Twin Cities bagels
As the descendant of an honest-to-God Jewish bagelmaker, a former Brooklynite, a home bagel baker and a general pain-in-the-ass, I’m not an easy guy to please when it comes to bagels. So I did a little research before going bagel shopping, and the consensus seemed to be that the St. Paul Bagelry was the local place to go.
Kind of disappointing. The sesame variety that I tried was decently crusted but internally insubstantial. Beyond that, they had all manner of ridiculous flavored cream cheeses and fruit-infused bagels… at the same time, they were out of “plain” bagels and the text-messaging 17-year-old behind the counter had never heard of egg bagels to begin with.
Minneapolis-St. Paul has all manner of good food out there. Are bagels a weak spot? Anyone know anything? And, yeah, I know Brothers in the skyway imports H&H. That’s cool, but not the same thing as having a solid local producer.
St. Paul Bagelry has been sold, I think, twice in the last few years. The bagels and service have seriously diminished in that time. I gave up on the place when I tried to order a sandwich, but all the meat was spoiled.
Great comment — that goes a long way toward explaining the gap between hype and experience.
I gave up on the place when I tried to order a sandwich, but all the meat was spoiled.
Eww, seriously. That’s horrible.
I didn’t know “bagelry” was a word. Egg bagels are my favorite. How do they not have egg bagels?
I’ve been in the Twin cities for over three years and have yet to taste a decent bagel. I was recently back in NY lamenting the lack of Egg bagels in MN, but I especially miss Egg Everything bagels… and Everything bagels in general do not impress me out here.
Being a born and bred Frozen Chosen…I guess I never really got what makes a new york bagel so good?
Explain it to us…I know Einsteins and Brueggers are chains but I like their bagels.
Basically I look for a nice chewy skin and a fairly robust somewhat dense interior.
I get the philly, sliced onion and lox at lunds.
I totally agree with your criteria.
But for my money, neither Brueggers nor Einsteins are dense enough and one — or perhaps both, I’m not up on my chain bagels — are too large, thereby making a lousy chewy exterior / dense interior ratio. It’s been awhile since I’ve had either — I should probably revisit.
Incidentally, I think Madison’s Bagels Forever are pretty much terrific and stand up to all but the best bagels I had in NYC.
Also: the more a bagel shop caters to flavored cream cheeses and fruity / nutty / randomly flavored bagel varieties, the less time they have for quality control on a few core varieties. I was hoping St. Paul Bagelry would really kick ass on traditional styles (egg, onion, plain, arguably Everything, poppy seed) and let the modern idea of bagel-as-muffin go. No such luck.
My little hack is to buy the day olds from breuggers… their cheaper and the extra time decreases the water content of the bagels and they set up just about perfect.
Day-olds, eh? That’s a really good suggestion. I’ll do that the next time my pile of frozen bagels from Bagels Forever runs out.