The 1997 New Year's Day Bagel-Off Main Bagel-Off Page
ResultsParticpantsThe 1997 New Year's Day Bagel-Off ResultsParticpantsSo, a bunch of us were sittin' around one day, schmoozing about our childhoods, our families, and just generally kvetching, when someone noted that one of the experiences most of us seemed to share was the "Sunday Morning Schmeer." Aside from Chinese food and a movie on Christmas Day (for the Jews among us), a family gathering almost always meant bagels, cream cheese, lox, coffee, juice, an occasional bialy or piece of whitefish, and the Sunday Times scattered across the dining room table. As my father always says, "So, you had more than three Jews together on a Sunday morning? How were the bagels?"
This reminiscing naturally led to a discussion of where one could obtain a really first-rate bagel in the Boston metropolitan area. Well, not surprisingly, there was a little consensus (which is remarkable in and of itself given that the group included a dangerously high concentration of political scientists) and a lot of disagreement. Thus was born the idea of a "Bagel-off." We joked about having a wine tasting, but for bagels; but, the more we thought about it, the better an idea it seemed (group think at work). Joel and Sharon considered importing bagels from Brooklyn (as if we weren't depressed enough about the bagel selection in and around Boston), but the logistics seemed too complicated. Besides, without sending Joel and Sharon on an eight hour round trip every Sunday morning, we were all going to be eating local bagels for a while. We decided to limit our contestants to local fare.
Joel was away for a few months on Sabbatical (except on unpredictable weekends), with a trip to England thrown in for good measure. Eva wandered half way around the globe to Tunisia. David seemed to be off observing every couple of weeks or so. Scheduling posed a bit of a dilemma. We finally realized that there is one day every year when no-one can do anything productive even if they want to -- New Years Day. We made a few calls and Voila!
At dinner a few nights before, we decided that it would be necessary to make sure that the same flavors would be represented by each bakery. This would allow direct comparison. Joel insisted that the plain bagel was the true measure of any bagel bakery. In addition, we asked our bagel buyers to bring sesame, poppy, and one "pfoofy" flavor (Alyssa swears that this is the official scrabble spelling of this word) that the person feels to show the bakery in its finest light. Lisa bought bagels at Aesop' Bagels, a relatively new shop in Lexington. Eva and Frank braved the arctic temperatures and drove all the way to Brookline to get bagels from Kupel's, a winner of several "Best of Boston" awards for their bagels. Joel and Sharon went to Bagels by US, in Arlington, who "import" bagel dough from H & H Bagels, in New York. Finally, David was assigned the unenviable job (or so we thought) of bringing bagels from Dunkin' Donuts, a recent addition to their standard coma-inducing menu. These were the four combatants in our Bagel-off. (We had intended to include local stand-by, Bruegger's, as well, but the person assigned to bring them took unexpectedly ill).
The anticipation was palpable as Alyssa and I prepared for the festivities. Sebastian, our cat, was delighted at the assortment of fishes and cheeses assembled for the feast! (That is, until we locked him downstairs in the office) Alyssa and I had devised a fiendishly clever (and almost certainly more complicated than necessary) scheme to insure that no one, including ourselves, would know which bagels came from which store. As the bagels arrived, Alyssa transferred them into plain brown bags, marked only with numbers 1 through 4. Only she knew which number corresponded with which kind of bagel. I then transferred the bagels from the bags to bowls, marked with letters A through D. Only I knew which bag number corresponded with which bowl letter (It only took two PhDs to devise this system). With the identities of the bagels secured, the tasting began!
To allow us to pace ourselves, we sliced each bagel (with our new, handy-dandy bagel guillotine) and then cut each half-bagel into four quarters. But we had not anticipated one little problem: How were we supposed to keep track of which bagel piece on our plate was from which bowl? Enter PhD #3. Eva took a pen and drew cross-hairs on her paper plate. She labeled each quadrant with a different letter. Eureka! As long as no bagels slid over a line in transport, one could be certain of which kind of bagel one was eating (That's why they pay Eva the big bucks). We all dutifully followed suit, dividing our plates into four sections, often lining the borders with fish or cream cheese for added security against bagel invasions. Having solved this little logistical dilemma, we dived in!
The results are summarized in the tables below (Alyssa is responsible for the beautiful tables and this fancy web page). There were a few surprises worth mentioning. Kupel's bagels performed uniformly poorly. The bagels were dense, dry, and generally tasteless. Could we have gotten a bad batch in all four flavors? Their "plain" bagels are hardly plain at all. They are very grainy, really dense, and taste more like a roll one might be served in a health food restaurant in Berkeley, Cambridge, or Madison. Dunkin' Bagels performed surprisingly well. They were generally quite similar in size, taste and texture to those from H & H. Dunkin' Donuts could use to be a little less stingy with the poppy seeds, and their "Everything" bagels had the curious feature that the onion and garlic were baked into the dough, but not sprinkled on the outside. All in all, Dunkin' Donuts has produced a very serviceable bagel that should appeal to the bagel conoisseur and the masses alike. Aesop's bagels were almost uniformly hailed for texture and taste. In addition, we all appreciated the copiousness of seeds and other toppings.
The whole experience was lots of fun, once we got past the self-consciousness of sounding like wine snobs who had branched out into bagels. We highly recommend that others have their own "Bagel-offs" and we would be happy to link to pages reporting their results. Only one problem: We don't want to see another bagel for a while, but we have a couple dozen left over, as well as a quart of cream cheese and half a pound of smoked fish! ----- Bagel anyone?
-- Edward