- [Steven] Andrew.
- Yes.
- [Steven] Want to ice skate?
- Are you a confident ice skater?
(energetic piano)
- We're here at the rink at Rockefeller Center.
- Bagels.
- Andrew?
- Today, on Worth It, we're gonna try three bagels
at three drastically different price points
to find out which one is the most worth it at its price.
- Look, making bagels.
You know what that shape is?
It's a bagel shape.
- Circular foods.
- Some of the best foods.
- Bagel.
- Donuts sponge cake, calamari.
Let's GTF Bagel.
- Oh, I get it, cause the O is a bagel.
Alright, they're gone, I'm alone.
(old time music)
- My name is Scott Spellman.
We're at Utopia Bagels.
Well, we make hand-rolled
kettle boiled bagels, the old-fashioned way.
- And where does that passion for baking start with you?
- Believe it or not, when I was young,
I actually worked at a bagel place, called Boulevard Bagels.
This place is a good friend of mine.
Anthony, he owns the place and, like you guys together,
there's no better partner you could have, and
- Ah, we're actually more of a trio.
- Hey Adam. - Can't forget him.
[Adam] - What's up?
- So basically, we have a formula,
that's put into a mixer we also use molt.
A lot of bagels made today are used with brown sugar.
It's placed on a rolling table.
It is proofed a little bit then they'll start rolling it.
This guy, right there, I call him the Machine.
He's been rolling bagels for 20 years.
- [Andrew] Wow.
- A lot of bagel places are machine rolled.
There's not too many people that, continue to hand roll.
So before it's placed in the fridge,
it needs to be proofed and risen.
It's something that's underrated in baking.
And if you speak to any baker it's prob'ly the key.
Then it's placed in the fridgeration,
before it enters the next stage which is the kettle.
My ultimate thing is that feel on the paddle.
If you under kettle a bagel,
it'll come out looking like a baseball.
If you over kettle a bagel, it'll come out too big.
So, after the kettle we have poppy, sesame, all these
flavors and you're putting those flavors on these boards.
From there you put it in the oven
and it goes around one turn and you flip it.
I always use the phrase round and brown.
- [Steven] Round and brown, alright.
(register bell)
- Get me a drink.
For the lactose slightly intolerant.
Nah.
- For the lactose is definitely gonna kill him someday.
- Cheers.
(upbeat jazz)
- Oh that's so crispy.
- These nice creases right in the middle right there.
- You can definitely tell it's been hand made.
Because there's imperfections every bagel
is a little bit different.
- See this right here Adam.
Memory foam bagels.
- I'm gonna try it on it's own to begin with.
(chant of excitement)
- Super good, doesn't even need a condiment honestly.
- Best bagel I've ever had.
- Perfect bagel, a little cream cheese.
- Oh, oo.
Cream cheese heaven, the beauty of memory foam,
is that when you sink into it,
it morphs to you, when I put this bagel in my mouth,
(pastry crunch)
the bread slowly fills the chambers of my mouth.
- Chambers of my mouth, by Steven Lim.
(organ chimes)
It does have a delicious multi smell.
- Hey.
- We're gonna kick it up a little bit.
We're gonna give you an everything bagel.
We got cream cheese, tomato, and of coarse
our Norwegian Atlantic Nova, capers,
and red onion this, definitelys gonna take it up a notch.
- Look at the height on that.
- He does not mess around.
- Also such a beautiful array of colors.
(swing music)
- Oh God.
- Damn.
- [Adam] Is that incredible?
- Oh yeah.
- I could eat that everyday, the rest of my life.
- Oo, look at that bite.
(hardy chuckle)
- Clean.
- See you later.
- [Chef] See you later.
- Oh - Utopia!
Guess what I got, to go.
It's an egg, everything, bagel.
Bagel Fact, in Montreal,
everything bagels, are called all dressed bagels.
- Really.
- That's right.
- So would you call a plain bagel an all naked bagel?
- Oo, now, a very, unique bagel.
It is the Jerusalem bagel.
We're gonna eat it for din din, with some cocktails.
- A dinner bagel, let's do it.
(bus brakes)
(soothing guitar)
My name is Einat Admony, we here in New York,
West Village and this is Bar Bolonat.
We goin to have today, Jerusalem bagel.
- How would you describe the difference between
that and a classic New York style bagel.
- We bake it only, we don't boil it.
It's a little bit more fluffy and light and airy inside.
When travel in Jerusalem,
when you going around the old city
or the next to the, Western world,
you will see a lot of kids like
with a huge tray on their shoulder.
All around Jerusalem you sometimes smells
from this bagel and this baked sesame.
It's like absolutely divine.
So we basically make a small snake.
And then we twist it, we brush it with egg.
And then we dip it in a bath of sesame, and then we bake it.
Around 20 minutes, 365 degrees.
We serve it here with, a great
extra virgin olive oil and Za'tar.
- Za'tar, what is
- What is Za'tar?
It's a wild herb, it will grow next to
Jerusalem on the dry places on the mountain.
Tastes, between oregano to thyme.
- So are we having those together,
or kind of one and then the other?
- So the best way,
you rip up the bread and then you put it first in the oil,
and then all the Za'tar just going to stick now.
- This is very strange.
I have a cocktail and a bagel.
- We got Einat's favorite drink, the Yalla.
In Arabic it's slang for let's go, hurry up.
(glasses clinking)
- Ooh, that is straight up juice.
- Woo that's juicy Moscow mule.
Moscow mule if you guys don't know,
is tequila, lemon, ginger, but that's orange.
