Goodbye, Berkeley: Baron Bakery/Saul's Deli

Although I've been back in Pittsburgh for a month, I've been putting off writing my last bagel blog post, caught up in schoolwork and responsibilities. It is, however, finally time to relinquish the last sweet sigh of summer and face my bagel-less reality. 

I learned during my workday Bagel Blitz that the East Bay lives up to its bagel-haven reputation. On my last day in California, I decided to make the pilgrimage across the Bay myself, and made my way out to Berkeley. Although I lived in South Berkeley last summer, I never tried the city's bagels — at the time, I knew that eating a subpar bagel would upset me too much.  Luckily for all of us, I've become a stronger person since then. 

When in Berkeley, I made my way to Saul's Restaurant and Delicatessen with a couple of intern friends, tempted by rumors of delicious French toast and bagels straight from Baron Baking. Upon being presented a menu, I was torn between French toast — one of my favorite foods since I've been a child — and the necessary bagel. Naturally, I ordered both.

When my carbo-loaded brunch arrived, I started in on the French toast. I know this is a bagel blog, but I must digress to say that this is the best french toast I've ever had, hands down. This is a strong statement, coming from a man who's eaten thousands of slices of French toast in his short life. 

A disappointingly blurry picture of my brunch spread.

After eating the light-yet-rich, perfectly caramelized, and flavorful French toast, I eyed the bagel. It came on a plate with a lump of cream cheese and a couple of extraneous and lonely slices of cucumber. Ignoring the cucumber, I slathered the bagel with cream cheese and chewed thoughtfully. 

The New York Times called Baron Baking's bagels "as good as Brooklyn's," so I knew that I was dealing with some serious bagelsmiths. Dan Graf founded Baron Baking when he dropped out of Rutgers (a short 20 minute drive from my hometown in New Jersey) to answer a higher calling, perhaps the highest calling there is: bagels. 

Graf moved to California and started working at Saul's, taking time to perfect his bagel recipe. The bagels, like virtually everything in the Bay Area, are organic and locally sourced. As I always do, I chose a poppyseed bagel. The bagel had a dark, chewy crust, and the unmistakable interior of a Real Bagel. This bagel wasn't perfect, but it was pretty damn good. Although I don't agree with the New York Times that it was quite as good as an East Coast bagel, it was a close facsimile.

I left Saul's with a heavy heart, thinking about my redeye flight back to New Jersey taking off in only a few short hours. Although I never quite reached Bagel Nirvana this summer, I came closer than I had ever thought I would. In the end, my pick for best bagel of the summer has to be Baron Baking's offering, with Beauty's Bagel Shop's Montreal-style bagels an extremely close runner up. 

Although the summer is over, I'll never let go of my San Francisco memories, and I will never stop trying bagels. In a couple of short weeks I'll be back in San Francisco for a weekend, and you can bet that I will relentlessly drag my friends around the city to try new bagels — It is my duty, and my responsibility to bagel society. 

Bagel Blitz: Beauty's Bagel Shop, Authentic Bagel Company, and Bay Area Bagels

As my internship neared its end and my summer in San Francisco was wrapping up, I found myself running short on time to make pilgrimages to new and better bagel places in the Bay Area. My coworkers, however, made things easy for me last week when they brought their favorite Bay Area bagels into the office for me to try. 

On Wednesday I tried Beauty's Bagel Shop and the Authentic Bagel Company, both hailing from Oakland. Although it's difficult even for me to eat two whole bagels for breakfast, I was determined to give every bagel its fair chance in these unforgiving bagel-lympics. East Bay, several of my coworkers adamantly insisted, was akin to some kind of Bay Area bagel Nirvana. 

Beauty's Bagels, pictured above, came first. These bagels are boiled and then baked in a wood-fired oven, inspired by the exotic bagels of Montreal. My manager, who brought in the Beauty's Bagels, swears by the Montreal-style bagel. Beauty's Bagels, according to their website, are designed to be "chewy on the inside with a nice crust and tons of seeds on the outside." 

