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I had to have a NY bagel. It was among one of the things I had to experience while in NY. Coincidentally, Absolute Bagels was close to where I was staying so I could easily stop by to sample their delectable goods.
It's a small shop with a few round tables available if you want to peruse the NY Times while eating one of their delicious creations. I immediately got in line and chose a sesame seed bagel with lox cream cheese. The asian lady asked me if I wanted the bagel toasted. I said "Yes". She asked me again. In the next few seconds, I thought to myself, "She asked me again? Maybe she doesn't want me to toast it. Damn I'm being such a tourist ." So I conceded to her persuasive powers and said "No, that's fine."
Best bagel I've had, bar none. The bagel itself was light, tender, and soft on the inside and the thin outer crust was crisp and slightly crackly. I enjoyed the lox spread with its smooth, buttery cream cheese and the salty, smoked salmon intermingling within it. In hindsight, I should have bought a bag full of those bagels so I could take them back to Cali with me and enjoy them.
Fantastic little joint on the UWS to pop in for a bagel. Nothing much except bagels, but this is one of those joints that does one thing, and does it well. Many varieties of cream cheese including my favorite, hard to find variety, Jalapeno Cream Cheese!
There's something zen about a place that doesn't try to add gyros, hot dogs, chicken, hamburgers and whatnot to a stellar offering.
Bagels ONLY BAGELS. But baked on premises, and done RIGHT.
I only have one question . . . why are the owners Asian and not Jewish? I was surprised by that, but the bagels are DAMN good!!
"You don't need these bagels toasted, they're really fresh," my friend said incredulously at my request as if everyone in Manhattan knew about the majesty of Absolute Bagels except for me (which was probably true).
I opened up the brown bag and took a deep inhale of all the yeast and warmth. The spices from my pumpernickel bagel with tofu cream cheese made my mouth water.
The first bite was the best--- that heavenly, chewy dough smothered in tangy tofu. Mmmm, while my mouth was enjoying the toothsomeness my tongue indulged in a bath of creamy, sweet, cream-cheese-like soy product.
I never understood how whities would consume a whole block of bread like it was a real meal until that day. An absolute bagel is the lobster of breakfasts.
Make sure to get up early for these puppies, they go fast and there's always a line.
Excellent - let's hear it for the manhattan valley!
Great bagel, and the Veggie creamcheese is great too! (Love it with a pumpernickel bagel)... for some the creamcheese may be a little much (in quantity)... but for me it was amazing...
Yes, it can get tight with seating, but so good!
I just inhaled an egg bagel from this place. I walked twenty blocks to feast on it. Um. It was worth it. Friendly service too.
WTF?? Why are Asians taking over the Jews? This keeps on happening. First it was the LES, then Flushing, then finance and accounting, SUNY schools, and now bagels??? What the fuck are they doing making the best bagels in the city? ?!
Stay away from our pastrami!
A must visit place in UWS. The bagels are nice and crunch outside and just right amount of doughs inside. A regular cream cheese with any bagel is only $1.99 vs $3.50 for flavored cream cheese. My only request is that they should upgrade coffee offerings - maybe go with Vietnamese coffee...
Absolute Bagels totally knows their bagels like no one's business. They seem to have as many tofutti spreads as they do cream cheese, so it's great. They supply ample amounts of schmear for every bagel, and if you get it in a container (rather than spread onto your bagel for you), it's easily enough cream cheese for another bagel. It's also nice that all the prices for the bagel & spread are pretty much the same across the board ($3.55), so you can feel free to try whatever spread you like! I haven't had any of their sandwiches, but I'll definitely be back.
The decor/ambience is definitely more functional than comfortable, I recommend getting the bagel to-go and going out to Riverside Park to enjoy.
I've been going here since I was in junior high [how ever many years ago that was] and I've always ALWAYS ALLWWAAYYSSS loved their bagels. I live like a few blocks away so it's great. They have more then just bagels...but you'll have to go yourself to check. I usually get tofutti cream cheese as well, cause my lady and I love it a bit too much. They have a good array of bagels too, just let them know what you want, pay for it, roll on out [or grab a seat]. I love their fresh, aromas [is that even the right word??], pretty, chewy, drool inducing....bagels. Go...now...buy..eat.
These are good but certainly not the best bagels. Silly comments like "Believe the hype: Absolute Bagels has the best bagels in New York City." come from the Columbia intellectuals who think NYC is defined as the territory between Hungarian Pastries and Mama Mexico (UWS).
Look, I gave a blind taste test to another bagel connoisseur of a Poppy Absolute Bagel which I got right when it came out of the oven against a cold H&H poppy. He recognized the latter as the better quality, finding the consistency better and noting that it tasted fresher.
