New york city bagel & coffee house

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We offer a variety of made to order sandwiches as well as bagels to take home. We use only fresh, locally sourced ingredients of the highest quality.

New york city bagel & coffee house
No other bread can quite match the golden sheen and toasty smell of a warm bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Where to find exemplary versions of NYC’s unofficial favorite food

by Updated Jun 22, 2022, 12:32pm EDT

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New york city bagel & coffee house

No other bread can quite match the golden sheen and toasty smell of a warm bagel. | Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

The bagel may or may not have been invented by Germans living in Poland in the 14th century, but here, it’s associated with Jewish American cuisine, as well as being one of the city’s most iconic foods. Revered by people all over the country, it’s rare to find a faithful duplication elsewhere. True bagels are boiled briefly before being baked. (Turn one over: If it has a grid pattern on the bottom, it was first steamed, and is not a true bagel.) Chewy, glutinous, and highly caloric, one’s a meal and a very satisfying one, especially when schmeared with cream cheese and layered with lox or another form of cured fish.

Even today the bagel continues to evolve, as several points on this map will demonstrate. Here are some favorites, including a Mediterranean precursor to the bagel and some stunt bagels, all good enough to be wolfed down whole without any topping at all.

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New york city bagel & coffee house

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Note: Restaurants on this map are listed geographically.

Faithfully furnishing bagels, bialys, and muffins to its northern Bronx neighborhood since 1992, Riverdale Bagels guarantees its bagels are boiled and not steamed. All the traditional toppings are available, but innovative spreads are being developed on a daily basis, including spicy bacon, garlic pepper, and sundried tomato cream cheeses.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Riverdale Bagel in the northwestern Bronx. Google Maps

This shop was started in 2017 to address an (alleged) lack of great bagel places in Harlem. The result is a shop with bagels that have a crisp exterior and chewy inside, made the traditional way with a 24-hour fermentation, brief boil, and bake. All the classic spreads are available, as well as aggressively creative bagel sandwiches like the Andrew, featuring egg, sausage, bacon, Vermont maple syrup, and scallion cream cheese.

  • Open in Google Maps
  • Foursquare

New york city bagel & coffee house
The bagel case at Bo’s in Harlem. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Come lunchtime, this barn of a bagel bakery boasts lines that extend out the door, the customers eager for a taste of its bulbous and budget-priced bagels, often delivered still warm, rendering toasting unnecessary. The bagels at Absolute are a bit larger than average and glossy from their boil. The bright orange egg bagel is a favorite, and so is the everything bagel, best spread with the salty and smoky whitefish salad for an explosion of flavor.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
The bagel display at Absolute Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Sure, Zabar’s and its stellar smoked fish is just around the corner, but the bagels here have a better chew. The place throngs with customers excited for any of the bagel sandwiches, from the standard bacon, egg, and cheese to those with whitefish or cream cheese and lox. Despite having a no-toasting policy for years, the shop now grumpily allows it.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Bagel Talk’s modest exterior. Google Maps

Locals rave about the bagels at this Astoria institution, and New Yorkers make pilgrimages from other boroughs to snag them. The range of bagels is vast. On a recent visit Asiago and jalapeno-sesame bagels were available, and the roster of cream cheeses and other miscellaneous toppings is just as robust. Maybe you don’t like bagel innovations of this sort, but I thoroughly enjoyed my whole wheat everything with a thick layer of scallion-bacon cream cheese and its smoky and grassy flavors. These bagels may not be for every morning, but on this occasion, it hit the spot.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Whole wheat everything at Between the Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

In the contemporary fashion, the bagels are big here, with clear, distinct, and clean flavors. A sunflower seed bagel, for example, features a scatter of untoasted and unsalted seeds, making a bagel that’s not only beautiful to look at, but with a subtle flavor we’ve found nowhere else. The cream cheese collection is distinctive, too, including lots of low-fat varieties among the dozens of choices — our favorites are chipotle and walnut raisin.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Egg and sunflower bagels from Hudson Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

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Despite its name, Brooklyn Bagel doesn’t have a Kings County location — instead there are five spread across Queens and Manhattan. The Astoria outpost is super popular, frequently boasting long lines for their gigantic, airy bagels. They also serve a mini version, a robust selection of cream cheeses, and offer rotating specials like gingerbread, seven grain, and sundried tomato bagels.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Seven-grain and sundried bagels at Brooklyn Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Looking for a little nosh just north of Hudson Yards? Spacious, modernistic Finn’s is your place. It has an expanded range of bagel flavors, but perhaps even more significant is the assortment of cream cheeses, including vegan ones. A favorite is the bacon and scallion cream cheese — it’s hardly kosher, but tastes great on one of the pleasantly sparse everything bagels.

