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Insripired by New York, designed by a Chef, approved by a NutritionistWe 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.
Where to find exemplary versions of NYC’s unofficial favorite food by Updated Jun 22, 2022, 12:32pm EDT View as Map 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. Health experts consider dining out to be a high-risk activity for the unvaccinated; it may pose a risk for the vaccinated, especially in areas with substantial COVID transmission. Read More 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sign up for the newsletter Eater NYSign up for our newsletter. 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Link copied to the clipboard. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Between the Bagel
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.
Hudson Bagel
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.
Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Company 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.
Finn’s Bagels
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.
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.
Ess-a-Bagel
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.
Murray's Bagels
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.
Bagel Bob's 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.
Black Seed Bagels
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.
Tompkins Square Bagels
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.
Forest Hills Bagels
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.
Related Maps
Russ & Daughters 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.
Kossar's Bagels & Bialys 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.
Shelsky's Brooklyn Bagels
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.
Terrace Bagels
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.
Bagel Supreme 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.
Tasty Bagels
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.
Related Maps
What is the most popular bagel in NYC?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.
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