Why New York is in the middle of another bagel boom

Early on a recent sunny Sunday morning in Manhattan, the line for PopUp Bagels extends down Thompson Street in New York’s Greenwich Village.

It’s so long, it almost runs into the equally lengthy line for Leon’s Bagels. A few blocks away, the queue for Apollo Bagels has become so notorious that the landlord has threatened the proprietors with eviction. What’s going on?

We are deep in the middle of a still accelerating bagel boom, says Sam Silverman, owner of NYC Bagel Tours and organiser of Bagelfest, a celebration that drew international bakers and about 1,600 similarly obsessed bagelphiles to Citi Field this September.

New York has seen bagels boom before. There was the rainbow bagel mania of the early aughts, and then, just a decade ago, purveyors such as Black Seed Bagels and Major Food Group’s Sadelle’s reframed the humble nosh as something aspirational, even fashionable.

When the pandemic hit, some home bakers skipped the sourdough and took up bagel making, which then blossomed into businesses. Influencers have made the stacked split bagel sandwich as much of a calling card as a pizzeria’s cheese pull.

Meanwhile, even bagel rollers are now going viral. Practitioners of the long-secret art include Affan “Alex” Baka, who estimates he rolls about 1,000 bagels per hour with his sister Afia.

They rotate among shops-at the Midtown standby Bagel Market he recently churned out green and fuchsia Wicked bagels. Before launching It’s Bagels! in London, co-founder Dan Martensen (himself a pandemic baker) paid the Bakas a visit.

“We had someone come yesterday from Paris, and last week from Madrid,” Alex tells me. The global spread of the New York bagel is so complete that a credible argument can be made that some of the best specimens are to be found in California.

Despite that, New York remains at the heart of bagel culture. But even here, change is creeping in. The bagel’s appeal continues to grow, and so do the lines.

Treat Every Customer Like an Influencer

The biggest of the New York pandemic projects is PopUp Bagels. Adam Goldberg started it in 2020 out of a backyard window in Connecticut; now it has 10 locations. The company has received financial backing from Michael Phelps, Michael Strahan, Paul Rudd and other celebrities, and last year took $US8 million in funding from Stripes, which has backed Levain Bakery, Erewhon Market and On Running. Goldberg also just announced a plan to franchise PopUp, with an eye toward it being in 150 markets in the next five years.

PopUp’s selling point is simple: The best bagels are ones hot from the oven. Goldberg’s system is brilliant in its simplicity. PopUp doesn’t offer sandwiches or even coffee-though that may change soon. Instead, the bagels, sold in quantities of 3, 6 or 12, come with a tub or two of cream cheese or butter and a suggestion to “rip and dip.”

On the Sunday I visit, the line at the Thompson Street location is dozens deep. Counterintuitively, Goldberg says, “the longer the line, the hotter the bagels.” That’s because when dozens of people are waiting, they bake at full tilt, pulling about 25 dozen bagels from the oven every 20 minutes. Just 8 minutes after I join the mob, I have a bag of piping-hot bagels in my hand.

Staffing the queue is a high-spirited “bagel bouncer” who write customers’ names and orders on bags with a Sharpie. When a couple in front of me demurs on cream cheese-they’re taking their haul on a flight to California-he offers to add a few free bagels to their order instead. The mission, Goldberg says, is to treat every customer like an influencer.

Goldberg says he modeled his business on Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack. “You had a burger and fries. That was it,” he says. “We’re a bagel and cream cheese. That’s it. We want to move the line, and we want to make all of our community happy.”

Steaming Interior, Crackling Crust

Speed and friendliness only matter if the bagel is actually good. PopUp’s are great. Steaming interior, crackling crust and generous coatings of everything spice, sesame, poppy or salt. They’ve already won Bagelfest’s best bagel competition twice. They aren’t, however, classically made. While traditional New York bagels are rolled, producing a denser, chewier bite, the holes at PopUp are poked, which leaves the interior fluffier.

Lighter, airier, poked bagels are also what’s on offer at Apollo Bagels, with two locations in Manhattan and more on the way in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Hoboken, New Jersey. Notably, Apollo uses a tangy sourdough for its bagels, an untraditional but unsurprising move, since it’s an offshoot of the Brooklyn restaurant Leo, a specialist in naturally fermented bread and pizzas. Unlike PopUp, Apollo does offer sandwiches, most served photogenically open-faced.

At 8:45 a.m. on a Sunday, it takes only about 20 minutes to procure a $US15 whitefish salad on an everything bagel, shingled with rounds of cucumber and fronds of dill, and to devour it in the park across the street. Sitting nearby are Beth Wilner, who manages a women’s clothing brand website, her husband, Ross, who works in finance, and their Havanese poodle, Banzo, all making their first visit.

Willner considers herself a “once a quarter” bagel person, but she says Apollo’s lighter profile has won her over. By the time they finish their nosh, the line has nearly tripled in length-more than they would have been willing to endure, Ross says. “You have to do the pre-9 a.m. move in New York, for anything.”

A Taste of the Future

PopUp and Apollo are bagel traditionalists in one respect; the former typically has six flavours, the latter, three. And then there’s Brooklyn’s Bagel Joint, which draws long lines at a pair of farmers markets in Park Slope and Greenpoint. (It’s slated to open a brick-and-mortar location in Greenpoint in December.) Bagel Joint’s roll-boil-bake approach is orthodox; its flavors often are not. Offerings range from elevated takes on classics-the revelatory $3.50 egg bagel uses ultrarich duck egg-to more unexpected flavors such as Mexican mole, gochujang and garlic naan (the latter for its bialy). Founders Will Sacks and Lanty Houreflect say their menu reflects the Jewish diaspora and New York’s multicultural embrace of the bagel.

“We want to go for this luxury angle that a bagel has not been allowed to have, but pizza has, for whatever reason,” Sacks says. “We want to elevate this really humble bread and say, ’Why not saffron? Why not rose water?’ We’re paying $US20 for a sandwich anyway. Why not make it worth my while?’”

And then there’s Baker’s Dozen Bagels in suddenly buzzy Ridgewood, Queens. On Sunday mornings, the place offers behemoth stuffed bagels, inspired by the viral ones from Calic in Los Angeles. The first time I went to try one, just after 11 a.m., they were already sold out. The following Sunday, I meet Silverman, the bagel tour guide, there at 10 sharp and hit the jackpot. We order the three flavours on offer: buffalo chicken ranch, hot honey bacon and pepperoni pizza.

Stuffed isn’t exactly the right word for these monsters, each of which fills its plate-size container. The bagels are rolled and boiled per tradition, but then deep slashes like wheel spokes are cut into them. Into these openings go fillings like mozzarella cream cheese, marinara sauce and pepperoni, before baking. The end product is messy, rich, and meant to be pulled apart.

It’s an affront to all that’s holey (sorry, not sorry) but also the platonic hangover food.

For what it’s worth, Silverman, who’s explored the West Coast bagel scene, says these are superior to their California cousins, for the most New York of reasons. “It’s because there’s a better bagel as the base of it. It just gives it more structural integrity and flavour,” he says.

When one of the shop’s co-owners, Rico Stephen, stops by to check on us, we ask if this low-key renown (we’ll use the phrase “not famous but known,” which is on PopUp Bagels’ merch) is enough, or if he wants the lines and hype that come from being the new hot bagel in a town known for hot bagels. “I want it. I want it,” he says. “If you can’t cater to the busy, you shouldn’t be in business.”

Bloomberg.