My fellow Montrealers. I write to you today with the seriousness and gravity of someone who has been fiercely debated, guilt-tripped and lobbied by my friends and family across an international border, and who has come out the other side unconvinced.
My family is from Montreal. Growing up, I’d come here for Rosh Hashanah and other holidays. And every time, there was always this coordinated campaign. They took me to St-Viateur. Then they tried Fairmount. They waited for me to finally agree with them. They guilted me to a degree that is probably illegal under the Geneva convention.
When I told my family I was writing this article, my mother texted back “I can’t. What have I raised?”
Today, I am here to say what I have been thinking my whole life: The New York bagel is better than the Montreal bagel.
I understand this may be upsetting to hear, but it’s the truth.
As a university student, I have been trained to critically evaluate evidence. And the evidence, collected over many breakfasts, is that the Montreal bagel is sweet, small, and tough in a way that confuses the body at seven am. Furthermore, it is structurally too weak to handle a proper shmear, making it impossible to build a breakfast on it. You can barely even put lox on it without the whole thing falling apart. I prefer the bread from The Cheesecake Factory over a Montreal “bagel”.
The New York bagel, on the other hand, is a statement. It’s large and it’s chewy in a way that’s satisfying. It’s also diverse. A New York bagel can handle anything from cream cheese to a bodega sandwich, the ultimate melting pot of a sandwich only found in New York City. That fluffy circle is a confident bread that has nothing to prove, unlike its flimsy Canadian cousin. It doesn’t require you to eat three to feel like you’ve had a meal. It respects both your time and your appetite.
By now, I’ve heard all the counterarguments. First, there’s the wood fired oven, often invoked like a sacred text. My response: who cares what kind of oven is used if the product doesn’t taste good? The second rebuttal I've heard is: “You just don't understand it yet.” My answer to that is: I’ve been coming to this city since 2007. If I don’t "understand” by now, I don’t think I ever will.
I am unmoved.
But I digress, I love Montreal, and I have no ill will towards its people. I did choose to come study here, after all. This city is fun and exciting. Smoked meat is a gift to the world. You have contributed many great things to the world—poutine, Leonard Cohen, Mike Bossy, and Celine Dion. Your contributions are meaningful, but the bagel is a loss, and I think you must know it deep down as well. The defensiveness alone tells a story. Nobody gets that worked up over a food they’re confident about.
The bagel is where I draw the line and plant my star spangled banner. When I return home for break, my first meal will be a real bagel
By the time you read this, I’ll be safely across the border, eating a bagel at Rosenfeld’s bagels in Newton, Massachusetts– a proper bagel of constitutional integrity.
Montreal bagels are not all that.
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