  • Open in Google Maps
  • Foursquare

New york city bagel & coffee house
Scallion and bacon cream cheese at Finn’s Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Lox, nova, and smoked salmon aren’t the same thing — and Tal Bagels is the place to find out why, with a comprehensive menu that boasts all three. With multiple locations across Manhattan and too many cream cheese options to count, Tal Bagels has earned itself a reputation as one of New York’s favorite bagelries with hot bagels and fast service.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
The upper First Avenue location of Tal Bagels. Tal Bagels

The classic New York bagel shop, which first opened in 1976 near Stuyvesant Town, now has four locations — all which still sling big, chewy crusted bagels. It takes a while to pick up an order for sandwiches or a bagel with lox, but people looking to just order bagels and cream cheese can sneak to the back of the shop, where the line is shorter.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
An assortment of Ess-a-Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Open since 1996, Murray’s was born out of a desire for a superior neighborhood bagelry in Greenwich Village. The result is large but light bagels with a crackly crust and modest interior chew. Beyond standard cream cheese, cured fish, and egg fillings, Murray’s specialty is substantial meat and poultry sandwiches bigger than usual, made from salami, hot corned beef, chicken cutlets, and just about any deli meat or fish salad one can think of.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Murray’s epic hot corned beef on an untoasted garlic bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

For a small bagel shop, this two-decade-old Greenwich Village spot just north of NYU tries very hard. In addition to 14 varieties of bagels, and a smaller selection of mini and flat bagels, Bagel Bob’s offers unusual cream cheese flavors such as Nutella, peanut butter, and jalapeno, as well as a diversified collection of fish salads for bagel sandwiches. Don’t miss the pumpernickel bagel with olive cream cheese.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
A pumpernickel bagel with olive cream cheese at Bagel Bob’s. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Founded in 2014, the multi-branched Black Seed makes Montreal-style bagels, which are different than most of those found in New York City. They’re slightly lighter, slightly sweeter, and — baked in a wood-burning oven — a little bit smoky. These bagels tend to emphasize seeds like sesame and poppy, hence the chain’s name.

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  • Foursquare

New york city bagel & coffee house
Montreal-style poppy seed bagel with lox. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Bagel purists won’t like this place in the East Village, with its rainbow of cream cheese options, but it has long lines at both locations for a reason: a massive variety of menu items, some frankly weird, that’ll serve any appetite. It’s sometimes the only bagel place out-of-town friends have heard of, but there’s a reason for that — you can get the latest food fads here executed in bagel form.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
A line waits in the interior of Tompkins Square Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Head for Forest Hills Bagel for a more comfortable bagel experience. The interior is laid out like a diner, and an opulent counter display offers a large range of flavored cream cheeses and their surrogates, including low-fat dairy spreads and those made from whipped tofu. The bagels remain the focus, however, with a very nice cinnamon raisin for sweet bagel lovers, and poppy and sesame bagels that don’t stint on the seeds.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
A cinnamon raising bagel from Forest Hills Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

For the better part of the last 100 years, the only way to get a bagel at Russ & Daughters was to wait in line — out the door and around the corner. Today, this New York institution has two additional locations at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and on Orchard Street. Their bagels and bialys — hand-rolled and boiled — are soft and chewy, but sturdy enough to hold their own against toppings like cream cheese, smoked fish, or pastrami-cured salmon.

  • Open in Google Maps
  • Foursquare

New york city bagel & coffee house
A lush selection of bagel fixings at Russ & Daughters. Daniel Krieger/Eater NY

Bialys — a flat, round, unboiled roll with chopped onions in the center that’s a cousin of the bagel — are a grand New York tradition, and Kossar’s is the ultimate place to score some. New owners have updated the shop, which opened in 1936, but they still use the same original recipe. Good bagels available, too.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys on the Lower East Side. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Modernist bagelry Shelsky’s has all the bagel classics in small, dense form, but it sports a few spicy outliers, like its numbing Sichuan peppercorn bialy and chili crisp cream cheese. Indicative of the appetizing shop’s contemporary founding, the preparation of the bagels here shows extra care: A sourdough starter is employed in the kitchen, actual egg goes into the the egg bagels, and chopped cheese and Taylor ham sandwiches come served on a bagel or bialy.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Shelsky’s everything bagel with cream cheese. Carla Vianna/Eater NY

