Can I get a good New York bagel at... H&H Bagels
Can I get a good New York bagel at... H&H Bagels
"Like No Other Bagel in the World." Thank god.
Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). If you’re interested in taking this journey with me, make sure you subscribe so you never miss a review. If you want to ensure I review any specific bagels (or want to let me know why I’m wrong), you can email me at seanmatthewkeeley@gmail.com.
Among New York City’s many iconic bagel spots, delis, and appetizing stores, America might just be most familiar with H&H Bagels. While Russ & Daughters has the history and places like Tompkins Square Bagels and Ess-a-Bagel garner plenty of attention, no bagel place has the pop culture imprint that H&H has built up over the years. That cache appears to be what they’re banking on as they attempt to go national.
In 1972, Helmer Toro and brother-in-law Hector Hernandez bought Midtown Bagels on Broadway and 80th. Combining their names, H&H Bagels officially came onto the scene, and by 1974 they had two stores, one on the Upper East Side and another on the Upper West Side.
The company has an inauspicious start. H&H went bankrupt in 1979 and Toro lost ownership of the Upper East Side location, though he remains the owner of the other one and opened another shop in Hell’s Kitchen in 1993.
H&H hit the pop culture jackpot in 1997 when they were featured in an episode of Seinfeld. After spending the last 12 years on strike, Kramer returns to work at H&H Bagels, only to strike once more before getting fired for dropping gum into the bagel dough. The episode might be best remembered as the one in which we are introduced to Festivus, but the cultural footprint had been stamped.
A year later, Nora Ephron gave H&H a nod in her film You’ve Got Mail. Joe (Tom Hanks) namechecks H&H as his “neighborhood bagel place.”
H&H then cemented its place as the quintessential NYC bagel spot when one of their takeout bags showed up in a 2001 episode of Sex & The City.
H&H remained the go-to reference for good NYC bagels in the years ahead with mentions in Entourage, How I Met Your Mother, and The Office.
By 2009, however, things took a turn for the now-iconic bagel business. Toro was indicted for tax evasion and withholding pay from workers. He pleaded guilty to grand larceny, was forced to pay restitution, and served a jail term.
As for H&H, Toro’s company was sold at auction in 2011 and his two locations closed in 2012. President Barack Obama (a former Columbia student) lamented the closure of his favorite bagel place as “shocking.”
"I was always a big poppy seed guy," he told the Forward. "Lox and bagels okay...but generally just your basic schmear."
So big was the closure of Toro’s side of H&H that someone wrote a book about it.
Meanwhile, H&H Bagels on the Upper East Side remains in business and, in 2014, CEO Jay Rushin came on board with visions of a national expansion strategy. In 2016, they opened a new Upper West Side shop. In 2017, they started a wholesale business. By 2019, there were H&H outposts at JFK Airport and LaGuardia Airport.
Beyond New York City, they’ve gone all-in on franchising and currently have outposts in Washington, D.C., Santa Monica, and West Palm Beach. The list of future locations includes Chicago, Tampa, Miami, and Dallas. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before there’s an H&H Bagels here in Seattle.
“Pretty much every product category has its premium players, whether you want to talk pizza, or burgers, or whatever category, and there’s a missing link with bagels,” Rushin told QSR. “The food world is gravitated toward higher-quality, better-for-you products, and our products are all-natural, no preservatives, and authentic New York bagels. There’s no one else that can compete with us on that product.”
The H&H story takes a winding road but it followed success to the most American of places: Corporatization and massive expansion. We know how that story usually goes when it comes to quality, so let’s find out if H&H Bagels is set up for national success or if they’re just trading on a reputation that’s already gone.
And if you want to know how I define a good bagel, you can find that here.
WHAT I ORDERED
Plain bagel as-is
Everything bagel with scallion cream cheese.
THE EXPERIENCE
Right off the bat, I want to admit that H&H Bagels was doomed to fail this review.
On the last day of my NYC trip, I planned to trek up to Absolute Bagels, which had quite the hype train around it. So much so that when I stupidly arrived late in the morning on a weekend, the line was 50 people deep.