- Is that it?
- Yeah.
Oh man, okay.
I don't know anything about alcohol,
but it tastes like a Moscow mule.
There are so many sesame seeds on this bagel.
If there's anything I love more than anything,
It's sesame seeds, sesame oil, open sesame.
- Open sesame.
- That's right.
- [Andrew] Look at that.
- [Steven] Oh man!
- [Andrew] Cheers.
- Cheers.
(lively accordion)
- That's, something else.
- That's nice.
- This is a game changer, a dry condiment,
is not a thing you usually, come across.
- Uh huh.
- It's kind of like, the bottom of a bag of chips
where you just have like that flavor dust.
But this is like a delicious organic,
little pocket of flavor dust.
Well you got the double dip.
Should Adam try?
Adam try a bagel?
- Yeah.
(sultry music)
(energetic bass)
- Dessert bagel.
- I wanna bite of yours.
Do not shove that in my face.
- Okay.
(scoffing laugh)
Oo that's good.
- Bagel fact!
Did you know that in 1963, the first bagel machine was
invented, like the automated bagel machine.
- Really.
- And it was invented by a man,
who was a math teacher, by the name of Daniel Thompson.
And he also invented the folding ping pong table.
- Wow.
- Yeah.
- I guess once you start inventing one thing,
all the other inventions just kind of
like cascade out of your mind.
- And now, we go, to the one thousand dollar gold bagel,
which all the proceeds actually go to charity.
That's what makes it worth it.
- Yeah that's cool.
- The bagel is found at a hotel, the Westin.
And the charity is the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen.
And we're gonna go check that out a little bit later.
(laid back piano)
- My name is Frank Tujague I am the director of services
here at the Westin New York at times square.
- Hi I'm Craig Reid, executive chef.
And today we will tasting the thousand dollar bagel.
- I have a passion for seasonal ingredients.
I wanted to use the truffle.
Growing up in New York I wanted to
use the bagel, and they just worked.
- So it's always been for or helping some sort of program.
- It's always been non-profit.
100% of the money, brought in for this bagel,
is donated to Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen
which is, the number one food kitchen
serving hungry New Yorkers in New York City.
(calming piano)
- I'm Andrew St. John I'm the Interim Executive Director.
- I'm Michael Ottley I'm the Director of Operations.
- It's been known for 35 years.
It hasn't missed a day in all those years.
Even in 1990 when the church burned down
they served that day as well and we feed,
up to a thousand people a day.
- [Andrew] So every day about a thousand people.
- [St. John] That's the average yeah.
- So basically the meal is a nutricius meal that's made,
from scratch we use no processed food.
- [Steven] And anybody can come here, and eat here.
- [Michael] Anybody.
- [St. John] I can assure, an authentic taste.
- We are so glad to be able to talk to you guys,
to see how the proceeds are gonna come in
and greatly impact Holy Apostles kitchen so thank you.
- We start off with a really nice New York bagel.
Then I take mascarpone and cream cheese
and I whip that together.
So we smeared it onto the bagel
and then we have the truffle which is
the main important ingredient on it.
So we have nice white truffles, we shave those thin.
Then I use goji berry jelly.
So I think decent wine and goji berries,
coming together, pureed up a little bit,
thicken it up and then make that into the jelly.
Goes great with truffle, the pungent of the truffle
and sweetness of the jelly.
Then we have a little gold leaf for a little bit of pizazz.
It kind of just, heightens up the color a little bit.
(register bell)
- I have eaten more truffle in my life,
in the last year because of Worth It.
So people always ask me what is truffle,
smell like like it's hard to describe.
- It's kind of like how, why do we enjoy
eating spicy food if it's hurting us,
but I think the best spicy food is
right on the edge of delicious and pain.
And truffle is right on the edge of
delicious smelling and quite frankly nasty smelling.
But it's riding that line where, it's the best smell.
- To me, when I first smelled truffle.
It smells bad, initially, but then it's like,
the more you smell it the better it gets.
- Yeah.
- We'll eat together alright.
- Okay.
Bagel cheers.
- Cheers.
(soft keyboard)
Solid bagel.
- That is really tasty.
I would never guess that jelly,
and a mushroomy thing, would taste really good together.
You don't really encounter that often.
- Yeah.
Wow, I'm surprised, the jelly just like,
cancels out a lot of the really weird funk pungentness.
- Like a dank.
- And it really brings out the nice,
colorful, dank flavor of the truffle.
- Of all the truffle things I've had
this is actually top two maybe.
- I think this is a good truffle food.
For people who actually don't know
if they like truffles or not.
It's a good gateway, it's a truffle dove.
(upbeat music)
- Alright who's your worth it winner Andrew?
- My worth it winner is Utopia Bagels.
I can't find a fault in their bagels.
- For me I so wanna pick the Jerusalem bagel but I,
it's this close, but it goes to Utopia.
- [Andrew] Yeah.
- The Utopia Bagel's my worth it winner.
I realize that I did not know what a bagel was.
I've grown up today, I hit bagel puberty.
- Whoa
- And I learned what bagels are.
- Hey Adam what's your worth it winner.
Bar Bolanat, Adam picks Bar Bolonat
- Whoa. - Yeah.
- I saw that a mile away.
This is something I sorely miss in Los Angeles.
I think people just don't get it.
Like there's too much sunshine,
they don't crave the comfort of a warm bready thing,
because they don't have that deep sadness that you need.
- You sayin that New York's a sad city?
- It's just a theory.
It's just like winter, the anger, the honking.
- [Steven] Oh yes!