This little-known bagel bakery sandwiched between Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery ensconced in a double storefront produces one of the city’s broadest range of bagel flavors and a correspondingly large array of cream cheeses. One of our favorites is the egg everything bagel, which enriches its multiple herbal flavors with egg, and another is a cinnamon raisin bagel with a sweetened cinnamon crust on the outside.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Plain, cinnamon raisin, and egg everything bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

This Bay Ridge bakery offers an outsize product so big and bulbous the holes have nearly disappeared, and one is almost enough to be shared by two. It also furnishes views of the nearby Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and there’s a park across the street where you can eat your purchases in fine weather (it also sells subs on rolls baked on the premises). Its most revolutionary product is the french toast bagel, which is sweet, sticky, and covered in powdered sugar.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Salt, plain, and French toast bagels at Bagel Supreme. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Tasty Bagels in Bensonhurst, a rare Italian bagel bakery, was founded in 1983. This hub of bagel innovation owns up to inventing the big wheel bagel in 1984, a giant disk of bagel dough fit to feed an entire party by being cut in wedges. Ten years later, the flagel was born — a flattened bagel that fits in a single slot in your toaster without being cut. Apart from novelties, and a lengthy menu of hero sandwiches, all the regular bagel flavors are available in exemplary renditions.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Behold the original flagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

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Riverdale Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
Riverdale Bagel in the northwestern Bronx. Google Maps

Faithfully furnishing bagels, bialys, and muffins to its northern Bronx neighborhood since 1992, Riverdale Bagels guarantees its bagels are boiled and not steamed. All the traditional toppings are available, but innovative spreads are being developed on a daily basis, including spicy bacon, garlic pepper, and sundried tomato cream cheeses.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Riverdale Bagel in the northwestern Bronx. Google Maps

Bo’s Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
The bagel case at Bo’s in Harlem. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

This shop was started in 2017 to address an (alleged) lack of great bagel places in Harlem. The result is a shop with bagels that have a crisp exterior and chewy inside, made the traditional way with a 24-hour fermentation, brief boil, and bake. All the classic spreads are available, as well as aggressively creative bagel sandwiches like the Andrew, featuring egg, sausage, bacon, Vermont maple syrup, and scallion cream cheese.

  • Open in Google Maps
  • Foursquare

New york city bagel & coffee house
The bagel case at Bo’s in Harlem. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Absolute Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
The bagel display at Absolute Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Come lunchtime, this barn of a bagel bakery boasts lines that extend out the door, the customers eager for a taste of its bulbous and budget-priced bagels, often delivered still warm, rendering toasting unnecessary. The bagels at Absolute are a bit larger than average and glossy from their boil. The bright orange egg bagel is a favorite, and so is the everything bagel, best spread with the salty and smoky whitefish salad for an explosion of flavor.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
The bagel display at Absolute Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Bagel Talk

New york city bagel & coffee house
Bagel Talk’s modest exterior. Google Maps

Sure, Zabar’s and its stellar smoked fish is just around the corner, but the bagels here have a better chew. The place throngs with customers excited for any of the bagel sandwiches, from the standard bacon, egg, and cheese to those with whitefish or cream cheese and lox. Despite having a no-toasting policy for years, the shop now grumpily allows it.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Bagel Talk’s modest exterior. Google Maps

Between the Bagel

New york city bagel & coffee house
Whole wheat everything at Between the Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Locals rave about the bagels at this Astoria institution, and New Yorkers make pilgrimages from other boroughs to snag them. The range of bagels is vast. On a recent visit Asiago and jalapeno-sesame bagels were available, and the roster of cream cheeses and other miscellaneous toppings is just as robust. Maybe you don’t like bagel innovations of this sort, but I thoroughly enjoyed my whole wheat everything with a thick layer of scallion-bacon cream cheese and its smoky and grassy flavors. These bagels may not be for every morning, but on this occasion, it hit the spot.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Whole wheat everything at Between the Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Hudson Bagel

New york city bagel & coffee house
Egg and sunflower bagels from Hudson Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

In the contemporary fashion, the bagels are big here, with clear, distinct, and clean flavors. A sunflower seed bagel, for example, features a scatter of untoasted and unsalted seeds, making a bagel that’s not only beautiful to look at, but with a subtle flavor we’ve found nowhere else. The cream cheese collection is distinctive, too, including lots of low-fat varieties among the dozens of choices — our favorites are chipotle and walnut raisin.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Egg and sunflower bagels from Hudson Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Company

