Bagels... it's not them, it's me

[cerealjoe]

Now Montreal has two bagel addresses which fight over the title of "best bagel in the world". Both are open 24/7. Yes, tiny bagel shops open 24/7. Yesterday I went to visit one of them, the Fairmount one. It's true that their bagels are good. They're fresh, they're not hard to chew and they're not perfectly round and with a perfect shape like the perfect ones you can get from a normal shop. I'll go try the other shop today to see how it compares. But see... bagels and I, we're not in love. It's true those bagels were very, very good but I just don't seem to have what it takes to love bagels, it's not them, it's me. I suppose that for me bagels are meant to be breakfast food but they're just too heavy for me to eat them for breakfast. They could be lunch food when stuffed but honestly between a sandwich made with a fresh baguette and one made with a bagel, I'll take the baguette one. As I said, it's really not them, it's me.

Comments

[mittelfeld.livejournal.com]

I always preferred St Viateur's bagels, but both places were too far across the city. (I lived in NDG, and Westmount in my final year there.) There was this awesome bagel place just around the corner from my first apartment, and they were open 24 hours, so I usually went there instead.

I miss the poppy seed bagels so much. *cries* You can't get proper Montreal bagels out here in Victoria. I think there's a wood-oven place in Vancouver that makes them, I'll have to check next time I go over to the mainland.

[cerealjoe.livejournal.com]

These were the first bagels I tasted which did not seem to fall to the bottom of my stomach like rocks (main reason why I hated bagels before). They're so different from the store ones... a bit like a baguette from a shop isn't really a baguette!

BTW, thanks for telling me about the bagels, I wouldn't have tried looking for them otherwise!

[mittelfeld.livejournal.com]

I couldn't possibly let you visit Montreal without trying the bagels! *g*

Yeah, most bagels sink in my tummy too. The "New York style" bagels that most places sell are too big and fluffy for my liking... but the Montreal ones were just perfect, and not as filling. I often had two poppy seed ones with cream cheese as breakfast, and I'm not a big eater!

[cazzicles.livejournal.com]

Oh, yum.. you're making me hungry! Australia isn't a big bagel country, which means that there's only a few stores around the place that you can actually find them. This means that people either really, really love them and travel to get a good one, or have no idea why anyone would bother.

We were in NYC last October and you'd better believe we had bagels for every meal we could physically fit them in for. My only criticism there was that, if you had a bagel with cream cheese, it didn't just come with a little bit of cream cheese but lashings. We'd scrape the excess off so that we didn't, you know, have on the spot heart attacks, and it would be this huge pile of cream cheese that could easily be used for another two or three bagels.

I long for 24 hour bagel shops :(

[cerealjoe.livejournal.com]

I think that bagels aren't that huge anywhere besides North America. I just think that in most places there are other varieties of breads which are preferred... but these were the best. I don't know if you found good bagel places in the US but I have the worst memories ever of bagels just falling to the bottom of my stomach right away that it was unpleasant, but these local ones, totally different!

So now you have to go to Montreal to try some! I would say, even as a non-lover of bagels, it's worth checking these local bagel places even though they're pretty far from the city center. Plus they have some lovely cafes in that neighbourhood.