A poppy seed Beauty's Bagel.

This was my first experience with the so-called "Montreal-styled bagel," so I'll admit that I wasn't sure what to expect. There was certainly a generous coating of poppy seeds on the bagel I chose, and I was intrigued by the bagel's shape, smaller and more ring-like than a New York bagel, with a larger central hole. Montreal-style bagels are baked in a wood-fired oven, giving them an intriguingly unevenly charred surface, glossy from honey. 

When I took a bite, I was impressed. The bagel was different than what I was used to, denser and sweeter than the New York bagels of yore. Still, it was satisfying in a way that few—if any—of the bagels I had eaten in the Bay Area had been before it. 

After I finished my bagel, surreptitiously trying to clear poppy seeds from both my teeth and my keyboard, I decided that I would visit Montreal as soon as I could to experience an authentic Montreal bagel for myself. Montreal is, after all, only a 6 hour drive from my home in North Jersey—perfect for a Winter Break road trip. I'm looking for a road trip companion, so If you speak conversational French and relish the thought of subzero temperatures measured in celsius in the Canadian winter, feel free to reach out. 

The next bagels I tried were from Authentic Bagel Company, also in Oakland. Authentic Bagels was born of a dream: The dream of two brothers, Jason and Mark Scott, who moved to California from Rhode Island. The Scott brothers, they write on their website, relied on a tweaked version of their grandmother's bagel recipe to create their own product. 

An everything bagel from the Authentic Bagel Company in Oakland. 

Their bagels had some promise, with a nice coating of everything—sesame seeds, poppy seeds, onions, and salt—and a good shape. The skin, however, lacked the texture and crackle that I look for in a good bagel. When I bit in, the bagel was a little too bread-like for my taste. This makes some sense, given that the "bagel brothers" worked to blend their knowledge of "an East Coast bagel with the San Francisco sourdough tradition."

I love bagels and I love San Francisco sourdough, but the two are best left separate. Bagels are many things, but the best bagels transcend other, inferior forms of carbohydrate. 

Another coworker brought in a third bagel contender two days later, on Friday. These bagels came from Burlingame's Bay Area Bagels. My coworker, a truly dedicated bagel lover who took to boiling and baking her own bagels after leaving the East Coast, brought in the Bay Area Bagels after an aborted attempt at at-home bagel creation. 

An uninspired bagel from Bay Area Bagels in Burlingame. 

The bagels were fairly mediocre; they reminded me of Dunkin' Donuts in some ways. They were good enough for a mid-morning breakfast at work, but I can say fairly confidently that I'll probably never make the trip to Burlingame to try them in person. 

Last week I tried more bagels than any other week of the summer, and I am truly grateful that my coworkers care enough about my passion for bagels to bring in their own favorites. I never thought that I would miss working full time, but here I am, writing this post from my bedroom in New Jersey and thinking wistfully of my summer working at Salesforce. 

Marla Bakery: Ferry Building Fun

Last weekend, Laurnie—the vegan light of my life—visited me in San Francisco. Saturday morning, Laurnie and I met up with my friend Luke to explore the Ferry Building Farmer's Market, a fresh food paradise that I conveniently live right next to. 

We started our farmer's market journey with a San Francisco staple: $9 freshly squeezed juice. As I sipped my kale-cucumber-mint-apple-pineapple juice and sampled ripe peach and pluot slices, I was constantly on the lookout for bagels. 

Lo and behold, I stumbled across Marla Bakery's stand, where they sold savory and sweet galettes, brownies, and bagels. Joe Wolf, the owner of Marla Bakery, told the New York Times that "San Francisco has struggled with the bagel," in a relevant article published yesterday. This is a man who knows that he's facing an uphill battle. 

