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COURIER LIFE, APRIL 8–14, 2022
OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
Hole bunch
BY ETHAN MARSHALL
One Brooklyn-based bagel aficionado
spent more than a year
trying to find the best bagel place
in New York City.
Bushwick resident Mike Varley
has patronized 202 bagel
shops from across the five boroughs
since first beginning on
his 13-month journey, and has
compiled their rankings into an
interactive map displaying the
locations with an icon grade and
scores based on a five-point scale,
as first reported by TimeOut.
According to Varley, 38, the
best bagel place is Hot Bagels
(P&C Bagels) at 7905 Metropolitan
Ave. in Middle Village, Queens,
earning a score of 4.75 out of 5.
High-ranking Brooklyn bagel
places include Olde Brooklyn Bagel
Shoppe in Prospect Heights,
Bagel Boy in Sheepshead Bay and
Bagel Hole in Park Slope.
When conducting his taste
tests, Varley would always order
an everything bagel with scallion
cream cheese, which, according to
Varley, served two functions.
“First, it operated as a means
of controlled comparison,” he
told Brooklyn Paper’s sister publication
QNS. “Second, both options
allow for creativity and variety
in preparation while still
being among the most popular
order options.”
He splits his reviews into three
categories: store, bagel and cream
cheese. Additionally, Varley said
he tried to identify what may be
unique about each experience.
His reviews typically take about
an hour to write.
Varley described the project
— dubbed “Everything is Everything”
— as an offshoot of one he
began in 2020 called Total Clarity
when he and his wife walked in
five marathons a week in a year
for a total of 7,000 miles across the
five boroughs of the city.
“Pretty early on I realized I
had a unique opportunity to survey
all that NYC bagels had to
offer — both because I would be
visiting every neighborhood and
because I’d be burning the bagels
off with a marathon a day,” Varley
said.
He tried three bagels a week
throughout Total Clarity before
devoting another month to trying
50 more locations.
When it came to P&C Bagels,
Varley said “the combination of
unique store aesthetics, a great
staff, the crusty toasty quality
of the bagel and the freshness of
the cream cheese with great scallion
texture additions made it a
winner.”QNS reached out to P&C
Bagels for comment and is waiting
for a response.
Varley said he is already looking
into adding more stores that
he missed or may have opened up
after the list. He said popular demand
has been dictating which
ones he has or intends to try.
According to Varley, the ideal
SCHMEAR CAMPAIGN: One Brooklyn man is on a mission to find, and rank, the best bagel places in New York City.
Unsplash/Rachel McDermott
bagel shop has a combination of
“second nature intangibles and
intimate familiarity with services
offered.” Although he admits
more established stores are usually
at an advantage, more contemporary
stores can certainly
catch up with thoughtful intentions,
customer engagement and
flexibility to experiment,
“A ‘5’ bagel store represents the
ultimate in presentation, product
freshness, order management and
bagel staff skill,” he said.
While Everything is Everything
does provide detailed reviews,
Varley emphasizes that
the grading system for bagels is
still subjective.
According to Varley, “the
qualities of an elite bagel are
peak freshness, a strong chew
identity, compelling flavor and
texture dialogue between topping
and dough and its ability to
enhance the applied spread via
radiant heating, texture complement
or otherwise.”
When it comes to cream
cheese, the application plays a
big role in deciding the score.
“Too little creates a persistent
feeling of longing, too much is a
logistical nightmare of spread
management and bagel obfuscation,”
Varley said. “Messy preparation
can result in constant
napkin grabbing that mars the
experience.”
In addition to application
amount and technique, other factors
Varley considers when judging
the cream cheese are viscosity,
dairy perspective, scallion
texture, scallion flavoring and
interplay with the bagel.
Toppings aside, Varley says
it’s important to keep in mind
what he refers to as “The Ten Bagel
Axioms” — among them, “Do
not toast a bagel if you know it is
hot or fresh,” and “an irregularly
shaped bagel will almost always
taste better.”
Bushwick man ranks over 200
bagel places in New York City