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The New York bagel argument.
New York is arguing about whether a bagel should be the big faintly sweet quarter-plate thing it has sold since the sixties or the small tangy one that eats closer to a sourdough roll. Start on the new-wave side at Apollo and Popup, cross to the old-guard counters they are reacting against, then take the old guard's best case, which is two counters nobody argues about. Finish on the Lower East Side, where the bagel is what carries the fish and nobody is having the argument at all.
Apollo and Popup bake the new wave's bagel, small, brown and tangy, and you can settle the whole argument in one morning. The Infatuation calls Apollo's bake divisive among purists, and Popup will not sell you a single bagel and will not cut one either. The old guard bakes the big faintly sweet quarter-plate bagel, and Ess-a-Bagel is where to meet it. Eat one from each camp cold, because heat flatters everything and a cold bagel tells you what the crumb is really doing. Then take the old guard's best case, which is two counters nobody argues about: Utopia in Whitestone, off a carousel oven built in 1947, and 2788 up on Broadway, where a cash-only shop failed its inspections, closed and came back under new owners. Finish on the Lower East Side, where Russ & Daughters and Kossar's have never taken a side, because one sells fish and the other sells bialys and the bagel is only what goes underneath.
Apollo and Popup bake the small tangy bagel, and The Infatuation has turned on one of them.
Apollo and Popup bake a smaller, browner, tangier bagel than the one this city has sold since the sixties, and the two shops the new wave was built on no longer get the same write-up. Bryan Kim's bagel guide for The Infatuation calls Apollo's bake "divisive among bagel purists," which on this particular fight reads as a compliment. The same guide now finds Popup's product good and short on flavor, and says the rule about selling bagels only in bags is wearing thin. Eat at both before you read another word, because everything below is a reaction to what comes out of these two ovens.
- Apollo Bagels$
The tangy end of the fight, and a working chef queues for it. Dominique Roy, chef de cuisine at Eleven Madison Park, eats his everything open-faced under scallion cream cheese and tomato, and his own note on the line is that fifty people ahead of you costs about ten minutes. Eight doors trade under the name, so take the nearest.
- Popup Bagels
Order a bag of three from the walk-in line, or pre-order a dozen online if you are feeding a room. Nobody here will cut a bagel or build you a sandwich, so do not arrive planning a lox breakfast. Carina Finn called them some of the best bagels in the city when she reviewed the shop in 2023.
Ess-a-Bagel bakes the big faintly sweet bagel, and The Infatuation has dropped Murray's to its honorable mentions.
Ess-a-Bagel bakes the bagel the new wave is arguing with, about the size of a quarter plate, faintly sweet, with seeds all the way to the edge, and the writers who made these counters famous are cooling on them in public. The Infatuation demotes Murray's Bagels to its honorable mentions and says why: "if we were putting together this list 20 years ago, the Greenwich Village shop would've almost definitely made the cut." H&H Bagels is on neither of the two current city rankings, and Best Bagel & Coffee runs a production line for the Penn Station rush. Go to Ess-a-Bagel (831 3rd Ave) anyway, because that is the counter every shop above is being measured against.
- Ess-a-Bagel (831 3rd Ave)
Seven doors trade under this name and this is the Midtown East counter, the one with a review pinned to its own address. Order the everything with scallion cream cheese, and work the order out while the office line moves.
- H&H Bagels
The famous one, and the fame runs well ahead of the reviews. Hannah Albertine described the dark caramelized crust for The Infatuation in 2021 and I have found nothing published on the counter since. Her other fact is the New York one: as far as she knows, this is the only bagel shop named in both Seinfeld and Sex & The City. Order plain or sesame with cream cheese.
- Best Bagel & Coffee
A production line built for the Penn Station rush, which is why the bagel still tastes fresh once it has cooled and why this is the one to carry onto a train. Order an everything, plain or with jalapeno cream cheese. A hanging sign sells a Texas beef sandwich under melted mozzarella and barbecue sauce, and that tells you what kind of counter this is.
- Murray's Bagels
Eater and The Infatuation read the same crumb ten days apart and described opposite bagels, one large and light, the other dense and springy. Both of them are right about what the counter is for, and that is the deli case behind it. Order the reuben, or the club with an inch of chicken salad in it.
The old guard's best case is two counters nobody argues about, and the older one bakes in a machine built in 1947.
Utopia Bagels has baked in Whitestone since about 1980, and co-owner Scott Spellman puts the whole craft in the part nobody discusses: "It's what you do with the water. It's how much water you put in, it's how much, when you proof, [when] you let in the air." 2788 Bagels is the other one, a reboot of a shop that failed its health inspections and shut in late 2024, reopened by different people with most of the same faces behind the counter. Order the everything at either one and you are holding the old guard's best argument.