Not to knock absolute - but it is Absolute Bull**** to think this place is anything more than a quality bagel convenient for a Columbia student.
These bagels are GOOD. Really, really good. Toasty on the outside, delicious and soft on the inside. If you get one fresh out of the oven it's actually heaven. It's also hilarious that it's owned by a Thai family. They are brusque but it's bagels in NYC! Makes sense to me.
The cons? The bagels are pretty small. The place is tiny and the lines frequently go out the door. Usually nowhere to sit down, although it depends when you go.
Note - they will GLOB cream cheese on, so make sure to either ask for a little or order 2 bagels, 1 with cream cheese, and use it for both.
Excellent bagels. They're a little bit lighter in weight compared to H & H. I like to get just a plain bagel with butter for $1.25.
I went expecting the best bagels I've ever had, and Absolute delivered. They're warm, fresh, and a bit doughy, and they have a shell with just the right amount of crispness. The secret is out though so expect a line.
Wow. I've always liked bagels (well, any bread product really), but I've never had a real bagel experience before. So, when visiting New York, I had to find the quintessential New York bagel. After checking yelp and discovering that the highest rated place was a mere block away, it became first on my list.
And what an experience! I followed the advice and asked what was fresh. Trying to keep it relatively simple, I got a still hot plain bagel with strawberry cream cheese. A generous portion of cream cheese (and with actual strawberries!) and an amazing bread product. Just crispy enough on the outside, ever so slightly doughy and delicious in the middle. I'm having breakfast there every day until I leave NY.
This is my favorite bagel place ever!! It's small, it's fast and I always get what I want. It's warm, tasty and delicious!!! If you're in NY, this is one to go to. Mark my words!
Believe the hype: Absolute Bagels has the best bagels in New York City. Soft and chewy on the inside, nice crunch when you bite into them, perfect heft and freshly baked flavor. After eating one, you'll understand why people line up on the street for them.
Two pet peeves:
1. No lowfat cream cheese. Not even plain. Which is weird since light cream cheese is not a new thing or a particularly hard-to-come-by item. I feel like they could easily get some.
2. They don't ask if you want your bagel toasted and once I ordered a bagel with butter and jelly and seriously 10 seconds later specified that I wanted it toasted and they said it was "too late." ???
Still, it's cheap and the line moves quickly -- they have a perfect system to deal with the big crowds they get so you never wait for more than a few minutes.
after reading about this place on yelp, we went waaaaay out of our way to get to it...which turned out to not be that big of a deal since the guggenheim was just a short ways away.
we both ordered an everything bagel with lox and cream cheese (my fiance got jalapeno flavored cream cheese). it was really great, but i think it was a bit overpriced for a bagel, even if i was adding smoked fish.
in general, i thought it was good, but i would not make another 80 block journey to get there.
I cannot resist rumors of delicious food. After reading the TimeOutNY article in the brunch edition saying that this place was the BEST BAGEL in NYC, I ventured to a place where usually only free booze and close friends can reel me in: thats rite, all the way above the 100s.
I ordered an everything bagel (10c extra to be toasted) with lox and cream cheese. Add a coffee and the total was $8 exactly.
Honestly, I was not impressed. The everything bagel was way too salty, the cream cheese was too watery and light (altho they did glop a lot on for me), and there were only two thin strips of salmon (gotta give credit for being fresh tho).
I don't get why this was ranked #1. Now I'm craving a nice fluffy just-made H&H bagel that I know won't disappoint. :)
Don't trust anyone who gives this place less than 4 or 5 stars -- this place is the BEST!
Apparently I found out that the guy who decided to open up Absolute Bagels used to work at Ess-A-Bagel, and then of course, he perfected his own boiling bagel technique and opened this place. So maybe we should give some credit to Ess-A-Bagel for training him and helping to create a bagel genius that gave birth to Absolute?
I came here in the afternoon today to try a bagel; I've actually had their bagels and their spreads before when I went to the Tastings NYC event last November, and I was completely blown away by how good everything was and knew I had to come to the actual location.
As I came in, I couldn't decide which bagel I wanted, so I asked the guy behind the counter (he might've been the founder!) which one was his favorite, and he said with a smile, "whichever bagel is just made." He then took out a piping hot tray of egg bagels, and I knew right away I had to get one. I got it with cream cheese, and it was $1.95 ($1 per bagel and 95 cents extra for plain cream cheese; if you want it toasted, it's 10 cents extra, but this eggie was the freshest of the fresh, so no need for that).
