(mischievous music)
- [Narrator] New York City,
the bagel capital of the world.
The place where bagels reign supreme,
and are a cut above the rest.
Right?
Well, maybe not.
Because it turns out,
there's something that could rock New York
and its precious bagels
to the core.
(mischievous music)
Montreal has their own booming bagel industry,
and there's a constituency of bagel enthusiasts
that actually consider Montreal bagels
better than New York's.
Shocking,
I know.
- [Woman] I lived in New York for 50 years,
but I don't care for the New York bagels.
And neither does my family.
- [Narrator] What is going on here?
It's time to investigate.
- My name is Robert Morena,
and I'm the co-owner of St-Viateur Bagel Shop.
People really know about us,
and they know that if you come to Montreal,
you've gotta try a Montreal bagel.
Every time I go to New York,
I always visit a bagel bakery.
And I test my bagels against theirs;
and I've yet to come across something
that compares to a St-Viateur bagel.
(mischievous music)
A Montreal bagel
is set aside by its process
of how it's made.
We hand-roll each bagel.
We boil it in honey water.
We seed it.
We bake it in a wood-fired oven.
- [Narrator] Alright,
so Montreal's got the sweet and doughy flavor.
What do you got to say about that,
New York?
- Montreal bagels?
Eh.
I think it's mostly a fad.
Honey water?
Who does that?
No, I'm kidding.
I'm just making that up.
Sorry.
My name is Darin Dolfi,
and I'm the operations manager
with H&H Midtown Bagels East.
If you want a regular bagel,
you can go anywhere.
If you want a true New York City staple,
you come to H&H Midtown Bagels East.
Look,
it's New York City.
We're moving at a fast pace.
We sell a lot of bagels.
Some bagels are made on a machine,
others are hand-rolled,
like our cinnamon raisin.
Big deal,
still same great taste.
It's a very labor-intensive process …
That takes roughly 24 hours from start to finish
before we can bake off the bagels.
- [Narrator] So you each have your own process.
Big deal.
How do you eat them?
- So, generally,
we do not cut our bagels.
And they come out of a wood-fired oven,
they don't need to be toasted.
You come,
you pick up the bagels,
and they buy a tub of cream cheese,
and you would make the bagels yourself.
That's the real Montreal way of doing things.
- [Narrator] Got it.
So in Montreal,
I have to make it myself.
What about in New York?
- [Darin] When you walk in to H&H Midtown Bagels East,
you walk up to the counter,
place your order,
we slice the bagel,
we put cream cheese,
we put the lox,
we wrap it up,
and it's ready to go.
- [Robert] New York started manufacturing bagels
before Montreal.
The big difference is that
we just kept our bagel-making tradition the same.
Still horse and wagon.
- [Narrator] So if you're more of a sweet and doughy,
do-it-yourself bagel maker,
Montreal's for you.
But if you prefer the toasted bagel
with everything on it,
you gotta come to New York.
But in the end,
if there's one thing we can all agree on,
it's that everything's better
with cream cheese.
(mischievous music)
(bing)