I give kids cookies because when I was little, my dad took me to get penny candy and they used to give me a bag with a free piece of candy and I never forgot that. To me, my whole life, the bagel means feeding people and I love feeding people, I love leading them on a food journey, especially kids. Someone can have same experience his great-grandfather felt. Here at Utopia, our bagel stands out more than other places because we serve four generations. NYC makes two things better than any state: pizza and bagels, because we’ve been doing it longer. One of them is the Michael Jordan of rolling. We don’t cut corners! And my hand rollers have been here 22-27 years. We also use an ingredient a lot of places don’t, and that is liquid malt in place for sugar. My bagels are also made in a 1947 Middleby Marshall oven, whereas a lot of bagels tend to be doughy, made in steam ovens, a whole rack at a time, and most places bake early and shut their ovens off by 11. We do it the old-fashioned way: hand-rolled, kettle boiled. My friend owned this shop since 1981 and I became a partner in 2015.Ī few things: crispiness of the outside and that softness on the inside. I was managing a restaurant at time in Astoria but did Fresh Direct, making nine different frozen bagel flavors, which sold millions of dollars in frozen bagels a year. Eventually Fresh Direct asked his partner to make frozen bagels. My friend whose father owned a shop worked here. This was back when you had one kind of bagel with butter, before everything bagels were a thing! I ended up here in Queens because my wife grew up in this neighborhood. My best friend’s father owned a bagel store in Howard Beach where I started working at 14 years old. Always give respect and never expect it back. At times, I put on tefillin and I’ve been in a minyan, but what’s important is. Sometimes growing up, you’d know you’re Jewish and you’re around Italians and don’t want it to be known you’re Jewish, but as I got older, I felt cheated because we didn’t we do more things. I have friends that are rabbis and it’s important for me to show respect for religion. I didn’t go to Hebrew school - my bar mitzvah portion was in English - but I respect religion. I grew up Jewish but wasn’t brought up religious, but every summer, we’d visit a bungalow colony in the Catskills in Monticello. Based on recent visits, the argument could be made that Murray's bagel-too big, and typically a bit sweet-just isn't what it used to be, so what's the difference? Still, recognition where due-this is one of the better operations on the entire West Side, south of 59th Street.I grew up in Brooklyn, in Canarsie, across from the Glenwood projects in an era where the whole block played together. A few years back, Murray's relented, and now you get to ruin your bagel, just the way you like it. But as anyone who has spent more than five minutes in a New York bagel shop can tell you, the customer is always right, and possibly will also fight you, and everyone in the store for good measure. Give this Greenwich Village institution some credit-for the longest time, they fought back. Used to be, according to conventional wisdom, that only a second-rate operation would allow such a travesty the best bagel bakers took too much pride in their work for such foolishness to go unchecked. There was a time when you could separate the best shops in New York from the rest by the presence of a commercial-grade toaster behind the counter. Saveur Magazine raised eyebrows a few years ago, calling this one of the finest in the entire country-they were right. (There are three Maine shops on this list, and there probably should have been more.) When Allen Smith opened up shop in Lewiston the better part of a decade ago, he wasn't the first to tinker with the notion of a naturally leavened, long-fermented, and wood-fired bagel, but these days, Forage, which has since branched out to Portland's Munjoy Hill neighborhood, makes Maine's best bagel right now, gorgeously light and beautifully structured, with an exterior that snaps and crackles like popcorn. For a state with a scattered population less than Manhattan's, this is a group of people that is absolutely spoiled, and certainly for bagels: There isn't another off-the-beaten-path state quite so excited by the idea of the reinvention of the bagel. What can be said about Maine's enviable baking culture, except that if you know, you know, and if you don't, take a little road trip.
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