by Meg Cieply Peterson
It's easier around town these days to find a place to buy a shmear than a place to park your car. Welcome to the bagel explosion. Depending on what you're after--crisp crust, traditional texture, great cream cheese, Sunday morning seating, or latte--you don't need to go far to find it.
Bagels predate the New York Jewish deli scene. Some say bagels have been around at least 1,000 years, possibly originating in Tashkent, a once important trading center for Arab, Muslim, and Mongol empires. Speculation has it that these hard, crusty rolls were developed for a mobile society. Holes in the bread made it easy to string and carry, and the hard crust was impervious to dust along the trail. Others say the bagel was the innovation of a 17th century Jewish baker in Vienna. Legend has it he created them to thank King John II Sobieski of Poland for saving the city from Turkish invaders.
Either way, the bagel spread from the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe to the United States, where the recipe was fiercely guarded by the Bagel Bakers Local 338 union. By the 1960s a device known as the Thompson Bagel Machine came along to speed up the process of rolling and shaping the dough. Since then, the bagel baking process has been streamlined yet again with the relatively recent practice of steaming rather than boiling bagels before baking.
Steaming cuts the production to one quarter of the time it takes to boil and bake a batch the standard way. This creates a bread that's softer, chewier and easy to make sandwiches with instead of being hard enough in a few hours to throw through a wall, says one baker. Bagel purists, on the other hand, say a steamed bagel is little more than white bread. Letting the dough rise naturally and boiling it before baking develops the flavor, puts a shine on, produces a good crust, and reduces the starch and fat content, they say.
While the progressives and the purists battle it out, we get to enjoy the spoils. Whether your preference is boiled or steamed, does this area have a bagel for you.
Noah's: 278 University, Palo Alto, 473-0751; 405 California Ave., Palo Alto, 328-1212; 748 Santa Cruz Ave, Menlo Park, 326-4794
Who doesn't know Noahs? Only someone who hasn't ventured far. This is undoubtedly the hippest bagel store to stop at, if not the most traditional. Noah's was the first of the major chains to begin steaming its bagels. Personally, I find Noah's bagels big in the flavor department but lacking in the kind of dense chewiness that makes a bagel a real bagel.
Noah's on University is a hive of activity at lunch but the line moves swiftly. You can pick up a bagel sandwich for $2.25-$4.25. The lox is on the salty side but the cream cheese is heavenly.
You can get a good cup of coffee at Noah's, but don't look for specialty drinks. And if you come with a newspaper under your arm, at least to the University Avenue store, you should be able to find someplace to sit either inside or at one of the tables outside the busy shop.
Among the more exotic flavors are chocolate chip, sun dried tomato basil, and pumpernickel. On Fridays you can get challah for $2.45. Shmears are $2.95-$3.49.
Posh Bagel: 869 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, 325-7674
When Jeffrey Ottoveggio and Sergio Donoso, bagel consultants and baking suppliers, set up a "Revent Rack" oven for Noah's Bagels, they changed the face of local bagel baking. Such was their confidence in the oven's ability to simulate the boiling process by steaming bagels that they opened their own shop--the Posh Bagel. Since the first store opened in Los Altos five years ago, the chain has grown by a store a year with eight franchises in the works.
I find this growth mystifying, since Posh has one of the most toast-like textures of any bagel I've tried. These bagels are definitely California-fied. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Ottoveggio says he can increase the density of his bagels but chooses not to because the bagel industry has gone beyond the era of just the bagel and cream cheese, and customers want a softer bagel sandwich.
In addition to your standard variety, The Posh Bagel keeps coming up with fresh ideas like pesto, marinara, apple cinnamon, cranberry, banana nut, sun dried tomato and jalapeno with asiago cheese.
Posh offers eight different types of sandwiches, including lox and lox trim for $3.75-$5.95. The cream cheese here tastes slightly over processed, almost gooey, but it is offered in eight varieties, all mixed with fresh ingredients. Specialty coffee drinks are available, and there's plenty of outdoor seating on the spacious covered patio.
Le Boulanger: 720 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, 322-5528
If you're out for a loaf of bread and want a snack, a bagel at Le Boulanger will do the trick. Comfortable and pleasant with an emphasis on breads, bagels here are something of an afterthought. Le Boulanger offers a short list of sesame seed, poppy seed, onion, everything, cinnamon raisin and plain bagels and a tuna knosh ($4.95). Here again, the bagels are steamed and reasonably good sandwich fare.
Le Boulanger doesn't serve actual lox, but you can order cream cheese mixed with lox for your bagel, a spread of moderately good flavor and texture. There's plenty of space here to stretch out and relax with a newspaper or share a cappuccino and a bagel with a friend.
The Bagel Works: 642 Ramona Street, Palo Alto, 328-5429
The Bagel Works, Palo Alto's original bagel shop, looks so old that it almost seems hip. Of course, it also serves up a very authentic tasting bagel with a chewy dense center and a hard shiny crust.
Despite a streamlined culture of steamers, The Bagel Works, which has been part of Palo Alto's culture since the 1970s, stubbornly continues to boil before it bakes, and you can taste the difference. The Bagel Works keeps its recipe simple, using spring hard wheat, and instead of sugar, malt which is brought in from the east coast to give it a New York flavor. The Bagel Works also stays away from oil and preservatives, which some bagel bakers use to add color and keep the bagels softer.
You won't find anything much more adventurous than your basic classic New York style bagels here, but bagels at The Bagel Works are very good indeed, and the cream cheese is excellent. In fact, a quarter of the ingredients in The Bagel Work's lox spread is salmon.
Izzy's Brooklyn Bagels: 477 California Avenue, Palo Alto, 329-0700
If you are looking for a good old-fashioned Jewish deli style bagel, you can't get any more authentic than Izzy's. Stuart Stone and Israel Rind, who are partners in the store, boil and bake their bagels from scratch on site in the store, which is one of a kind and not part of a chain. Izzy's is also a strictly kosher shop. Everything is prepared under strict rabbinical supervision, which means everything is prepared fresh from the jalapenos in the jalapeno bagels to the strawberries in the cream cheese, and yes, real eggs in the egg bagels.
Stone's grandfather opened the first bagel business in the United States in Harlem, New York, in 1885, selling them off a push cart and baking them in his basement. Stone, who grew up in the Bronx, says he still uses the same basic recipe his grandfather used.
The 18 tantalizing varieties of cream cheese here are all fresh and made throughout the day. The store offers some specialty items, such as eggplant salads, vegetable soup, sandwiches, and a foccacio dough pizza. Expect to pay $2.25-$5.95 for sandwiches. The restaurant also serves up some of the thickest, most delicious lox I've tried. Specialty coffee drinks are available.
Back up to the Table of Contents Page