Bagels so hot the bag burns your hand
July 8th, 2011 at 9:02 am ETWoke up a little early, so I biked the long way around (up the bikeway on Allen Street and 1st Avenue). There’s a bagel place up there at 21st and 1st that I’ve been meaning to try, given that it looks authentic (read “a bit tattered and grungy, but not necessarily in a bad way”). SERIOUSLY A GOOD IDEA. The bagel boiler and oven are in plain view right behind the counter, and they’re selling ‘em almost as fast as they can make ‘em.
As bagel snobs go, I’m not a particularly virulent one (as you know, I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1970s, where good bagels were not unheard of but where the bar was pretty low). But I can tell the difference between a good bagel and a meh one, and between a meh one and one that came out of an industrial extruder. I know about the yeasty aroma, I know about the steam coming off the dough when you crack it open, I know about the slick and crunchy outside and the chewy inside.
So imagine my joy to discover that just by asking, I could bike away with a dozen steamy-hot specimens that were still steamy-hot when I got to the office, where I just ate two of them in rapid succession with a thin layer of cream cheese. You mean this has been on my way to work all this time and I’ve never stopped?
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Rich Mintz blogs on online fundraising and social media, American history and culture, bicycling and urbanism, food, technology, and other topics. Professionally, he's an expert in fundraising, constituency development, and social media for nonprofits, cultural organizations, cause-related marketers, and corporations. He is based in New York, where he serves as Vice President, Strategy, for 
