This is Joey Bagels and boy does he love to talk about bagels.

So what is the secret ingredient? Tradition. Years of learning the little secrets and tricks of making the perfect New York bagel, passed down from bubbe to bubbe. The process is more elaborate—more time spent making the bagels, searching for higher quality ingredients, and perfecting traditional methods using classic equipment. The wonderful, loyal staff at Gotham Bagels make every bagel by hand. We really don’t compromise on anything. “Almost every day a person will approach me at our store and thank us for being there, for caring about how we produce our bagel. Some will complain about our attitude, but never about our bagel.  What do they expect? This is, after all, a New York bagel shop.” —Joey Bagels

The Full Story (as told by Joey Bagels himself)

I always grew up with a bagel shop close by my house. We did not have them every morning, but my dad would always make sure to grab some at least once a week. And that was always a special morning for my family. As I grew older, I lost that special connection I had with bagels while I cooked and led various restaurants in and around Long Island and Brooklyn. The worry associated with finding a good bagel was not something on the forefront of a New Yorker’s mind. We had other things to worry about, like taking the subway. Then, by chance of a vacation or business travel, I would find myself somewhere in Middle America—always unwelcome—standing in front of a hotel breakfast buffet staring at the bagel selection. If bagel jail existed, this was solitary confinement, and the guests next to me—slurping coffee—slicing them in that plastic slicer thing, then jamming them in the toaster—were essentially engaging in bagel waterboarding. So, whenever I returned home from these trips, I always made it down to my neighborhood bagel shop “Bacon, egg, and cheese on a salt, pepper and ketchup, dark, no sugar.”

After leaving New York for Madison, Wisconsin in 1999 for a college teaching assignment, I discovered the bagels shops of the Midwest. These chain bagels shops would not last a minute in Manhattan, and wouldn’t even get the chance to open their doors on Long Island. Like the rest of the country, I assumed the secret ingredient in an authentic New York bagel had to be the water. That is what I thought until a trip back to the East Coast, when still to this day, I had the best bagel of my life at “Hot Bagels” in Fairlawn, New Jersey. 

I began to wonder, “If New Jersey can make an authentic New York bagel, why couldn’t Wisconsin?” Then came my quest of trying almost every bagel shop in Madison. What I found were light-colored pumpernickel, miserably deprived cinnamon raisins, and not a salt bagel to be found! I quickly surmised It was the lack of traditional methods and traditional ingredients that was causing this tragedy. Water could not be that important—unless you are in Florida, and that is a whole another story.  

Gotham Through the Years