Time Magazine is bemoaning the demise of the bagel this week, as one of New York's big bagel bakeries, H&H, goes out of business.The story by Joshua Ozersky begins: "There are few foods that are truly unique to New York, and the bagel is one of them. Pizza belongs to America now, but the bagel was always the undisputed property of New York, and now it has been diminished." It goes on to protest that making bagels puffy, sandwich buns was the downfall of the bagel, and adds that maybe the closing of H&H is a good thing.
Maybe. I don't know. But I do know that Montreal bagels are not the soft, huge, fluffy kind of thing that Ozersky is writing about. Both the St. Viateur and the Fairmount bagel bakeries turn out chewy, delicious bagels that a better than anything I ever had in New York.
Ozersky ought to come up here to sample them. Maybe he'll learn something about uniqueness.
The photo, BTW, is of the St. Viateur bakery, two blocks from our place. When Lukas was about 3, he spent an hour with a long board, loading blocks in and out of a low cabinet chez nous. When asked what he was doing, he said he was making bagels. You can see what he was thinking about in the photo.
2 comments:
I heart Montreal bagels. Esp with a skim of cream cheese, a slice of ripe tomato and some fresh ground pepper. *sigh*
Huge fluffy bagels are some horrible approximation that send me running the other way. :)
If you have a chance look on the Food Network....Glutton for Punishment with Bob Blumer.
He spent a day with the guys at St. Viateur Bagel. Quite Interesting and fun episode.
Jimmy Z.
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