PrintDear Murray's Bagels: Get a Toaster, Please
A very sad, untoasted bialy.
The good folks at Murray's Bagels will not toast your bagel or bialy. Not even if you say pretty please. I ordered a toasted bialy with scallion cream cheese yesterday morning and got this response: "We don't toast here." Stupidly, thoughtlessly, I still ordered it.
"I will send my resume to Murray's!" Photograph from massdistraction on Flickr
Why was this so stupid and thoughtless? Because I know that unless a real bialy (most bagel bakeries don't make real bialys because they require a different dough and a different baking process) is eaten within minutes, fresh out of the oven it has to be toasted. The untoasted Kossar's bialy was predictably awful: gummy, dry, heavy, downright inedible (which needed to be tweeted).
So what's up with this non-toasting extremism? I understand that a freshly boiled and baked bagel does not need to be toasted to be seriously delicious. But any self-respecting bagelry knows that a bialy needs to be toasted. Determined to get to the bottom of this very important New York food issue, I rang up Murray's Bagels founder Adam Pomerantz. His surprising response, after the jump.
Pomerantz immediately replied, "I completely agree. A bialy has to be toasted, unless it's eaten fresh out of the oven from Kossar's."
So why doesn't Pomerantz just install a toaster?
"The no-toasting thing has created a little mystique at Murray's. Sometimes when I'm at the shop on Sixth Avenue, I'll hear a woman say to her boyfriend, 'Don't embarrass me here by ordering a bagel toasted.' "
He has hedged his toaster bets. At his new bagel shop Leo's, Pomerantz has installed a toaster oven. Sometimes practicality (not to mention serious deliciousness) trumps mystique.
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6 Comments:
I
engmcmuffin at 2:56PM on 07/30/09
Toasting a bagel == not toasting a bialys.
morley at 3:22PM on 07/30/09
They won't toast your bialy at Russ & Daughters either. It makes me a little sad because I adore a toasty bialy. They don't taste right without the toasty goodness!
imlookingatyouallweird at 5:50PM on 07/30/09
I live near Leo's and I love that place. I can understand toasting a bialy, but not a hot, fresh bagel. Toasting is CPR for bagels: trying to revive something that is fading away. I grew up in Central NY and my idea of a bagel was a Thomas' or Lenders from the grocery store shelf/freezer, so toasting was a must. Now that I live in the city, I understand why fresh bagels should never be toasted. I say, if you truly love the texture of a toasted bagel, go for it if the place allows it. But, if it is your very first NYC bagel, please, please, please try it as it was meant, at least the first two times to get what it really means to have a warm, chewy, steamy bagel on a weekend morning!
billyboy at 1:58AM on 07/31/09
Ed, I completely agree! While I prefer a fresh, untoasted bagel, a bialy is so much better toasted and the only way I'll eat one. My husband and I recently had this discussion as I toasted the last Kossar's bialy I had in the freezer.
CornflakeGirl at 10:44AM on 07/31/09
I agree to an extent billboy... I eat a lot of bagels and sometimes I prefer the texture and flavor of a toasted bagel, even if it fresh. Conversely, I have had plenty of hot H&H bagels totally naked.
One thing though... Murrays is always packed, a toaster would make the waits twice as long...
Big B at 12:27PM on 08/07/09