I eyed the bagels, charmingly presented on a wooden cutting board. They looked small, but had a promising color. I asked for a poppy seed bagel, which was covered in enough poppy seeds to kill a child below the age of five, or possibly make you fail a drug test after one bite. I asked for my bagel with cream cheese, and learned that they had only "farmer's cheese," a spreadable cheese with chives. Although this seems like an unnecessary bastardization of cream cheese, an already perfect bagel spread, I grit my teeth, swallowed my pride, and handed over $5 for my bagel. 

I ate my bagel slowly, still sipping the now uncomfortably warm and leafy artisanal juice and looking out on the Ferry Building's stunning view of the Bay Bridge. The bagel had good heart, although still lacked the signature texture of a quality New Jersey bagel. And, although I truly love poppy seeds, this bagel was just a bit too aggressive with them—there were poppy seeds in my teeth for approximately the next 5 hours. It was smaller than a typical bagel, but had a satisfying bite.  

The bagel came with some aggressively brightly colored pickled vegetables.

Marla Bakery's bagel, as Elizabeth Weil wrote in the Times, "is a truly accomplished round bread product, with a tight crumb and a hint of sourness." That is to say, it's not bad—it's just not really a bagel, in the purest sense of the word. Wolf, owner of Marla Bakery, and his partner and wife Amy Brown, did not base their bagels on a New York template, but rather worked off their own palates, which might explain some of the discrepancies. 

Laurnie, Luke, and I left the Farmer's Market for Berkeley, a vegan paradise where we indulged in meatless Mexican food from the unique Flaco's Tacos. I was tempted to seek out new bagels to try in Berkeley, but even I can only eat so many bagels in a day. 

Bagels in San Francisco are the red-headed step child of the bagel world—unwanted and unloved, but clamoring for attention nonetheless. It's sad, in a way. This weekend I will continue to drag my friends to out-of-the-way bagel places, seeking closure for my futile quest. 

Bonus picture: Laurnie and I in Berkeley.

Katz Bagels: Merely Passable

I woke up on Sunday hungry and, as always, with bagels on my mind. After some heavy Googling, I decided on the day’s bagel target: the Mission District’s Katz Bagels. 

Although Katz has a location in the Financial District (where I live), my friends and I decided to go to the location in the Mission. Located on 16th Street only a few blocks from BART, Katz Bagels’ Mission District location is conveniently en route to Dolores Park, an ideal place to spend a Sunday afternoon. 

Katz Bagels has a charming storefront, and the interior of the store is marked by its simplicity. Upon entering, my entourage and I were confronted with a glass-fronted display case that housed plain, everything, poppy seed, sesame seed, and asiago bagels. This array of flavors was promisingly traditional; I was  glad not to see another blasphemous, Northern California-born flavor like pesto or blueberry. 

I ordered an egg and cheese sandwich on an everything bagel for $4, while my friends Luke and Kate ordered similar sandwiches. If I took a purely clinical approach to my bagel sampling, I would order only a plain, untoasted bagel with cream cheese at every bagel shop I visited. I am, however, weak willed and hungry—sometimes a plain bagel with cream cheese just doesn’t cut it. 

My egg and cheese sandwich on an everything bagel. 

My breakfast sandwich arrived quickly, wrapped in paper on a wicker tray. Luke insisted on taking the pictures, because he has a nicer iPhone than I do and considers himself a more qualified bagel photographer (this remains to be decided). 7x7 magazine describes a Katz bagel as “A little on the pale side when untoasted, but still glossy with a slight golden hue.” I would say the same of my bagel that morning, although it did have some promising dermal blisters. The bagel was also flatter than what I’m used to, but not egregiously so.

As I ate my sandwich I was impressed by the bagel’s crunch, though I worry that my standards have been lowered by a few too many San Francisco bagels. The sandwich still left something to be desired; the bagel didn’t quite match the texture of an East Coast bagel, the chewiness that makes a true bagel such a satisfying Sunday morning breakfast. A New Jersey bacon (or pork roll, if you’re into that kind of thing), egg, and cheese sandwich has an irrefutable presence that I just didn’t see in the Katz bagel, let alone any California bagel I’ve consumed so far.

