AVClub - Supper Club
Look, I fucking love bagels. I grew up eating facsimiles of New York bagels in Miami delis, and occasionally getting the real thing when we'd visit my mom's family in Brooklyn. They're fantastic bagels. So I'm not putting NYC down in the least when I say... I agree. Montreal bagels are better.
I went to Montreal for the first time in 2015, and I made a point to check out the bagels at Fairmount Bagel, and they were divine. The satisfying crunch, the sweet-but-not-too-sweet flavor, the quality of the dough itself - it's all just a tad better than its New York cousin.
Again, I love both, but I've gotta hand it to Montreal. They have the best bagels. I'm very jealous.
Bagels originated in Jewish communities in Poland and began cropping up in New York and Montreal around the turn of the 20th century. At the time, there was a uniformity to the baking process: Bagels were rolled by hand and boiled in water before being cooked in wood-burning ovens. At some point, however, New York bakers succumbed to the allures of technology (some, not all) and began baking their bagels with gas and electric ovens.
Today New York and Montreal bagels are so different that they barely qualify as the same species. New York bagels are bigger, more pliable (New York City tap water has very low levels of calcium carbonate and magnesium, which produces softer gluten), and salty. Montreal bagels are sweeter (bakers add sugar to the dough, which, once rolled, is poached in honey-infused water), smaller, and crispier, with a chewy interior. Many Montreal bakers still hand-roll their bagels and cook them in the same wood-burning ovens they used when they first built their shops. You could knock the Montreal bagel for having a larger center hole, which means less surface area for toppings, but that would be an acknowledgment that you need cream cheese or other accoutrements to accompany the bagel. A Montreal bagel stands on its own.
But as divisive as the bagel rivalry is between these two cities, its nothing compared to the long-standing bagel feud between Montreals two bagel titans: St-Viateur Bagel and Fairmount Bagel. Both shops are located in the Mile End, a neighborhood known for its high concentration of hipsters, thrift stores, and Jewish peopleits basically Brooklyn with Quebecois French.
Look, I fucking love bagels. I grew up eating facsimiles of New York bagels in Miami delis, and occasionally getting the real thing when we'd visit my mom's family in Brooklyn. They're fantastic bagels. So I'm not putting NYC down in the least when I say... I agree. Montreal bagels are better.
I went to Montreal for the first time in 2015, and I made a point to check out the bagels at Fairmount Bagel, and they were divine. The satisfying crunch, the sweet-but-not-too-sweet flavor, the quality of the dough itself - it's all just a tad better than its New York cousin.
Again, I love both, but I've gotta hand it to Montreal. They have the best bagels. I'm very jealous.