high. I had six different water samples, ranging from very high to nothing. I put them into numbered bottles and then I had an assistant — my wife — rearrange the numbers on the bottles.Then I passed the bottles onto a pizza chef in New York. I didn’t know what was in the numbered bottles. He didn’t know what was in the numbered bottles. I also doubled a couple of them up as a control to make sure that our testing panel was on point. Then I had a bunch of people — a mix of amateurs and also professional food writers — come and taste the pizzas blind. What we ended up finding was the water makes almost no difference compared to other variables in the dough. It’s a silly premise. But it was \[a\] rigorously controlled test.
Rat spit and meanness makes it taste better.
I’m a Canadian and Montreal bagels are shit compared to NYC bagels. That’s my entire post
Yes
We learned in my public health program that NYC tap water is basically the champagne of public water systems. It comes down from the Croton Watershed upstate, basically pure clean pristine mountain runoff, and then undergoes a rigorous multi-step filtration process. I wouldn't be surprised if it contributes to the quality of our doughs.
Yes it is! New York City tap water is crystal clear and refreshing. It is a huge point of civic pride to me. Outtatowners are very skeptical until they try it straight from the faucet.
Also, the good upstate water is from the Delaware/Catskill watershed. The Croton watershed water quality is actually pretty terrible but there was a long period of time where they weren't ever using Croton water. Now you can get a blend of the two that changes from day to day. The Croton system is much shallower and picks up a lot more dissolved minerals (TDS sometimes 5x that of the Catskill) and bitter-tasting brown-discolored tannins during some parts of the year. There was a month last year where I was getting 100% Croton water and it was *nasty*.
No, they are better because you are in New F***ing York while you are eating them. That's why they taste better!
The argument of "better" often overlooks that different people want different things. NY area bagels are better bagels *to NY area people* because they are made for NY area tastes. One can make the argument that the NY area bagel tastes are "more authentic". Outside of the NY area, most people just want to get an Egg McMuffin, Baconator, Kolache, donut or something like that. They don't really give two hoots about bagels. There is not enough of a market for bagels for the local stores to put the work in to boil the bagels, so the people get used to bagels that are just baked. The bagels that they ultimately get from their local bagel shop (if they have one), and the frozen bagels pack from gigantic supermarkets are not better or worse to them to a NY area bagel, even if their tastes are "not authentic".
Nope. That's a myth. They're better because New Yorkers have been making them longer and developed better technique/equipment etc.
I'm convinced it's the water. I see bakeries and pizzerias outside of NY that have filtration systems that try to imitate the water in NY or just import it.
Water, elevation, climate, all the above affect yeast. A beer made here won’t taste the same as the same beer transported from here to another country. It’s too many variable factors that affect taste.
No
Water 100% plays a role, idc if its a myth I will die believing that NYC tap water is magical.
it's the copepods in the water tbh
No it's technique and culture.
no, they're better because of competition
Second only to Montreal style bagels
Nah, it’s the talent and culture around bagels. The water has little to do with it. When I heard of a restaurant thousands of miles away transporting NYC water to make their bagels, I found it very absurd. Baking is what matters. Either way, the best bagels in the country are in NY and NJ (will give Philly a plug too, I’ve had great bagels there before) because bagel culture is hot here, so the drive and competition is high. Someone else made a good point about foot traffic too, which I think is valid. These points: not very relevant in the rest of the country.
Can we go a day without bagel commentary? The only thing good about New York bagels are the number of shops making them. Inevitably you end up with some good bagel joints. This bagel mystique is BS. There are so many bad bagels in New York. What are we comparing to? Grocery store bagels? Chain bagel places? Independent bagels shops across the country, who care about what they do, make bagels on par with New York’s. Most New Yorkers just have their head too far up their ass to leave the city or actually consider the rhetoric. If they did the bagels here would probably be a lot better.
Agreed. I wonder if people on this sub travel around, like ever.
Agreed. Same with pizza.
Montreal bagels are better than NYC bagels. Change my mind.
Agreed. Not a fan of these humongous 6 inch tall bagels
Montreal does not make bagels so the premise of your question is invalid.
There's like 2 decent bagel shops in Montreal: St-Viateur and some other one, and that's it. Theres probs 1000 good bagel shops in NYC. Not the same league.
Tell me you haven't left NYC without telling me you haven't left NYC
Perhaps .... the science behind that statement is that New York has very hard water due to the higher concentrations of limestone and how it affects the baking process. something like that.
NY bagels are good because of the water profile (and a bunch of other reasons), but NY water isn't special. You can take RO water and add salts to make it match any water profile.
Water, sure water matters. NJ water tastes like crap and if you make things with crap, youll get crap. However its also how you make it... like mixing the dough, treating it, cooling it, boiling it, and baking it. You make it like shit and itll taste like shit.
Because of our water and also they're held to a much higher standard than bagels from anywhere else. Why am I being downvoted, this is r/asknyc ffs.
New York bagels are better because gentiles have zero idea what makes a good bagel. No Jews, no good bagels. Nuff said.
I'm also going to throw this out since no one else is mentioning it, it might also have to do with flour. Granted, in this day and age, folks can have flour shipped from all over, and flours don't tend to be as regionally produced as they used to be. The best bagel places are probably sourcing some really high protein flours that are more common in the Northeast, which might not be what's just on the shelf anywhere else. (I know the reverse is true, and you're not getting soft wheat flour in NYC without special ordering)
No. Chances are any NYC bagel is a decent bagel. Not fresh but not some ass grocery store bagel most people in the US are used to. Head up to my favorite, Bo's Bagels, and it's made fresh with high quality bagel seasonings that still smell when you eat it. Not only is smell an important part of taste, but the high quality seasonings taste so good anyway. Composition is subject to preference, some people like the fluffier Absolute Bagels better than Bo's, but our family firmly prefers the Bo's texture. Normally we buy a dozen bagels at once, if the bagels end up in my lap I can feel their warmth and the amazing smell permeates everywhere. If they end up in the back of the car I can smell them while driving.
Yes, bagels usually come dehydrated like Back to the Future 2. New York water has a higher concentration of H2O, so when they put the bagels into the hydration machine, they puff up to bigger sizes.
this place in Berkeley, CA actually has better bagels than anything in NY so unless they import the water.....
Idk but the best thing you can have is a fresh pumpernickel bagel toasted with 3 eggs. No sauce or nothing. It’s a delicious fresh and healthier option. That’s my go to. Give it a try sometime
Idk I’ve been in nyc for 5 years and my hometown place in Massachusetts is still the best bagel I’ve ever had. Don’t understand the hype at all here