Where to Eat: New York City
The freaks come out at breakfast.
Have you ever eaten more than 70 bagels in a month? I can’t recommend it, gastrointestinally, but duty called: I was putting together our list of the best bagels in New York City.
A huge part of researching the list involved reading up on the current state of the bagel art — turns out, it’s contentious.
In the last few years, New York has gone through what has been called “a bagel renaissance,” but what others consider a crisis of tradition. Many of the city’s more popular bagels aren’t made in the traditional manner. Some can be fluffy, sandwich bread-y orbs, while others are dense, sourdough-leavened and nearly scorched. All bagel heresies in some quarters.
On the far side of those, even, lies a land of bagel abstractions. Sometimes, in my travels, I ventured there. It felt good to expand my horizons, if not for science, then for a laugh. When compelled, I ordered something blasphemous or off-the-wall — a bagel made with prosciutto in the dough, for example (which was not good).
Some of these Franken-bagels were quite good, but let this be a warning to purists: The following is going to be a disturbing, bizarro bagel jump scare. Luckily, it’s just in time for Halloween!
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