Sarah and I didn't cry too much when the famous Columbia Bagel shut down just one half-block from our house. Sure, they got a lot of press for having great bagels. Columbia students swore by them, the place was narrow, dingy, crowded, unkempt, low-key. Everything was homemade, the crusty old counterpersons would snap at you if you took too long, all the things that make a place great.Why not make a fuss when they demolish a long-time neighborhood institution to build condos for rich people who'll turn our likeable neighborhood into another Upper East Side, or worse, a faux-hip boutique-ridden SoHo?
Absolute, that's why.
Absolute, that's why.
Absolute Bagel on 107th and B'way is a far, far better bagelry than Columbia ever was, with less press attention because it's just far enough away from Columbia to avoid the gaze of the prep-schoolies who think they're in Harlem when they see a black person on 118th and Amsterdam. 
This Filipino family has been here for years, making sure you don't order anything stupid like asiago cheese or banana walnut (not that they would ever serve such a perversion of nature). The dough is either standard, egg, pumpernickel, or, unfortunately, whole wheat (they have to cater to the granola-types up here) and the only one that gets any decoration is the standard. Poppy, sesame, onion, salt, garlic and that's it. They do have several varieties of cream cheeses with flavors mixed in - which are very good and done with great ingredients in-house - but we usually go with a small tub of standard cream cheese and a quarter pound of paper-thin sliced lox. Sarah often likes to stop at Garden of Eden for sable, which is a smoked-yet-still-very-greasy whitefish. And the bagels themselves. Unfortunately they've spoiled me for pretty much anything else. Oh, sure, I'll still eat a fresh bagel from H & H, Ess-A-Bagel, or whatever. But in terms of grocery-store or street-cart bagels, forget it. And it makes the freezer-case bagels I used to eat as a boy in rural Wisconsin look like a cruel prank inflicted on innocent Americans by that sinister Jewish cabal we all heard about.
This Filipino family has been here for years, making sure you don't order anything stupid like asiago cheese or banana walnut (not that they would ever serve such a perversion of nature). The dough is either standard, egg, pumpernickel, or, unfortunately, whole wheat (they have to cater to the granola-types up here) and the only one that gets any decoration is the standard. Poppy, sesame, onion, salt, garlic and that's it. They do have several varieties of cream cheeses with flavors mixed in - which are very good and done with great ingredients in-house - but we usually go with a small tub of standard cream cheese and a quarter pound of paper-thin sliced lox. Sarah often likes to stop at Garden of Eden for sable, which is a smoked-yet-still-very-greasy whitefish. And the bagels themselves. Unfortunately they've spoiled me for pretty much anything else. Oh, sure, I'll still eat a fresh bagel from H & H, Ess-A-Bagel, or whatever. But in terms of grocery-store or street-cart bagels, forget it. And it makes the freezer-case bagels I used to eat as a boy in rural Wisconsin look like a cruel prank inflicted on innocent Americans by that sinister Jewish cabal we all heard about.
2 comments:
Hey, they also have cinnamon-raisin. You can see them in the third picture inside the oven.
That's true. I like the cinnamon raisin -- it's my third favorite behind everything and sesame. It's really stellar with walnut-raisin cream cheese.
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