I would (and thanks to its convenient location, probably will) eat at Katz Bagels again, but without the gumption I reserve for eating true Jersey bagels.

After we finished our bagels we went to CREAM across the street, because I love ice cream almost as much as I love bagels, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to eat an ice cream sandwich at 1 p.m. right after a late bagel brunch. 

Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream between two chocolate chip cookies. Classic. 

The Posh Bakery: Sadly Subpar

Earlier this week I walked to a 9 a.m. meeting at work, bleary eyed, and was greeted outside of the conference room by several boxes of bagels. The bagels were from The Posh Bakery, a local chain with 14 locations around the Bay Area. The Posh Bakery is esteemed enough to have made at least one best Bay Area bagel list, so I knew I had to eat my bagel with a critical palate. 

According The Posh Bakery’s website, “With over 15 years of bagel-making history, we've become  an expert in the field.” As a card-carrying cynic and long-time bagel snob, I was naturally dubious of this claim. Although there were several varieties of Posh bagel and flavored cream cheese to choose from, I went with a classic everything bagel with regular cream cheese. The box also contained a standard selection of sesame seed, poppy seed, and plain bagels, along with the more esoteric blueberry, asiago, and asiago pesto.

An unnecessarily diverse array of Posh bagels.

A co-worker assured me that the asiago pesto bagel was "actually pretty good," but even as a long-time lover of pesto I find the idea of a pesto bagel off-putting at best and borderline unholy at worst—a bagel's beauty is in its simplicity. 

The bagel was a good size, but lacked the blistered skin that marks a superior bagel. I smeared a generous layer of cream cheese onto my bagel and proceeded to photograph it from every angle, earning me some raised eyebrows from co-workers.

The Posh bagel was light and bread-like, lacking the satisfying chewiness of a True Bagel. It’s clear that this falls into the category of “bread with a hole in it pretending to be something more.” It’s the kind of bagel that I would consider eating again, but only if it was first toasted to Hell and back. Toasting is, after all, the “great bagel equalizer.”

This picture is depressing.

As described simply and eloquently by Ed Levine over a decade ago: 

“A bagel is a round bread made of simple, elegant ingredients: high-gluten flour, salt, water, yeast and malt. Its dough is boiled, then baked, and the result should be a rich caramel color; it should not be pale and blond. A bagel should weigh four ounces or less and should make a slight cracking sound when you bite into it instead of a whoosh. A bagel should be eaten warm and, ideally, should be no more than four or five hours old when consumed. All else is not a bagel.”

The Posh Bakery bagel I ate sadly just wasn’t up to par. 

I will spend my Fourth of July weekend seeking out new bagels to try—what is, in the end, more American than a bagel? Brought to America by Eastern European immigrants a hundred years ago and since raised to a staple and an art form, the humble bagel has achieved the long-dead American Dream.

The 20th Century Cafe: Charmingly Underwhelming

Last week, my dear friend Laurnie shared an article with me listing the “Best Bagels in San Francisco and the East Bay.” J. Kenji López-Alt, managing culinary director of Serious Eats, boldly claims that these bagels “aren't just good-for-the-Bay-Area, but would stand shoulder to shoulder with the best bagel shops in New York or Montreal.”

This claim strikes me as hyperbolic. I’ll admit that I’ve never been to Montreal, let alone had a Montreal-style bagel. I’m well versed in New Jersey bagels (they’re just as good as New  York bagels, I promise), however, and hold every bagel I eat to those high standards.

I decided to visit the 20th Century Cafe, an adorable cafe in San Francisco’s trendy (read: expensive) Hayes Valley neighborhood, and home to what López-Alt considers some of the best bagels in the Bay Area. The Cafe, which I patronized on a beautiful Saturday morning with my visiting sister and a friend, was decidedly cute. The silverware was charmingly mismatched, and the shop was filled with delicate-looking cakes and pastries bathed in abundant natural light.