It was so hot and fresh that I had to wait almost 10 minutes for the bagel to cool off. But once it cooled off enough for me to comfortably take a bite, I was in such shock that I just sat there and chewed slowly -- all thoughts just disappeared from my mind. All I could think about was this egg bagel with this cream cheese in this fabulous shop (the decor is not so fabulous, but like I care when the bagel is this good!). It really is slightly crisp on the outside and chewy chewy chewy on the inside. I had one experience with H&H and will never go back (can someone please say "dense"! not only that but their service is so rude), especially knowing that Absolute is here.
Another plus is that they're pretty generous here with the cream cheese spreads, which is nice. Friendly service is always a plus. Well... in general, *everything* is a plus here, so just come here ASAP.
As a native Noo Yawker, I seem to be on an endless quest to discover the best bagels and pizza. Crispy on the outside and soft and doughy on the inside with a subtle flavor...in a perfect world it seems easy enough, however, most bagel joints have conquered only one of those requirements. Then after slathering on gobs of spread the bagel guy puts his palm on top of the bagel and pushes down with all his weight flattening the bagel. No, he wasn't looking out for your TMJ either. Needless to say Absolute Bagels are almost perfect as are the spreads.
Every New Yorker has a favorite bagel shop, and every New Yorker believes, to a fault, that their bagel shop is superior to all other bagel shops. Nobody ever converts, but that doesn't stop anyone from trying to make others believe in their version of the Bagel Truth.
So here's my contribution to the holy war: Absolute Bagels is the best bagel shop in the City of New York, and--assuming it's open--stop whatever you're doing and go and buy a bagel there.
Let's get this out the way first: the place is a dump. It's dusty and grimy. The tables wobble, it's cold in the winter. Look behind the counter on the north wall and you'll see the most dangerous fan ever manufactured. To hell with all that, you're not here for linen napkins, you're here for bagels.
And when you're past how the place looks, what bagels they are. I'm partial to poppy-seed myself because--and this is important--they put the seeds on all sides of the bagel. Nobody notices this sort of thing, but most bagel shops just throw a pinch of seeds on the top of the bagel and call it a day. Not so here; they take the time to give them a liberal application.
Inside, the bagels really are as good as the other hyperbole here: crunchy on the outside, chewy and soft inside. All that a bagel should be.
As for toppings, I have a confession: I detest cream cheese. I think it's repugnant, and thinking about it here as given me chills. So I go for the tuna salad, which is, hands down, the best in New York. If you don't like the bagels (and I don't know why you wouldn't), at least stay for the tuna. It's got a little bit of sweet pickle in it so it's tangy, and they give you a generous dollop on a sandwich.
Brilliant. A + + + WILL BAGEL AGAIN.
I'm from Arizona, where bagels are basically rolls with a hole in the middle (in the West, we don't have time for effete culinary practices like boiling perfectly good bread - not when there are sheep to wrangle and dogies to lasso).
I never understood what all the fuss was about until I moved to New York - my first apartment was a few blocks from Absolute, and when I took the first bite, I knew my entire bagular (is there an adjectival form of "bagel"?) experience up to that point had been a lie. Perfect skin on the outside, tender dough on the inside, really nothing like normal bread at all.
I'm not much of a fancy-spread person, but my friend who can't digest anything is a huge fan of Absolute's selection of Tofutti cream cheese. Absolute also has some weird, interesting bagel flavors, like raisin pumpernickel. Just one reason I'm never moving back to AZ.
The bagels and spreads here are absolutely (haha, get it?) fantastic!
But seriously, if you've never been here before, try the everything bagel toasted (extra 10 cents) with just plain normal cream cheese.
Or if you're lucky, the bagels will be fresh and wonderful.
They have quite the assortment of cream cheeses and toffuti cream cheeses with nova lox that actually tastes quite good as well on top of the aforementioned everything bagel with plain cream cheese.
Regardless, try out as my cream cheeses as you desire and find your winning combination.
I'll stick to the everything with plain cream cheese, please.
It seems rather fashionable to say that Absolute Bagels has the best in NYC now. It's sort of like when Jordan was dominating the NBA, they often gave someone else the MVP because they took him for granted, just like H&H is today in the sense of NYC bagels. Still, I totally get why everyone seems to love this place.
H&H Bagels are dense and have a lot of texture, while Absolute Bagels have a crispy crust, but are light doughy and almost sweet on the inside. For a $1 a bagel, the 40% discount from H&H almost makes this place seem like a bargain. Since I buy once a week and freeze, I think H&H hold up a little better in the freezer, but otherwise Absolute takes a back seat to no one.
I am completely in love with their bagels. I don't have just one that I always get, as I love so many different kinds that it depends on what i am in the mood for that day. Although I usually stick with the plain cream cheese, they do offer a great variety of flavored cream cheeses as well. I do have to admit that the herb cream cheese is a good one to try.
I like the way that they have the crusty outside but the inside is so soft. I am just drooling for a bagel right from Absolute right now.
