One my earliest memories is of visiting with my parents the “bagel factory” in, I think, Mattapan or Dorchester close to Boston. My keenly recalled odor of bagels being boiled and baked is hardly as refined as Proust’s taste of madeleines, but the sense memory is just as compelling as he described.
So was I intrigued with the plight of H&H Bagels on the Upper West Side , which the Times reported as having been closed for a few hours by the taxman on Friday.
A line of customers stood outside the store, seeming patient yet confused, until the doors reopened at about 1 p.m. Readers of the Zagat’s guides have called H&H “heaven with a
hole in the center” and a “benchmark” for “fat” and “perfectly crafted rings” with “just the right consistency” to be “addictive” — citations noted on plaques placed proudly on the store’s walls.
The entities that own the main store, at 2239 Broadway, and the related bagel-making plant, at 639 West 46th Street, owed a total of more than $100,000 in unpaid taxes, and numerous efforts to make them pay had been unsuccessful, said Tom Bergin, a spokesman for the department.
As someone who fancies himself a bagel maven, let me say that I never understood the passion so many people in New York and elsewhere maintained for the bagels. They’re okay, to be sure, but I find not one outstanding thing about them.
I’ve liked other bagels much more, even those that purists shun for their added flavor. Those I especially enjoy include onion, sesame, poppy seed and pumpernickel. At the bagel factory of my very early youth, there were just two choices: water or egg bagels.
Still, New York is known for its bagels (among a feast of other foods) and justifiably so. For me, one of the best examples started near Gramercy Park. Once having lived near the original Ess-a-Bagel, I was devoted to them. (They added a much fancier location on Third Avenue in the low 50s a while ago.) The bagels tasted fine, and still do. Aside from pleasing the palate, they also filled the stomach: their chief asset is their gigantic size.
Absolute Bagels on the Upper West Side has its devotees, partly because the owner had learned his craft at Ess-a-Bagel. But, in my mind, they don’t quite measure up – in any sense of the phrase. Lenny’s Bagels (not to be confused with the restaurant chain), also on the West Side, is a good choice. In Chelsea and Greenwich Village, I very much like Murray’s. As for the chains, they don’t interest me for bagels any more than they do for burritos.
What I don’t understand is the prices some of the bagel bakeries command for the product. I emphatically am puzzled by the H&H price of $1.30.
I’m quite happy with popping into Zabar’s toward closing, where I often can buy as many as 10 or 12 for – I hate to spread the word – a mere $1. That’s not each.
It’s hardly surprising to learn that H&H is in trouble financially. How can you survive charging as much for a piece of bread with a hole in it as for whole baguette in some locations? It’s a crime, and H&H has learned that crime doesn’t pay.
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