New york city bagel & coffee house
Seven-grain and sundried bagels at Brooklyn Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Despite its name, Brooklyn Bagel doesn’t have a Kings County location — instead there are five spread across Queens and Manhattan. The Astoria outpost is super popular, frequently boasting long lines for their gigantic, airy bagels. They also serve a mini version, a robust selection of cream cheeses, and offer rotating specials like gingerbread, seven grain, and sundried tomato bagels.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Seven-grain and sundried bagels at Brooklyn Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Finn’s Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
Scallion and bacon cream cheese at Finn’s Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Looking for a little nosh just north of Hudson Yards? Spacious, modernistic Finn’s is your place. It has an expanded range of bagel flavors, but perhaps even more significant is the assortment of cream cheeses, including vegan ones. A favorite is the bacon and scallion cream cheese — it’s hardly kosher, but tastes great on one of the pleasantly sparse everything bagels.

  • Open in Google Maps
  • Foursquare

New york city bagel & coffee house
Scallion and bacon cream cheese at Finn’s Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Tal Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
The upper First Avenue location of Tal Bagels. Tal Bagels

Lox, nova, and smoked salmon aren’t the same thing — and Tal Bagels is the place to find out why, with a comprehensive menu that boasts all three. With multiple locations across Manhattan and too many cream cheese options to count, Tal Bagels has earned itself a reputation as one of New York’s favorite bagelries with hot bagels and fast service.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
The upper First Avenue location of Tal Bagels. Tal Bagels

Ess-a-Bagel

New york city bagel & coffee house
An assortment of Ess-a-Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

The classic New York bagel shop, which first opened in 1976 near Stuyvesant Town, now has four locations — all which still sling big, chewy crusted bagels. It takes a while to pick up an order for sandwiches or a bagel with lox, but people looking to just order bagels and cream cheese can sneak to the back of the shop, where the line is shorter.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
An assortment of Ess-a-Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Murray's Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
Murray’s epic hot corned beef on an untoasted garlic bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Open since 1996, Murray’s was born out of a desire for a superior neighborhood bagelry in Greenwich Village. The result is large but light bagels with a crackly crust and modest interior chew. Beyond standard cream cheese, cured fish, and egg fillings, Murray’s specialty is substantial meat and poultry sandwiches bigger than usual, made from salami, hot corned beef, chicken cutlets, and just about any deli meat or fish salad one can think of.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Murray’s epic hot corned beef on an untoasted garlic bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Bagel Bob's

New york city bagel & coffee house
A pumpernickel bagel with olive cream cheese at Bagel Bob’s. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

For a small bagel shop, this two-decade-old Greenwich Village spot just north of NYU tries very hard. In addition to 14 varieties of bagels, and a smaller selection of mini and flat bagels, Bagel Bob’s offers unusual cream cheese flavors such as Nutella, peanut butter, and jalapeno, as well as a diversified collection of fish salads for bagel sandwiches. Don’t miss the pumpernickel bagel with olive cream cheese.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
A pumpernickel bagel with olive cream cheese at Bagel Bob’s. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Black Seed Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
Montreal-style poppy seed bagel with lox. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Founded in 2014, the multi-branched Black Seed makes Montreal-style bagels, which are different than most of those found in New York City. They’re slightly lighter, slightly sweeter, and — baked in a wood-burning oven — a little bit smoky. These bagels tend to emphasize seeds like sesame and poppy, hence the chain’s name.

  • Open in Google Maps
  • Foursquare

New york city bagel & coffee house
Montreal-style poppy seed bagel with lox. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Tompkins Square Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
A line waits in the interior of Tompkins Square Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Bagel purists won’t like this place in the East Village, with its rainbow of cream cheese options, but it has long lines at both locations for a reason: a massive variety of menu items, some frankly weird, that’ll serve any appetite. It’s sometimes the only bagel place out-of-town friends have heard of, but there’s a reason for that — you can get the latest food fads here executed in bagel form.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
A line waits in the interior of Tompkins Square Bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Forest Hills Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
A cinnamon raising bagel from Forest Hills Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Head for Forest Hills Bagel for a more comfortable bagel experience. The interior is laid out like a diner, and an opulent counter display offers a large range of flavored cream cheeses and their surrogates, including low-fat dairy spreads and those made from whipped tofu. The bagels remain the focus, however, with a very nice cinnamon raisin for sweet bagel lovers, and poppy and sesame bagels that don’t stint on the seeds.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
A cinnamon raising bagel from Forest Hills Bagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