Determined to keep my eye on the prize and not be taken in by aesthetics, I ordered a poppy seed bagel sandwich containing cream cheese, smoked salmon, pickled shallots, and dill for $8.50. My sister, for the sake of variety (and a fear of lox) ordered an everything bagel with cream cheese, cucumber, avocado, and chives for $7.50. At the 20th Century Cafe an everything bagel means poppy seeds, flakes of sea salt, and, uniquely, nigella seeds.

"It's smaller than I expected." 

When I learned about the Roman occupation of Britain in my 9th-grade Latin class, my brilliant late teacher told us that everyone says the same thing when they first see Stonehenge: “It’s smaller than I expected.”

These were the first words that came to mind as I looked at the almost charmingly small bagel in front of me. It was, like the rest of the cafe, cute. Cute, however, doesn’t cut through my Saturday morning hangover fog like a monstrous bacon egg and cheese does. Resisting the urge to eat the lovingly presented bagel in two bites, I ate slowly and analytically. The bagel was dark, dense, and chewy, sweeter than the East Coast bagels I was used to (explained by a “touch of honey” in the dough). The skin had a fairly satisfying crunch and texture, and the poppy seeds were, well, poppy seeds.

A poppy seed bagel filled with cream cheese, smoked salmon, pickled shallots, and dill. 

Overall, the sandwich tasted fine. Fine, unfortunately, does not cut it in this Great Bagel Race. The 20th Century Cafe’s bagel had a nice flavor (the pickled shallots were an especially notable touch), but lacked the authority and presence of a truly great bagel. I will likely visit the 20th Century Cafe again, but skip the bagel in favor of a peach pastry or their much-praised Russian honey cake.

A good bagel is hard to find.

I’ve been getting bagels from the same deli—The Coffee Grinder Cafe—since I was a child. The people who work there know me by name, and still remember my order even after I’ve spent months away at school. Anyone who's anyone has a strong opinion about bagels, and has their own favorite bagel shop. My gold bagel standard is—and always will be—the Coffee Grinder. 

The bagels I ate growing up were chewy but not tough, dense but still light. They were large and thick-crusted, with bubbles on their subtly shiny surfaces. While some bagel lovers deride toasted bagels, I enjoy my bagels lightly toasted and slathered in cream cheese that's melty, but never slimy. A good bagel can also, of course, hold its own untoasted.

A good bagel doesn’t come from a chain store. A franchise can’t reproduce the time- and labor-intensive craft that goes into a good bagel, which is without exception boiled and then baked. Boiling, after all, is what gives a New York (or New Jersey) bagel its signature chewy texture—it’s scientifically proven. A good bagel is best enjoyed fresh, and is hardly worth eating even just 24 hours after it comes out of the oven.

While good bagels come in a variety of flavors, my go-to is everything. My ideal everything bagel is generously coated in poppy seeds, sesame seeds, salt, and dehydrated onions. I spent many a morning my senior year of high school holding a bagel in one hand and driving with the other, craning my neck to check my teeth for stray poppy seeds in the rearview mirror. These were, I now know, the best mornings of my young life.

The crackly dermis of an ideal bagel from the Coffee Grinder. 

When I left New Jersey at the end of high school, I knew that I would spend the rest of my life searching for bagels that rivaled those I ate growing up, bagels that brought me back to Sunday mornings in my hometown bagel shop. I’m spending this summer in San Francisco, where I intern for a large software company as a technical writer. San Francisco is known for its food scene, which is inarguably one of the best in the country. Bay Area cuisine has a reputation for being organic, natural, locally sourced, and minimally processed. This philosophy of food has obvious benefits—by all accounts almost everything I’ve eaten in San Francisco so far has been excellent—but just does not lend itself to good bagel making. People in Northern California are, frankly, too healthy to really enjoy a properly carb- and cream cheese-loaded New York bagel. 

On the weekdays, I write usable documentation for enterprise software. On the weekends, I search the hills of San Francisco endlessly for a bagel that meets my standards. My hopes aren’t high, but I have nothing to lose.