Brooklyn Transplant Shocked By UWS Bagel Quality

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY – In a recent post titled “The bagel situation,” a user of the social media site Reddit lambasts the Upper West Side’s bagels in no uncertain terms.

I expected the UWS of all places to have excellent bagels down to basically the block level. I used to come into the city from suburbia growing up just to get bagels with my family. We'd go to Zabars and get smoked fish, H&H (the old one) for bagels, and have a picnic in the park, or just bring it all home. And if H&H was too crowded there were a half-dozen other places within a few blocks to go for almost equally good bagels. Surely, *surely* I thought the UWS would still be a veritable mecca of perfect NYC bagels. Instead I have been sorely disappointed with every bagel I have tried so far.

Despite admitting to recently relocating to the Upper West Side from Brooklyn, the original poster’s assessment is not entirely inaccurate, responses appear to indicate.

Few step in to defend the neighborhood’s offerings, and aside from a classic, Absolute Bagels, at 108th and Broadway, and the newly opened Kossar’s, at 72nd and West End Avenue, nary a familiar name escapes unscathed.

How do local bagels stack up?

Zabar’s: “Hard as a hockey puck.”

Zucker’s: “Flat and sad.”

Broad Nosh: “Mediocre at best.”

Bagels & Co and Bagel Talk: “Jokes.”

PopUp: “Overpriced and middling quality.”

And finally: “The less said about the H&H ripoff, which should be ashamed for sullying a once great name, the better.”

A few posters bemoan the loss of Lenny’s, which proffered homemade bagels at 98th and Broadway for more than two decades.

Generally, the state of the neighborhood's bagels is hard to explain.

“It’s a bagel desert,” another user agreed, “I have heard the wild unfounded speculation that it’s a mob run industry as it’s frequently cash only. I subscribe to that conspiracy theory as it’s the only way to rationalize this situation.”

Patch has reached out to the original poster for comment.

Did all the good bagels move to California? Are Reddit users imagining this bagel dystopia? Do you have something to say about the bagel situation on the Upper West Side? Patch would love to hear from you. Email michael.mcdowell@patch.com.