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Russ & Daughters

New york city bagel & coffee house
A lush selection of bagel fixings at Russ & Daughters. Daniel Krieger/Eater NY

For the better part of the last 100 years, the only way to get a bagel at Russ & Daughters was to wait in line — out the door and around the corner. Today, this New York institution has two additional locations at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and on Orchard Street. Their bagels and bialys — hand-rolled and boiled — are soft and chewy, but sturdy enough to hold their own against toppings like cream cheese, smoked fish, or pastrami-cured salmon.

  • Open in Google Maps
  • Foursquare

New york city bagel & coffee house
A lush selection of bagel fixings at Russ & Daughters. Daniel Krieger/Eater NY

Kossar's Bagels & Bialys

New york city bagel & coffee house
Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys on the Lower East Side. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Bialys — a flat, round, unboiled roll with chopped onions in the center that’s a cousin of the bagel — are a grand New York tradition, and Kossar’s is the ultimate place to score some. New owners have updated the shop, which opened in 1936, but they still use the same original recipe. Good bagels available, too.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys on the Lower East Side. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Shelsky's Brooklyn Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
Shelsky’s everything bagel with cream cheese. Carla Vianna/Eater NY

Modernist bagelry Shelsky’s has all the bagel classics in small, dense form, but it sports a few spicy outliers, like its numbing Sichuan peppercorn bialy and chili crisp cream cheese. Indicative of the appetizing shop’s contemporary founding, the preparation of the bagels here shows extra care: A sourdough starter is employed in the kitchen, actual egg goes into the the egg bagels, and chopped cheese and Taylor ham sandwiches come served on a bagel or bialy.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Shelsky’s everything bagel with cream cheese. Carla Vianna/Eater NY

Terrace Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
Plain, cinnamon raisin, and egg everything bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

This little-known bagel bakery sandwiched between Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery ensconced in a double storefront produces one of the city’s broadest range of bagel flavors and a correspondingly large array of cream cheeses. One of our favorites is the egg everything bagel, which enriches its multiple herbal flavors with egg, and another is a cinnamon raisin bagel with a sweetened cinnamon crust on the outside.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Plain, cinnamon raisin, and egg everything bagels. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Bagel Supreme

New york city bagel & coffee house
Salt, plain, and French toast bagels at Bagel Supreme. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

This Bay Ridge bakery offers an outsize product so big and bulbous the holes have nearly disappeared, and one is almost enough to be shared by two. It also furnishes views of the nearby Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and there’s a park across the street where you can eat your purchases in fine weather (it also sells subs on rolls baked on the premises). Its most revolutionary product is the french toast bagel, which is sweet, sticky, and covered in powdered sugar.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Salt, plain, and French toast bagels at Bagel Supreme. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Tasty Bagels

New york city bagel & coffee house
Behold the original flagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Tasty Bagels in Bensonhurst, a rare Italian bagel bakery, was founded in 1983. This hub of bagel innovation owns up to inventing the big wheel bagel in 1984, a giant disk of bagel dough fit to feed an entire party by being cut in wedges. Ten years later, the flagel was born — a flattened bagel that fits in a single slot in your toaster without being cut. Apart from novelties, and a lengthy menu of hero sandwiches, all the regular bagel flavors are available in exemplary renditions.

  • Open in Google Maps

New york city bagel & coffee house
Behold the original flagel. Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

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With multiple locations across Manhattan and too many cream cheese options to count, Tal Bagels has earned itself a reputation as one of New York's favorite bagelries with hot bagels and fast service.

What is a traditional New York bagel?

A true New York bagel is so much more, she continued. “A New York bagel has a shiny crust with a little bit of hardness to it and a nice glaze. The inside is very chewy, but not overly doughy. It's got a slight tang to the taste, and it's not too big,” she said. “But some people might disagree.”

What makes a New York bagel different?

In fact, New York bagels are superior to other bagels due to two things: The New York water, which is a key ingredient, plus the way the bagels are cooked. Tap water in New York is very soft, meaning it has low concentrations of minerals like calcium and magnesium.

What goes on a NYC bagel?

Toppings — Traditionally accepted toppings are limited to poppy, sesame, salt, onion, and everything. Modernists toppings can include pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, other "seasonings." Water — Many believe New York City water is the secret to the city's bagels.