Bergen Bagels: is this the best bagel shop in New York?

When you think of the Big Apple you might think of bagels, but for me there’s one place that can truly lay claim to being the best in the city, and that’s Bergen, writes Holly Baxter

The best places have mediocre coffee – it shouldn’t outshine the bagel (Bergen Bagels)

If there’s one thing everyone has an opinion about in New York City, it’s bagels. The everything bagel – a bagel made in-house at the bakery of your choice, comprising every type of seasoning they have (so usually a multitude of seeds, garlic, salt, onion and sometimes egg) – is a staple of any self-respecting New Yorker’s diet, and where you buy it matters.

The first thing that will help you sniff out a good bagel shop is the attitude of the staff. A really great bagel shop will be staffed entirely by people who look and speak to you as if you recently slaughtered their firstborn. The second someone at a bagel counter tells you to “take your time” as you briefly hesitate between a cinnamon bagel with strawberry cream cheese and a plain bagel with lox, you know you’re in the wrong place. Turn on your heel and walk out, without looking back.

Ideally, like a good diner, a quality bagel place should also have a samovar or an always-brewing pot of mediocre coffee. A bagel must be had with coffee, after all, but anyone worth their Himalayan salt knows that the coffee shouldn’t outshine the bagel. Like a bridesmaid at her sister’s wedding, it should be there to bolster the main event and, above all, not distract.

Needless to say, it’s also highly important that you get your bagels from an actual bakery. There are bagel stores in New York that take deliveries from down the road and then sell them on. Don’t trust them. The baskets of different-flavoured bagels at your chosen store should be constantly filled all day with warm, fresh little savoury doughnuts. Accept nothing less.

All of this is why I believe Bergen Bagels in Prospect Heights – a bougie area of Brooklyn a short walk from Prospect Park – to be the best bagel shop in New York. You walk in on a morning and the owners glance up at you with the practiced disinterest of any merchant who knows their fare is popular. You rehearse your order in your head (jalapeno cream cheese on a toasted everything bagel with black coffee, for Christ’s sake!) and then shout it out at a hundred miles per hour above the sound of other staffers arguing, toasters beeping, knives chopping up fresh scallion and coffees being poured. Then you wait for someone to shove a brown paper bag at you, warm with the bagel and liberally smeared with that spicy yet mild concoction, and run down the icy street in your duck boots so you can get home before either that or your drink gets cold. Oh, and if you fancy you might get hungry for something more later on, then they will chop a chocolate chip muffin in half for you, smear it in butter, toast it and wrap it up, for one of the more purely religious experiences of your lifetime.

Simply put, no one does an everything bagel, nor an array of cream cheeses, like Bergen Bagels. Every fruit and vegetable has been chopped up and combined with the fattiest, yummiest cheeses, and you are free to combine them with any number of different bagel flavours. I once witnessed a man here buy a cinnamon bagel with bacon, egg and cheese. They didn’t bat an eyelid. That’s professionalism.

Bergen Bagels: 473 Bergen St, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn