Panclog #44: NYC’s Bagel Pub
April 21st, 2019
Brooklyn, NY
Begging 4 Bagels in Brooklyn
The three best friends that anybody could have took New York City by storm.
Robb, Stephen and I are taking over the Panclog feed for the next three weeks. We will be discussing the three breakfast spots that we were lucky enough to try. The trip started out as a boy’s baseball trip that I easily turned into a Panclog pal’s trip. Although baseball is the communal sport that can bring the country together after wars, it is also very well known that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Therefore, breakfast and baseball go very well together. Let’s make a team have a brunch game. I’m the most into this idea.
Location/Environment: Bagel Pub has 2 locations, Park Slope and Crown Heights. The Crown Heights location was beautifully close to where we were staying. The décor was in an old wooden fashion. There are tables but the star of the pub is a long bar with windows that show off different types of cream cheese. On the wall behind the cream cheese there are many different types of bagels, Baked to perfection, begging to be selected.
Service: We first went to Bagel Pub on Easter morning. This led to a larger crowd than usual. This was not a negative, in fact it showed how a place like this can handle large crowds with ease and precision. When walking in, you walk straight to the back of the restaurant. You find yourself in the line, wondering which bagel/cream cheese combination will cause the emptiness in your stomach to subside for awhile. You place your bagel order and walk to the register where you can add a drink to the order. You pay and wait for one of your many aliases to be called.
Menu/Selection: The menu at Bagel Pub was much more extensive than I expected. They had breakfast sandwiches, dessert cream cheese, and a large array of juice and smoothies. But we didn’t really come for fancy juices. We came for NYC’s breakfast staple, Bagel with cream cheese. Bagel Pub has an extensive selection of different bagels and cream cheeses. If you don’t find something that strikes your fancy, then you are doing it wrong.
What do the dudes think? Let’s see:
Jared!
The bagel above is mine. It is a garlic bagel with zaatar cream cheese. The night before I ordered this majesty I tried zaatar for the first time. It was in some hummus. Here is a very accurate Wikipedia article about what Zaatar actually is. If I am remembering correctly, zaatar is a popular blend of herbs and spices in the middle east. It is yummy, savory, and very hard to find in Kansas City. In fact, I haven’t found it yet.
I got a garlic bagel because the Easter crowd depleted bagel pub of regular everything bagels. They did have whole wheat everything and egg everything but I wanted my breath to be stinky. That’s why garlic was my choice. This bagel was just lovely. Crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. My favorite part of NYC bagels is the fact that they really slather on the cream cheese. I also enjoy the sliced in half nature that they do post cream cheesing. I want to go back now and try more bagels and even taste the Oreo cream cheese. Who is with me?
Stephen!
Robb!
The Italians and their pasta, the Japanese and their Raman, the French and their wine some places just do it different and better than anywhere else in the world. These places bring hundreds of years of politics and culture with them into their kitchens and out comes a dish(s) that can’t be recreated anywhere else. The big apple, itself has many of these dishes to speak for it but NONE of them stack up to the 500-year-old polish circular bread with a hole in the middle commonly known as “The Bagel”.
Is it the NYC water (as the myth goes), the cooking traditions passed down from generation to generation or simply a good set of fresh ingredients that makes the NYC bagel? We may never know but what we do know is that no place on earth can recreate this soft on the inside, think flaky crust on the outside, perfectly seasoned piece of bread like NYC. Going into Bagel Pub (a newer entry into the Brooklyn Bagel scene) you are greeted with everything of old NYC. The lines of cream cheeses, from your classic to garlic dill, lox spread, bacon and cheddar, zaatar or you name it. Then you walk past the cold cuts and old Jewish deli traditions like black and whites, white fish and herring, chicken salad and the bagels cousin the bialy. All up at the counter where when you get that bagel and bit into your VERY affordable slice of heaven (this bagel is twice the size of those in the Midwest, like two dollars cheaper and much better) you feel like your experiencing a food you’ve known for quite some time but never like this.
Overall: Bagel Pub showed how even when busy, bagels are only a few moments away. Affordable, Cream Cheesy, and Delicious. GO TREAT YOURSELF
Grade:
Panclog: A+
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