- Utopia BagelsWhitestone
Carlo Mantuano's word for these bagels is balance, and the plain form of it is that the everything seasoning sits on the crust and never buries it. Whitestone is a trek for a bagel, and the Murray Hill counter bakes the same thing on a weekday.
- 2788 BagelsUpper West Side
The bagels here are small, dense, craggy and a little sweet, which puts this counter on the old-guard side of the fight. Sonal Shah's ordering rule is the part to remember: do not toast it, because the bread is moist enough to hold the fillings on its own.
On the Lower East Side nobody is having this argument, because the bagel is carrying the fish.
Ruth Rogers runs The River Café in London and eats her New York breakfast at Russ & Daughters, and her test is scarcity: "if I'm thinking about a breakfast that is truly New York, then it has to be Russ & Daughters." Down on Grand Street, Kossar's Bagels & Bialys (LES) has baked bialys since 1936, and a bialy goes into a brick oven and never near the kettle. Neither counter is in the bagel fight at all. Come here last, when you have decided what you think about the bagel itself and want to eat something that is not one.
- Russ & DaughtersLower East Side · $$
An appetizing store, which means smoked fish, caviar and no seats, and four generations of the same family on East Houston since 1914. Take a number and order the bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon, which is Rogers' own.
- Kossar's Bagels & Bialys (LES)Lower East Side
The bialy is the reason, and the brick oven is why it tastes nothing like the bagels in the same case. Neither current city ranking carries this counter, which tells you which side of the case to order from.
Make a walk of it
Take a number at Russ & Daughters on East Houston for the fish, then walk down to Grand Street and buy a plain bialy at Kossar's to eat on the way back.
Jeff's take.
The one bagel on my own saved list is Popup, and my note on it reads "Bagel rec from bagelfest". It is now the shop The Infatuation is coolest on. I would still go, because the rip-and-dip is a real format, and because being wrong in public is the price of having a side. What surprised me is where the argument lands. It lands in Whitestone, with a co-owner talking about hydration and proof time, and that is the answer I would give anyone who thinks the new wave brought technique to this city. Take the whitefish salad at Apollo if the line is short. And if you have one morning and no train fare, do Ess-a-Bagel (831 3rd Ave) and Apollo Bagels back to back and skip everything else.
Questions, answered
What is the bagel argument actually about?
It is about size, sweetness and chew. The Infatuation's bagel guide describes Ess-a-Bagel (831 3rd Ave) as consistent, slightly sweet and the size of a quarter plate.1 The new wave bakes smaller, browner and tangier, and the same guide finds Apollo Bagels closer to a sourdough roll and hands Popup Bagels over hot with no knives. Buy one from each on the same morning and eat both cold, because a cold bagel is where the difference stops being a matter of taste.
as of Sep 2026
Is Absolute Bagels really gone?
Yes, it is gone. It failed health inspections and closed in late 2024, and different owners reopened the Broadway shop in December 2025 under a new name after a threat of legal action, so you will see both names.2 Sonal Shah rated the reboot for The Infatuation in March 2026 and calls it a rare successful one, largely because most of the counter staff came back. 2788 Bagels is that shop. The cash-only rule went with the renovation.
as of Sep 2026
Where does Liberty Bagels fit?
Liberty sits in the middle of the sharpest disagreement these two publications have. Bryan Kim reviewed Best Bagel & Coffee and wrote that it arguably, doesn't even make the best bagels on 35th,
handing the street to Liberty a block away.3 Robert Sietsema and Nadia Chaudhury's Eater guide of March 2026 runs to 21 shops and does not name Liberty at all.4 The Infatuation gives Liberty a street and Eater leaves it off the map.
as of Sep 2026
Bagel or bialy at Kossar's?
Take the bialy. It bakes in a brick oven and never touches the kettle, which is the whole difference between it and the bagels in the same case, and Kossar's Bagels & Bialys (LES) has made them since 1936.5 Neither of the two current city bagel rankings carries the shop, so buy the thing it is actually known for.4
as of Sep 2026
Which door do I go to when a shop has eight of them?
Take the nearest one on the new-wave side. Apollo Bagels trades at eight addresses and neither Dominique Roy nor any reviewer has picked one out.6 On the old-guard side the door matters more, because the bake descriptions everybody quotes were tasted at the originals: The Infatuation writes about Ess-a-Bagel's First Avenue shop, and Ess-a-Bagel (831 3rd Ave) is the Midtown East counter with its own review attached.7 Utopia Bagels runs four doors and this trip is the Whitestone original.
as of Sep 2026
How this was written
Jeff's argument, filled in from the sourced entries. Every room here has its own sourced entry, and nothing on this page adds a fact that is not on one of them. Last read through Sep 2026.