These are very heavy.
These are like a weighty, weighty amount of food on these.
You could bludgeon someone into a deep coma.
[laughs]
New York City has been a bagel town for at least a century, when waves of Eastern
European immigrants schlepped their “rolls with holes” across the Atlantic to newly
forming ethnic enclaves in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
A lot of them were Jewish, which is why, today, there are over one and a half million Jews
in the New York metropolitan area.
That’s more than Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Philly, DC… combined!
So if you trace New York City’s bagel dynasties back to their humble beginnings, there’s
a good chance you’ll find a Jewish baker rolling rings.
But Jew or gentile, born here or not, New Yorkers love their bagels.
So does the rest of America: annual sales hit around a billion dollars a year.
Today, we’re meeting up with Rayna Greenberg -- also known as @OneHungryJew -- to talk
about bagels, Jews, and New York City.
We’re headed to Ess-a-Bagel.
It’s one of her favorite spots -- a midtown Manhattan classic that’s been slinging certified-kosher
bagels to hungry New Yorkers since the 70s.
Let’s NOSH!
(That’s terrible.
That’s really bad.)
I moved here almost 10 years ago, but I’ve been coming to New York since I was
a little kid.
To me, being a New Yorker is not like…
It’s not a sense of how long you’ve been here, it’s a state of mind.
Really, just as like a silly hobby, I started this Instagram account called @OneHungryJew.
So the very first guide I ever wrote was “Best Bagels in New York City.”
So the thing that separates a bagel from bread, is how it’s made.
So what you do, is you take the dough -- it’s a pretty stiff dough -- you roll it into the
ring, then you boil the actual dough.
You boil it, you flip it, you boil it, then you take it out, roll it in whatever seeds
you want (so it’s nice and wet, and the seeds adhere to it), and then you stick it
in the oven.
And you need a convection oven, so it’s blowing air around it at all times.
Cheers!
Good luck getting all that in your mouth.
Wow.
Yep.
Oh yeah.
Argh [laughs] This is also a key part of the bagel
experience, just talking with your hands while you go “Argh… argh!”
New Yorkers feel so possessive about, like, ‘we, bagels are our thing’ or whatever…
You could take most places in New York, the average ones, and stick them in any city,
and they would probably be the best of that -- whatever it is, wherever it is.
That is literally why people hate New Yorkers.
[Laughs] Because of that sentence I just said?
[Laughs] But you know what?
The truth is, if you are going to half-ass this, you can’t be in business in New York.
So we got whitefish, we’ve got Nova lox, and tomato.
I think that’s it on this one.
Onion and lettuce.
Onion and lettuce?
It is indeed amazing.
Oh my god.
And the whitefish is like, pretty mellow, right?
It’s super-mellow.
Honestly, I was expecting a more severe... flavor.
My mom still has like the big containers from Sam’s Club, of the whitefish salad...
Dope.
...that I would like, sit on the couch and scoop out of a tub.
Oh my god.
This type of food was always a part of holidays, weekends… it was just, you
always had bagels like Sundays after weddings.
You always did it Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur... it was a very like, holiday or together family type
of thing.
The fish is amazing.
Yeah.
It’s not super-fishy.
Yeah, which is awesome, because like for a lot of people, that is an off-putting
flavor.
But like, I feel like this is a good crossover lox.
It’s super-mild!
This is a gateway lox, is what it is.
[Laughs]
The capers though, capers are my favorite.
I’m a big salt fan, like, you can’t get enough salt into food for me.
Your doctor is just freaking out.
We’re all gonna die, like, at least I’ll die being happy and fat.
I mean, you’re gonna die being well-fed.
Well-fed!
That’s for sure.
There are worse ways to go.
Than full of bagels.