Also, try their sandwhiches which are pretty good too. I like the tuna salad and turkey.
Excellent bagels, but I'm not sure they're better than the ones on Parsons Blvd in Flushing, Queens where I grew up. Since I live in the UWS, though, this is now my bagel place of choice!
The man behind the counter half-laughed at me as I rattled off my order. One girl, 3 full sized bagels and 3 mini-bagels to go, and one smoked lox with cream cheese on an everything bagel. Little did he know i was leaving NY that day and was taking these babies hostage back to sunny CA.
I'd read all about bagels before I landed in NY. The history of the bagel, bagel unions, the original sizes of bagels, what made a NY bagel a NY bagel, and the use of different sweeteners, of which malt is the most authentic. After all that research, I had to do a taste test comparison!
Absolute Bagel did not disappoint. It was crunchy on the outside, denser than H & H or Ess-a-bagel and chewy. It's a hearty bagel. The bagel sandwich with smoked lox and cream cheese with tomato was so delicious, I could've eaten another if I didn't have to go to lunch a few hours later. It was well worth the trek up to the UWS!
The only thing I don't recommend is trying to take a salt bagel anywhere. Those should be eaten as soon as possible because the salt draws moisture out of the bagel, making it dry and overly dense / chewy.
Not great service, but what can you expect? Know what you want and order it quick. The line moves fast. Awesome selection of cream cheese. I got the apple cream cheese, it was divine. They really load it on there though, I ended up removing half of it.
For me, it was tough to imagine a bagel store besides terrace bagel in Brooklyn that I would go out of my way for. Then came absolute bagel. While terrace bagels are big and heavy, absolute bagels are light, fluffy and have plenty of flavors. It's also a lactose intolerant's dream as they have dozens of tofutti spreads in addition to their dozens of cream cheese spreads. If it were a bit further south, I have no doubt that it would give h&h a run for their money.
Seriously the best bagel.
My ideal wedding would include a naked cherub made out of their sundried tomato cream cheese and a wall made out of an assortment of their bagels. Now that's class.
Vegan friendly with a nice selection of tofutti cream "cheeses."
I almost feel I don't have to write a review, because I would just be adding another perfect 5 stars to a long list of well deserved 5 stars. In short, I've eaten bagels here for years. It is now the only bagel I will eat, everything else leaves a sorry disapoimemt in my mouth.
I sum up by saying bagel perfection. It is so good, I actually drive to this place to pickup bagels.
everything bagel with garlic&chives ceam cheese & salmon. so good! when you walk in you can smell the fresh baked bagels. there are a lot of people here, and the workers process your order relatively quickly. so if you don't know what you want or you're a first timer, stand to the side and let the others pass. anyways, it was aout $6-7 for the bagel. it's expensivev considering the fact taht you can make the exact same thing for less than $3. but hey i was in ny, and i wanted to try a NY bagel!
Seriously probably the best bagel i've ever eaten. This also may have been one of the only establishments i was in that had a nice variety of people from families to singles to couples of all different backgrounds. I think a review solely of adjectives will suffice here: crowded, quick, efficient, warm, airy, garlicy, caffeiney, friendly, small, delicious.
The best and the least expensive. I second the poster who wishes they'd switch places with the H&H on 80th and Bdway. I live at 80th & West End, but I still travel up to 107th to buy from Absolute Bagels. Totally worth it too, cheaper, yummier and way more options than anywhere else.
a friend i was staying with promised me these were the best bagels in NYC, while i didn't really have so much time to go looking for every bagel, i know that after having two of these in two days, i didn't want to look for any other bagel.
everything bagel with sun dried tomato cream cheese.
lox.
you don't need anything else. honest to god.
Although I am not in NYC as much as I used to be, whenever I come up for a visit to Morningside Heights I make sure to leave with a dozen Everything bagels from Absolute Bagels. Since there are a ridiculous amount of bagel places in the city, I am not sure if I can say they are the absolute best, but I do love them and have never been disappointed.
I Absolutely love Absolute Bagels. By far the best bagels I've ever had, especially when they are fresh out of the oven. So much better than the overhyped H&H, plus you can get cream cheese.
Now if i could just find a good bagel in near my new place....
Ya what a Bagel!! Just a fan of the plain with a lot of cream cheese.mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
After a nearly year-long involuntary hiatus, I was finally back in the area of Absolute Bagels and made a much needed stop. I can now say that these bagels are like crack. I didn't care that the subway passengers in my vicinity had to see me scarf down a darkened, crispy-on-the-outside, springy-on-the inside light yet satisfying whole wheat bagel topped with a generous helping of rich lox spread. I wish they would open more branches of this shop to spread the wealth,
This is the best bagel place in the world. The bagels are always straight out of the oven and… Read more »
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