If you order a bagel in DC, you should only expect this sort of travesty. Open offer to Ezra: if you provide the lox and cream cheese, I will provide you with one (1) frozen H&H bagel upon which to eat it. Even frozen and reheated, this is a vastly superior option to any bagel so far discovered in DC. And I use the word "bagel" very loosely. As a friend recently remarked, "DC bagels are downright anti-semitic".
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Ezra Klein gets exactly what he deserves
18 Apr 2008 12:49 pm
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Comments (21)
There's never an invisible hand when you need one.
If you feel like braving the never-ending gunfight crime-drama that is Baltimore (I kid), you could check out Greg's Bagels in the fairly charming Belvedere Square market.
What is it with Jews and New Yorkers with bagels? They're just pieces of dough. I've never really understood the attraction - and yes, I have tried New York bagels.
WTF? In a city the Jews secretly control? Jeez.
Actually, Ezra's just playing dumb. If he flashes his membership card at the right doorway, he can get bagels and lox whenever he wants. McArdle's just SOL.
Have you tried Brooklyn Bagels in Arlington yet? They are on Clarendon Blvd right next to the Courthouse stop on the Orange linge.
They are fairly close to a NY bagel.
ok, we get it. You're from New York. It is impossible to get anything good or "authentic" if you leave the tri-state area. Get over yourselves. You can't get decent crab outside a certain radius of the Chesapeake. I wretch when I read this crap. You're better than this. Write about your own cooking.
Bagels by Us in Arlington, MA sells H&H bagels, which are trucked in from NY after being boiled and frozen, then thawed and baked on site. Paris apparently has a similar place. On the one hand, this is crazy. On the other hand, they're the best bagels I've found in town. I still can't see why making boiled bread rolls should be so hard.
I finaly get it: lousy bagels are anti-semitic in the same way the "lipstick libertarian" is sexist. That is to say, not really.
If you want a good authentic recipe for bagels send me an email. I moved from NY to Texas and have had no choice but to learn to make them myself. My recipe has gone through many revisions but they are still not perfect. Getting closer all the time thou. Still best bagels in the south or west.
Given that authentic New York pizza is tasteless, thin, and swimming in grease, I guess I can't muster that much admiration for the concept of an authentic New York bagel. In this context, I think "authentic" tends to mean "difficult to digest."
I liked Tony Kornhieser's comment on one grocery store's bagels.
They were made by people who haven't even READ the Old Testament.
NY Pizza is supposed to be thing and crispy and a little bit greesey. If you got flavorless you didn't go to a good place which makes it's own sauce.
I have, for years, complained you couldn't get a good bagel in DC. You can get good bagels because the water isn't right. People don't seem to understand this concept. Water is a flavored chemical ingrediant. It's the same reason San Francisco Sourdough only tastes *that* good in SF. You can't get a decent bagel, that wonderful soft chewy toughness anywhere else but NYC. It's the water.
I know how you feel. I live in the Midwest and the Italian sausage out here is equivalent to an ethnic slur.
As a New Yorker now living in the south the bagels here are a absolute disgrace. They should be called two pieces of bread with a hole in the middle. Even better dough door stoppers.
I feel the same way about the pizza here too. Papa John's is not even close to Tony's Pizza in the Bronx. I miss NY but I hate NY weather in the winter.
I am not a bagel fan. I was in DC on vacation in October of last year and stopped in a bagel shop for breakfast and I was disappointed, and if I can be disappointed they must be bad.
Why do people live in DC? The food sucks. You can't get a bagel or a slice. Last time I was there the sushi was terrible too. Just a low class place replete with people from flyover country.
Why are there so many bad places to eat in DC? It's our capitol, for fuck's sake, so it has had people from all over the world coming and going for centuries. It's connected by Amtrak to New York and Boston. And when I actually find a decent place to eat (like the gay cowboy bar near where a friend of mine lives that had rather good fish tacos) it closes. WTF? Is it Georgetown's stifling preppiness or something?
H&H bagels are too large and squidgy. Almost everywhere else, bagels are even larger and squidgier and worse. The thing Noah's Bagels sells isn't even a bagel really, it's a roll.
I had a decent bagel in New York at some place over near Beth Israel hospital, perhaps on 1st Av. near 14th St.
Oddly, there is a fairly good bagel shop on Princeton-NJ-of-all-places. Also, there was one in Highland Park, NJ, which may still exist.
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"Meanwhile, a Bruegger's Bagels just opened up across from my office, and I went in hoping for a delicious lox-and-bagel."--Ezra Klein
anyone that clueless is made to be, what passes today as, a Journo..
what a Tool..(yes, for far more than erroneous bagel expectations)
Posted by MEH | April 18, 2008 1:19 PM