I didn’t account for that and suddenly found myself in a dilemma. I didn’t have the time to wait in line for an hour. So, I disappointingly looked around for an alternative bagel I could grab quickly before heading to the airport. H&H was the only place in the area that seemed worth a shot.
A bit rushed, I arrived at H&H with a cursory understanding that it had been featured in Seinfeld and had a good reputation, though I was unaware of the whole story I mentioned above. Entering the Upper West Side shop, I was greeted by what felt like a franchise-style interior. Spartan and compact, I didn’t get a real “authentic NYC deli” vibe, though I don’t think that’s what they were going for either.
By the time I got to the counter, I could see the bagels in the baskets and noted they looked “premade” and “factory.” Also, they had run out of everything bagels (it was 12:30 p.m.). Given that I needed one of those for my review, I said I’d wait for the new batch, which would be ready in 10 minutes or so. The good news is that I’d be getting the everything bagel at its very best, hot and fresh out of the oven.
The plain bagel ran me $2.30 while the everything bagel with cream cheese came in at $6.45, both of which felt a little high compared to the local averages I’d seen.
UPON FIRST GLANCE
As I said above, first impressions were not great from the baskets. Things didn’t get much better when I finally got my bagels. The bagels were both very uniform in shape and feel as if they’d come off an assembly line. I did not have high hopes.
TOP
The top of the plain bagel was extremely shiny and featured a light golden brown color. It was slightly crisp and did have some cracks in various places. It was also crinkly to the touch.
As for the everything bagel, it was also very uniform and shiny where I could see beyond the seeds. They had a medium seed hand, with a focus on onion and garlic.
BOTTOM
The bottoms of both bagels were soft and featured a clear Cornmeal Ring of Doom. There were some bubbles on both but not much in the way of texture or crinkle.
INSIDE/BITE
The plain bagel offered a very soft rip. The same goes for the bite, which was very soft with only a whisper of crispness. Just like with Murray’s, I noted a very distinct malty flavor that made the bagel very sweet. The interior of the bagel was pillowy but not fluffy and did feature a pleasant smell. However, that malt overpowered everything else.
As for the everything bagel, all I had to do was touch it and the cream cheese immediately started oozing everywhere. That was unfortunate. The schmear was very scalliony, which was appreciated, but it was so loose that I was practically wearing most of it with each bite. That malty flavor reared its ugly head once again and the mixture of that and scallion made for a rather unpleasant experience. As for the bagel itself, it was very soft and the everything flavor was very onion-forward.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Fresh out of the oven, that everything bagel should have knocked my socks off. Instead, it made me feel like I was sitting in any number of bagel chains, like Einstein Bros. or Bruegger’s. Then again, based on the company’s plans, that appears to be the point. H&H fancies itself the heir apparent to that space and, based on the bagels I ate, they seem primed to take that mantle.
I don’t mean that in a good way.
Is It Good Enough For The Goys?
As this place expands across the country, it’s going to do a major disservice to those of us who are fighting to make sure people eat good bagels. Trading on its bona fides, H&H is going to open in a new city under the guise of “Authentic NYC bagels as seen on Seinfeld,” and people will assume this is what New Yorkers consider the apex of bagel noshery. Ugh.
Is It Good Enough For Northeastern Jews?
For all his many, many faults, it sounds like Helmer Toro knew how to make a good bagel. There’s just no way so many New Yorkers would have gone out of their way to hype them up otherwise. But whatever bagels H&H was making back in the day, they don’t make those bagels anymore. They make generic factory-line chain bagels now. The past is indeed dead.
MY NEW YORK AREA BAGEL RANKINGS (11/27/23)
O’Bagel (Hoboken)
H&H Bagels
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Do you think it's possible to make a chain bagel that's better than Panera etc but still decent? Like Starbucks isn't great but I think most coffee snobs (myself included) would at least say their basic espresso is fine. It seems odd that bagels doesn't have an equivalent.